WPT Suggestion

[southerndog]

Don't you think it would be fun if in a heads up situation they only showed you one players cards to start with? That way, you could say how you would play the hand from the perspective of the guys cards that you do see. I think it would be cool if the WPT mixed things up like this every once in a while.

[SevenStuda]

Good thing nobody asked for your oppinon.

[Easy E]

[tewall]

I think it's an interesting idea. It would probably be confusing for some though, and I'm sure they want to keep things as simple as possible.

I think it would be a cool idea for a book to play through a tournament through the perspective of a player. It could be a fictitious tournament, but the idea would be to show the thinking that goes on. Mike Lawrence wrote some books like this for bridge, and they are very entertaining, as well as showing you how a top player thinks.

[Nottom]

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I think it would be a cool idea for a book to play through a tournament through the perspective of a player.

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Doesn't "Positively Fifth Street" basically cover this?

[scotnt73]

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I think it would be a cool idea for a book to play through a tournament through the perspective of a player.

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Doesn't "Positively Fifth Street" basically cover this?

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yes, and it does a great job too

[cferejohn]

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I think it would be a cool idea for a book to play through a tournament through the perspective of a player.

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Doesn't "Positively Fifth Street" basically cover this?

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To some degree. However:

a) It really only discusses a handful of hands.

b) The book is about many other things than the author's run the WSOP.

and, most importantly:

c) McManus is not a poker expert. While he is obviously at least a decent player, he is not someone who has spent the majority of his life playing and thinking about poker.

I think what the above player is interested in is more like a hand report that covers every interesting hand in a multi-day tournament, with thought processes, from a top-flight tournament player (Cloutier, Helmuth, Lederer, Flack, Ivey, etc.).

I think the reason a top tournament player would choose *not* to do this is fairly obvious. The risks (someone, or rather many people, using this detailed thought process information against him) outweigh the rewards (selling books to, most likely, a fairly niche market of hard-core poker enthusiasts).

Financially, this might make more sense in this era of e-books, where they could make a PDF out of it and their publishing costs would be roughly nil, but if I were a top player, I'd think that was an awful lot of work to go to (while I could be playing, no less) to write a book that at least theoretically substantially decrease my EV.

[tewall]

Yes, you've got it. I think Ciaffone would be a good candidate. He's good enough to do it (finished 3rd one yr. in world championship, and has one a bracelet in some other WSOP event I think -- probably Omaha), but is not on the tourney circuit, so wouldn't have to be worried about giving away "secrets".

Frankly, I think there's very little some top player could give away. WPT shows how they play hands, and the top players are still the top players. That a top player would give away an edge from a book seems unlikely to me (although I think Brunson was hurt by Super System, but there was much less information available back then).

[cferejohn]

Well, even if the amount they would 'give up' in tournament play is small, or even negligible, writing a book is a *ton* of work, and they certainly *would* be giving up money in that the amount they could make playing for however many hours it takes them to write is almost certainly more than the amount they would make by selling the book.

Positively 5th Street was a work of non-fiction that had a huge potential fan base of anyone who was even remotely interested in poker. A book that simply discusses umpteen tournament hands in detail is going to have a much much smaller market. The poker strategy books that are successful appeal to as many players as possible (remember that Super-System lost money hand over fist, it it was as generall as it could possibly be).

I think the market for this theoretical book is so small that it would be an upset for such a book to even be in the black, let alone pay for all the work that goes into making it. I imagine that is the fundamental reason no such book is in the works.

Don't get me wrong though, *I'd* buy it...

[tewall]

You might be right, but I think if a book like Ray Zee's on high-low split Omaha and stud can make money, then the type of book I'm thinking of could too. There's a lot of people tuned into WPT and the WSOP right now, so I think there'd be a pretty big market.

[jwvdcw]

Very cool idea..I think there was one hand during this year's WSOP where the camera didn't pick up Howard Lederer's hand and he ended up winning the pot and nobody knew what he had.

It would be cool for them to take one aggressive player like Ivey or Farha and only show his cards all tournament long. Since they can edit after the tourney is over they can choose someone who at least makes the final 3 so that we'll see a lot of it.