[jmgurgeh]

Just finished the book, a great read that I thought might benefit from a revised edition given the changing scope of the poker world. I can see how telling people that it's not very happy to be a professional poker player might be taken the way the OP stated it, but the way I took it was just that being a poker pro is not as glamorous as you think (probably a valuable reality check for some).

In any case, I thought that was an extremely minor point. I think the most valuable section of the book dealt with "thinking visibly," which is done to some degree in the other 2+2 books I've read (incl. Theory of Poker and SSH), but honestly I thought this section was way too short. Al, if you revise and publish a second edition, I hope you'll include a lot more examples of thinking visibly and hand reading. I think so far the best book for sheer number of walkthroughs is Hilger's Internet Texas Hold 'Em, but that's exclusively for online play and doesn't deal much with psychology other than general playing style reads. (And quite frankly, nobody deals much with situations where you're advised to be aggressive, and then you find aggression right back at you. Those hands are a hell of a lot harder to play.)

A few other topics I wondered about after I finished were general observations I've made online and in some live games. We've all been on the bad end of terrible plays that worked out, but I think the Loose-Passive section misses a crucial psychological idea that may be quite common to these players: They sometimes think they're making strong plays by calling. A little beyond the "keep you honest" attitude is one guy who called me (clear premium hand) down with Q8o, unimproved with no draw. I went to the history, saw what hand he had, and said "You called me down with Q-high?" He replied, "I wasn't going to let you buy it." In a live tournament once I pushed all-in with the nuts on an extremely dangerous board, and a player who played the board called me. I talked to him about it (one of my friends) and he said he did it as a bluff. That's right, he thought he was bluffing by calling. Though loose-passive players are described as compliant, I would often characterize them as (in their minds) uncompliant, and not willing to be pushed around by my bets and raises. Moreover, I see an awful lot of donkbets ("gaybets" if you like) from players who are otherwise passive. All of a sudden they choose horrible spots in which to bluff with a single bet that is almost certainly not going to get them the fold(s) they need to win, but this can be very frustrating to deal with, and is a huge break from their typical passive style.

If that all seems critical, I don't mean it to be. For a while I just couldn't figure out how some people were "naturally" good players and some (me) would be terrible without having read some decent literature first. After reading your book, I think those players are good at discerning general strategy of games by concentrating intently and thinking visibly, the latter being perhaps the most important concept (for me) in the entire book.