The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King

[laserboy]

I received this yesterday from Amazon and was finished reading it five hours later. It is a very entertaining read.

The author weaves some great gambling stories and background information on the big money players together well with a narrative of the Andy Beal games. It has a lot stuff that I had never read before. The background information on Andy Beal is fascinating as well.

This is best poker book of its kind that I have read in a long time. Highly recommended. It almost makes you want to run out and play some $100,000/$200,000.

[jojobinks]

i'm half way through and am loving it.

[King Yao]

I'm reading it too - a quarter of the way - and its really fun so far.

[SossMan]

looks like i found my airplane book for my vesas trip tomorrow...thanks.

[Rob-L]

I agree. I'm about 1/3 of the way through it and think it's one of the best poker narratives I've ever read. Andy Beal has had a very interesting life!

[Shaman]

I'm 80% into it. Better than Biggest Game in Town, Anthony Holden's book, and Man with the $100,000 Breast put together.

Lesson One: If you want to make it to 2,000-4,000 level you have to be a real gambler and take real chances. Forget 300 big bets. You have to go for broke sometimes. You have to risk enough when the opportunity presents itself so that you can't sleep well. I don't think I'll ever make it to that level. I'm too S&M like in my bankroll management.

Lesson Two: Jennifer Harman and Todd Brunson may the the best pros at the highest limits.

Lesson Three: By now, Andy Beal may be the best heads up limit player in the world. As of two years ago, he dominated both Chau Giang and Barry Greenstein. Held his own against Chip Reese, Doyle Brunson, Howard Lederer, and Ted Forrest. The only people who clearly beat him were Todd Brunson and Jennifer Harman.

This is a very entertaining book that reveals the willingness of the world's highest stakes players to risk it all. This book not only covers Andy Beal but the members of the "corporation" as well.

[MikeCraig]

[ QUOTE ]

Lesson Three: By now, Andy Beal may be the best heads up limit player in the world. As of two years ago, he dominated both Chau Giang and Barry Greenstein. Held his own against Chip Reese, Doyle Brunson, Howard Lederer, and Ted Forrest. The only people who clearly beat him were Todd Brunson and Jennifer Harman.


[/ QUOTE ]

It is highly likely that I will be making a correction in future editions about the number of times Andy Beal played Barry Greenstein. On pages 194-195, I referred to a game between them in Fall 2003. I thought I had four sources for this game. Three of them were either vague or admitted their memories for dates and results weren't good. The fourth, I thought, was Barry, until I realized (too late for the first edition) that what I thought were summaries of two losing sessions during different Beal trips were references to the same session. Barry's denial of a Fall 2003 game against Andy (not that he ever told me otherwise; I just mistakenly thought he had) is much more specific than those telling me the opposite.

I don't know how much, if at all, that affects your opinions about Barry v. Andy. I'm pleased to be the reason for the debate, but if part of my contribution was an incorrect piece of information, I want to fix that.

And thanks so much for all the kind words about the book. Because the 2+2 group has been nice enough to create a forum for us even to discuss a non-2+2 book, I won't quote reviews or tell you about book signings or stores or online sites selling the book. (You're poker players; you'll figure it out!)

Mike Craig

[Beavis68]

Todd earned a great deal of respect from me when I read his chapter in SS2. Although his chapter was brief, and on 7stud8b, it showed me he has a great gambling mind.

It would be great if 2+2 could get him in the stable.

[Jingleheimer]

I picked this book up last weekend and read it in one sitting. I thought it was a very entertaining read as well.

There were two things on which I wish the author had gone into more detail:

1) Andy Beal
This guy is a really fascinating guy! I was really blown away by his story. Seems to be an entrepreneur to the core. Hard to believe that one guy can make money fixing TVs, counting cards, in real estate, running seminars, and as a banker?! He has an outstanding math problem named after him, and now he is one of the best HU HE players in the world. Wow. I wanted to know more about Andy Beal. Really really compelling character.

2) Andy's preparations for his matches.
Andy was using some kind of game theory to determine optimal frequencies for bluffing and calling etc. The author really doesn't go into this. I know that this may not be of interest to a wider audience, but one question I had was: Since Beal has experience and relationships with mathematicians, has he done some work with mathematical analysis on HU HE? I do know that there is quite a bit of work on the [0,1] game. There didn't seem to be any mention of a connection between Beal's math experiences and poker. This seems to be really unlikely. I was curious about that. Also, the book seemed to indicate that Beal preferred HU because he was a bit leery about collusion in a multihanded game of lots of pros vs him and that HU was considerably less boring. But it could also be that HU is a game which considerably more amenable to a mathematical analysis. Anyway, I was curious to know if these thoughts were in there too.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the book.

J

[sethypooh21]

[ QUOTE ]
finished reading it five hours later. It is a very entertaining read.

[/ QUOTE ]

What he said.