Al Schoonmaker

[Elizabeth-Anne]

Al Schoonmaker has a very pessimistic attitude about professional poker players. He thinks that almost all pro's are miserable. Al is overly judgemental. If you think poker is a bad profession, where do you get off judging everyone else?

It really depends on the individual person and whether he/she really likes it. There are people in "prestigious" careers who are unhappy in it. Alot of lawyers wish they never went to law school and they have the highest suicide rate. It also depends on what you compare poker with. It's alot better than working at burger king.

Schoonmaker makes silly attempts to compare poker with professional sports. He compares it with NBA, and poker is completely different. Try to make a living by playing volleyball, racquetball, or lacrosse. You won't make anything, cause there's no market for it.

So if Schoonmaker wants to compare poker with sports, lets compare it with baseball. Professional poker players probably make more than most baseball players. Schoonmaker doesn't realize that most baseball players aren't in the major leagues. How much do you think a double-A or single-A baseball player makes?

Schoonmaker uses Stu Unger as an example of why professional poker is bad. Well most of us aren't heroin abusers.

Al Schoonmaker sits on his high pedestal and passes judgement on poker players. He uses is own standards on everyone else, but not everybody is going to be admitted to a PhD program.

When he writes bad words about being a pro, Schoonmaker has "selective perception." For each unhappy "pro" there's 20-30 who have a pretty nice life.

Schoonmaker's attempts at bashing pros are silly. Are you saying that Ed Miller, Tommy Angelo, Bernie, Clarkmeister, and (Just)Jason are all a bunch of miserable, half-broke degenerates?

It seems like Schoonmaker loves to stereotype people. He is following the same line of thinking as the non-poker playing civilians, who seem to think poker pros are degenerate gambling addicts.

Schoonmaker's book is overrated. There is little specific holdem/poker playing advice. Almost the entire book is a description of the 4 player categories (Loose, Tight, etc.) which have been covered in other works. He also writes as if players fit rigidly into a category, but many players are somewhere in between. John Feeney's book is infinitely better.

Schoonmaker is pompous and very judgemental on other people. He loves to bash the poker profession. Al Schoonmaker is the prototypical concrete-thinker.

[brianmarc]

On the other hand, his book, "Psycho of P" is an excellent analysis of this part of the game. Must reading along with HPAP and TOP.

[TylerD]

[ QUOTE ]
very judgemental on other people

[/ QUOTE ]

oh the irony.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

You have done an excellent job of coming up with an unsolicited, unprovoked, and highly ignorant personal attack on someone you obviously have never met. Congrats.

Well guess what liz, I know Al personally, he's been one of my very good friends for a long time. And you are just plain dead wrong.

Al takes a very honest and straightforward approach, but apparently one not to your personal liking. I have always valued his advice, even when it wasn't what I wanted to hear. Obviously you don't want to hear it either, but that doesn't make you right and him wrong.

Speaking of selective perception:

[ QUOTE ]
For each unhappy "pro" there's 20-30 who have a pretty nice life.


[/ QUOTE ]

Ok liz, sure thing, we all know your opinion is pure fact.

Al does not make silly attempts at bashing pros. He simply makes observations based on his extensive experience. I guarantee you Al knows a LOT of pro players, from coast to coast, and he wouldn't portray them as anything other than what he truly believes them to be. I also guarantee you that Al thinks of none of the people you listed as half broke degenerates, particularly not Ed Miller (who is part of the Wednesday poker discussion group in Vegas) and Clarkmeister (who also lives in Vegas and knows Al personally).

Al's book was never about hold'em strategy. If that's what you wanted from it, well you bought the wrong book. Also, if you failed to gain anything from it, well, you just missed out, or your reading comprehension is quite poor.

Al's education allows him to take a rigorous scientific approach to things. I am also college educated, so I can understand this. I am not sure you are, otherwise I think you would realize the difference between pompous and scientific attitudes and approaches to problems.

My guess is that you simply cannot handle the fact that Al speaks his mind, and his positions often differ from yours. Too bad for you. Because I always value his advice, even when it's not what I want to hear. And the times I listen to him, I rarely go wrong, but the times I have ignored his advice I was almost always sorry I did.

al

[Al Schoonmaker]

I'd like to thank you and the others who have supported me here and elsewhere. I used to get upset by attacks, but I now just accept them as part of my position.
You and everyone else who knows me can confidently say that I have never disparaged pros as people, but I do have extreme doubts about poker as a career.
Since I explicitly state on p. 82 that players' styles are distributed in a bell curve, I obviously don't rigidly assign them to categories. In fact, I agree with her that most people fall somewhere in between
As for the "pompous" criticism, I encourage anyone to click on my name and read my profile here. Pompous people don't flatly state, "I am not a poker expert."
Regards,
Al

[gdaily]

Hi,

I beg to differ,

Actually, I think Shoonmakers book is one of to three books ever written on poker - in close contest with Ciaffone/Reubens "Pot & No-limit Poker" and Brunson et al "Super/System". These three books have helped my game way more than ever HPFAP or Sklanskys "Theory of Poker" have done.

But you have to do a lot of own thinking using this material (all three of them). If you want a textbook about holdem, its clearely tyhe wrong book to read - but you should have understood that from the title.

Did you even bother to do the "test" about yourself in the book? I did, and that pin-pointed my leak(s) in a very accurate way, that has helped me save and win many dollars.

/Ola

[Jeremy'sSpoken]

Time of the month Elizabeth?


I'm sorry...flame away

[TheGrifter]

[slavic]

Schoonmaker's attempts at bashing pros are silly. Are you saying that Ed Miller, Tommy Angelo, Bernie, Clarkmeister, and (Just)Jason are all a bunch of miserable, half-broke degenerates?

These guys can stand up for their own defense, but I do know a couple of these guys don't consider themselves pro's.

Now if you want to talk about Al's observations on the "Pro" lifestyle I would have to say he's not too far off the mark. He's not trying to be insulting, he's trying to lay out some considerations that you need to take into account.

Schoonmaker's book is overrated. There is little specific holdem/poker playing advice. Almost the entire book is a description of the 4 player categories (Loose, Tight, etc.) which have been covered in other works. He also writes as if players fit rigidly into a category, but many players are somewhere in between. John Feeney's book is infinitely better.

I think you missed the point of the book then. His insight into the functions of a players mind are quite worth while.

[Lori]

Now if you want to talk about Al's observations on the "Pro" lifestyle I would have to say he's not too far off the mark. He's not trying to be insulting, he's trying to lay out some considerations that you need to take into account.

I know very little about Al, other than he has the respect of many respected posters here, and that's good enough for me.

One thing that has always bothered me though, so I'll ask it here, is that people who say that Pro players are always depressed, moody and generally fed up with what they are doing.
I don't dispute this fact, but in the reasonably long time I have been playing, my own observation is that these people would have been depressed, moody and generally fed up with what they are doing WHATEVER they did for a living.

I have always figured that pro poker attracts these kind of people rather than creates them. Certainly I'm one who it attracted.

Lori