Good Books, Bad Books

[BigF]

[ QUOTE ]
Hellmuth, Esfandiari, and Fischman proudly chirp about not learning the game from books.

[/ QUOTE ]

Rocks and Rings said he learned from a poker book at the very beginning. Maybe he stopped because the books he read were not that 1.4.

[ptmusic]

In the days of my youth
Ken Warren told me how to win a hold 'em hand,
Now I’ve reached the age
I try to play like SSH the best I can.
No matter how I try,
My variance can put me in the same old jam.

Good books, Bad books,
You know I read my share;
When my aces got cracked
by a brown trout man,
Well, I still don’t seem to care.

-ptmusic

[Easy E]

My god, Ed- you're turning into a Mini-Me Mason!

Take a vacation! But not until you write the NL book...

[img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[Adam Carolla]

[ QUOTE ]
All fields have their duds. But poker always seemed to me to be far worse than the average field.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you think poker is bad, try reading golf books. 95% of them are complete crap.

[helpmeout]

Yawn

There are crap books in every field.

Most books are filled with some good stuff and some crap stuff it doesnt necessarily make them crap.

The person reading them has to think about the information not just copy word for word like a school kid.

When I read a poker book I want new ideas, as long as it makes me think, then the book is of some value. The last thing I want is reworded stuff from TOP.

I really dont see the point of this thread.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Everyone:

I'm going to get into this a little more.

While there will be a large number of poker books sold the next few years, there are also many more books coming onto the market than there is shelf space at the major book stores. What this means to me is that most of these books will fail as commercial entities.

Now I won't mention any names, but you can go to Amazon and look at sales ranks. While you will see a few poker books such as the Harrington books with incredible good sales ranks, you will also see many other books, some by well known authors that have poor sales ranks meaning no sales.

But what I find most interesting is we have noticed that one of the other poker publishers, a company with many more books than we have, seems to be missing the release date of many of their new titles. That is a bunch of their books which according to Amazon should already be out are not yet released.

Now I can't be absolutely sure, but I suspect that most of these not yet released books that should already be out will do poorly (in terms of sales). I also suspect that many of this publisher's line of books are also doing poorly.

The conclusion to this, and I have stated this before, is that for a new poker book to be successful, it better be good regardless who the publisher is. This is especially true since some new books (in addition to ours) that are coming out are pretty good. The new good books, as well as the established good books, should now begin to crowd the crummy ones off the shelves.

That's the way competition works, and that's the way it should be.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Beach-Whale]

[ QUOTE ]
The new good books, as well as the established good books, should now begin to crowd the crummy ones off the shelves.

That's the way competition works, and that's the way it should be.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I agree that that is the way it should work, but it's definitely not "the way competition works," unfortunately. Good products only win over bad products if the consumers are knowledgeable, or maybe if someone knowledgeable is guiding them. And let's face it - most of the time in the free market, the consumer knows schit, and 99% of those who have any interest in guiding them just wants to mis-guide them. And this would apply to politics too.

So, if the poker book market works as a free market "should" work, well, then it is an aberration.

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
Good products only win over bad products if the consumers are knowledgeable, or maybe if someone knowledgeable is guiding them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think Mason should have postscripted that sentence with "in the long run" - I'm pretty sure that's what he meant, and in that case I agree. In the short run, say if every poker book ever written were released today, you might see a leaning toward those books with larger advertising budgets and/or bigger names ("Harrington on Holdem" would most likely sell right out of the gate, while "Theory of Poker" would probably take some time for people to realize it's a good book and word of mouth to spread before its sales got going).

But regarding poker books, everyone is going to put the things they read into play at some point, so the bookbuyer either becomes knowledgeable (at which point he can tell a good book from a bad one) or goes broke. Compare that to a crummy popsci book on theoretical physics, where many people who purchase it are simply reading it for pleasure and will never know that it's a crap book unless they ask a knowledgeable person or have access to a particle accelerator for some reason - the worst that can happen to them is that they come out of the experience with some hogwash new-age conclusions about what quantum spookiness means regarding their day-to-day life.

So while books like TJ's are definitely entertaining and easy reads ("You'd better believe I could go broke with AQ, partner - and anyone who says they couldn't is a stone fool....Or a gone goose."), I sincerely doubt you're going to get very far in poker if you habitually check-fold AK when you don't hit the flop, or only play the Top 10 Hands, etc. At least not far enough to recommend it to someone else.

[HddnR]

So what is a good book on Quantum Physics?

[Jordan Olsommer]

[ QUOTE ]
So what is a good book on Quantum Physics?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea - my particle accelerator is in the shop.