The Psychology of Poker By: Alan Shoomaker

[yellowjack]

Hello,

A little late on the response here but I just finished the book two days ago so I thought I'd give some input.

I see myself as a mentally strong player who has a very good idea of why I play the way I do. As a result of this, I didn't gain anything from the self-evaluations. Actually, I found myself in disagreement about some of the assessments.

In his book, he says that if you blame your poor results on bad luck, you are kidding yourself. I disagree with this, as I put very good sessional results as coming from good luck and not just "skill". Much later on in the book he mentions himself speaking of long term luck just once. However it was very misleading at the start, and should be corrected if another edition of this book comes out.

The parts of the book that benefited me the most were the parts on why people play LPP, LAG, TAP, and TAG. The reasons are very straight-forward and logical, i.e. a TAP is living off pension and wants to pass the time while making some money. If anyone wanted a summed up version of the book from me it's that he explains why people play the way they do, and he makes sure you know why you're playing.

Perhaps this realization of this is what makes the book so good. Whatever it was, I must have overlooked it.