Real Poker Psychology

During the last few years, there has been much new information produced that comes under the heading of poker psychology. The idea is to cover that area of poker which is less strategic but still important to one s overall success at the game, and a new area of mental coaching has appeared.But poker, being a game based on probability that can be very counterintuitive and which also has a large short term luck factor can trick many players into thinking that things are a lot different than they are. Thus, the supposed need for psychological tools to help with ones play. But it turns out that gaining a good understanding of everything poker which includes the strategic concepts that govern expert poker play as well as the counter intuitiveness and the short-term luck factor will usually solve all problems.In Real Poker Psychology, mathematician Mason Malmuth who has written numerous books on poker and gambling including Gambling Theory and Other Topics and (as a co-author) Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players, takes a fresh look at the psychological side of the game. He approaches the topic of poker psychology from the perspective of a professional player, setting this book apart from some other books in the field and leading to many different conclusions when compared to these other works. Topics covered include Variance, A Mathematical Model of Tilt, Poker is Counterintuitive, Craving Action, The Maniac, 10,000 Hours, Being a Tournament Star, What Your Opponent Thinks, It s Not What You Eat, Visual Cues, Fight or Flight, Apathy, Sucker Privileges, Self-Weighting Hand Histories, Recent Erroneous Concepts, and much more.

Mason Malmuth was born and raised in Coral Gables, Florida. In 1973 he received his BS in Mathematics from Virginia Tech, and completed their Masters program in 1975 also in Mathematics. While working for the United States Census Bureau in 1979, Mason stopped overnight in Las Vegas while driving to his new assignment in California. He was immediately fascinated by the games, and gambling became his major interest.After arriving in California he discovered that poker was legal and began playing in some of the public cardrooms as well as taking periodic trips to Las Vegas where he would play both poker and blackjack. In 1982 he went to work for the Northrop Corporation as a mathematician and moved to Los Angeles where he could conveniently pursue his interest in poker in the large public cardrooms in Gardena, Bell Gardens, and Commerce.In 1983 his first article Card Domination The Ultimate Blackjack Weapon was published in Gambling Times Magazine. In 1987, he left his job with the Northrop Corporation to begin a career as both a full-time gambler and a gambling writer. He has had over 600 articles published in various magazines and is the author or co-author of 16 books. These include Gambling Theory and Other Topics where he tries to demonstrate why only a small number of people are highly successful at gambling. In this book he introduces the reader to the concept of non-self weighting strategies and explains why successful gambling is actually a balance of luck and skill. Other books he has co-authored include Hold 'em Poker For Advanced Players with David Sklansky, Seven-Card Stud For Advanced Players with David Sklansky and Ray Zee, and Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big with Expert Play with Ed Miller and David Sklansky. All of these are considered the definitive works on these games.His company, Two Plus Two Publishing LLC, has sold over two million books and currently has 42 titles to its credit. These books are recognized as the best in their field and are thoroughly studied by those individuals who take gambling seriously. In addition, Mason also heads up Two Plus Two Interactive LLC which produces www dot twoplustwo dot com where the largest English speaking poker community on the Internet is located. At the time of this writing, it contains approximately 100 forums (including several foreign languages as well as English) where as many as 15,000 posts per day appear. The web site gets up to 40,000 unique visitors a day, 80,000 visits a day, 700,000 page views a day, and approximately 700,000 unique visitors a month. In addition, there is an Internet radio show known as the Two Plus Two Pokercast and the Two Plus Two Online Poker Strategy Magazine.