Elements of Poker, by Tommy Angelo
A book review
by “verneer”
Simply said, this is the best poker book I've ever read - and I've read a lot of them. Part of me doesn't want you to buy it or read it since if you do, you will become a better poker player and might take my money or money from a fish that I would normally get. The book is a really easy read and you can crack it open anywhere read a bit, get insight into the game, and then put it down. One of the things Tommy discusses is this idea of Reciprocality. Here is what he says:
"Reciprocality is any difference between you and your opponents that affects your bottom line. Reciprocality says that when you and your opponents would do the same thing in an given situation , no money moves, and when you do something different, it does [...] You dig for gold by looking for things that you could do differently in the future, things that will create or increase advantageous differences between you and your oponents, and thereby cause theoretical money to flow from them to you." (p. 34-5)
For example, suppose you raise JJ UTG and get called by a a player holding 55 in the CO. The flop comes KJ5 with two hearts and you both get it all-in. Your set holds up and you win the pot. Tommy would argue that there was no theoretical money flow between you two. The way he looks at it, if the positions were switched, you would have played his hand exactly the same way. Only if you were to have played his hand differently in his position would there be theoretical money flow between you too. He continues on page 59-60:
"So what is the most profitable hand, reciprocally speaking? Is it pocket aces? Nope. The hand that has the highest reciprocal potential must be a hand that gets played lots of different ways. It's going to be somewhere between the hands that are rarely folded, and the hands that are rarely played. Aces are almost never folded before the flop, so we know that they cannot be the most profitable hand. It seems most improbable that the most profitable hand would be exactly the same hand fore everyone through all time and space, which means the answer will vary from player to player. And that means that any answer we produce is just an educated guess anyway. So what the heck. I’ll go first.
The hold’em hand I think I’ve made the most reciprocal profit on the over the years is queen-ten."
To me, this is such an interesting way of looking at playing your hands. It's all about how you play your hands different from your opponents. Would they call in a spot where you would raise? If so, why?
He also has a section called The Object of the Game (p. 82-83). He writes:
At poker, the object of the game is to stand up with more money than you sat down with. Whoever does that wins. Whoever doesn’t loses.
What if you decided that for today’s session, the object of the game was to not tilt? What would you do differently? What if the object of the game was to act last on the turn and river? What if it was to quit while you felt fresh?
By making up your own object of the game …
… you sharpen to focus of your energy onto that objective.
I mean ... that's just gold. I will leave you with this:
If you are stuck and you are not having fun, and the reason you are not having fun is because you are stuck, then it's okay to quit while citing this to yourself as the reason: I want ot have fun. I am not having fun. So I will stop this unfun activity, now. (p. 31)
I feel like any person serious about poker should have a copy of this book.