Tao of Poker

New Issue: Card Player Magazine

Here are a few articles that I read from the most recent issue. I'm slowly making my way through them all.

1. Two Black Nines -- Layne's Style! is written by Layne Flack who sits in on Phil Hellmuth's article this week.

Here's a bit: "This is the first Hand of the Week that Mr. Hellmuth has allowed me to write 100 percent on my own. How fitting it is that it involves pocket nines, because we all know to whom this hand really belongs -- right, Phil?"

2. Change Your Game as Your Opponents Change is written by Andrew N.S. Glazer.

Here's a bit: "Whether you choose to thank Steve Lipscomb and Chris Moneymaker, or the Travel Channel and ESPN (with shows like Bravo's new Celebrity Poker Challenge helping to keep the momentum going), you have probably never faced so many inexperienced players, no matter what limits you chose to play. These television shows are, for the moment at least, changing poker, and you'll find your results improving if you change along with it. Except for the localized phenomena that one sees when live poker moves into a town for the first time (ah, to have been living in Los Angeles when hold'em was legalized here...), poker has never experienced a time when so many new players were coming into games at the same time..."

3. Tilt, Part I: Avoiding It is written by Alan Schoonmaker.

Here's a bit: "Tilt means that someone is playing very differently and much more poorly than usual, and most people use the term only for playing too many hands too aggressively. If someone is always wildly aggressive, he's not on tilt. He's just playing in his usual, maniacal way. I'll use a broader definition: Tilt means someone is making plays for emotional reasons that he would not normally make. Wild aggression is just its most visible form. Another form is to become so upset, frightened, or convinced you can't win that you "play scared." You might fold good draws with pot odds or not raise with pocket kings. Your play deteriorates so much that the "I can't win" belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This form of tilt is less dramatic and noticeable than wild aggression, but it can be equally destructive..."