Book Review: Elements of Poker
‘Elements of Poker’ by Tommy Angelo is a light, delightful read for poker. There are quite a lot of things elaborated in this book, which were never considered before. The book isn’t merely about percentages or pot odds or bluffing and hand ranges. There are loads of books in the market which show you how to play, however this book literally focuses on how you should be while playing the game.
In fact, the book is all about how and where should you sit, the thoughts in your mind, the actions you need to display, when and how should you speak, including the way to breathe. Angelo starts off by describing three different games of poker. according to him, game A is where you play the best and feel the best, game C is when you play poorly and feel the same, whereas game B is anywhere between the first two games. It is impossible for players to play the game A all the time since poker is known to be a psychologically and a physically stressful game. The book strives to help you improve your game C. he explains that improving your game A would increase your win rate by 0.5% per hour, whereas improving game C could be worth more. It’s often the difference between winning and losing.
Angelo explains the basic philosophy behind profits. It actually comes from all those things that you can do better than your opponents. However, it’s not all about the poker hands. Every decision made by you could be an opportunity to decide better than your opponents. Therefore Angelo stresses more on quitting. Players who are prone to tilting in poker would find his advice pretty invaluable.
The underlying theme of the book is self-control. The reader would be able to recognise that this book happens to be a by-product of a long struggle between the author and his problem with the tilt. Angelo has been a professional poker player for a long time and he actually shows the paths he had taken to achieve control over his thoughts and bring in some discipline into his actions. It’s not necessary that all that worked for him could work for his readers too, but the instructive examples can help a lot.
On the other hand, he also discusses some of the common concepts of the game in a plain and easy-to-understand language. The tournament chapters are dedicated towards the survival in the game. There are some ethical issues discussed in the book too, which seem to be a little off-track. But on the whole, the book is fun to read and would prove beneficial for all those players seeming to tilt or the beginners.
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