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The Shining Path of Poker from John VorhausPoker tools are useless without the underlying will to use them well. This is why we speak of poker as a path to mastery, not just of the game you play but also of the player you are. Here is where your path begins, with a fresh, new look at the poker game you play and your playing state of mind. John Vorhaus
has written more than two million words about poker in a career stretching
back to 1988 and including stints with every major poker publication.
His first book, The Pro Poker Playbook is now a hard-to-find classic,
but in recent years his prolific pen has yielded Killer
Poker: Strategy and Tactics for Winning Poker Play, Killer
Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game Part
1: Your Poker Philosophy Your Poker PhilosophyLet's get one thing straight from the start. I'm no smarter than you, you're no smarter than me. We are two together side by side walkin' down this very interesting path of poker. If I'm a good teacher it's only because I've been a good student: avid, energetic, relentless in my pursuit of higher poker knowledge. Should I succeed in infecting you with my enthusiasm for that pursuit, well, that'll probably be more darn useful to you than anything we might together discover about raising with pocket jacks or the proper defense of blinds. So I call myself your guru with tongue planted firmly in cheek - only maybe not so, because I understand what the guru's real job is. Not to boss but to serve. Not to instruct but to invite. Not to order but to inspire. It's my job to establish you in higher poker consciousness and to help you stay there. Seems like a highfalutin goal for something as prosaic as poker, but I imagine it'll pay you other benefits as well. Can you imagine what some of those benefits might be?
And what's your job in all of this? To study. To learn. To bootstrap yourself to successively higher levels of poker achievement and deeper levels of poker understanding. To have character and fortitude. To overcome (here comes the new age part) your ego and delusion, and establish a real, open, honest and thoughtful practice of poker. I don't have a hard job. All I have to do is transmit. You don't have a hard job either. All you have to do is receive. Together we'll both grow. Together we'll walk down the road. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: The practice of poker requires the right attitude of devotion every day, even when outer circumstances are chaotic. Your Poker ToolsYour poker philosophy should be built on two principles: aggressiveness, and honesty. Aggressiveness is a given. Anyone who plays the game for any length of time quickly learns that the person who takes command and control of the poker game has the best chance of scoring a big win. But honesty? What's up with that? It would seem like honesty and poker are mutually exclusive concepts. After all, victory in poker comes from deceiving your foes, convincing them to bet when they should fold, fold when they should raise, and in all ways respond to the false signals you send out. What is the bluff - poker's fundamental building block - if not an elaborate and strategic lie? Maybe this will clear things up: When I talk about honesty, I'm talking about self-honesty. It's fine to tell lies to other players at the table; you're right that that's part and parcel of the game. But telling lies to yourself is something that simply cannot be tolerated. Just look at all the trouble it can lead to.
Can you think of other lies that could lead to trouble for you or for players you know? I'm not asking you just to think about that. I'm asking you to really ponder the question and get involved with the answer on the deepest, most articulate level. Because here's something else about your poker philosophy: It's proactive. If you're not vigorously involved in improving yourself as a player, then you're wasting time, opportunity, money. Maybe this is how you should think about aggressiveness: It's not enough to be aggressive as a bettor, you must also be aggressive in getting better. So I'd like you to do me a favor. Write up a little list of all the ways you could be more honest with yourself about the choices you make playing poker. You don't have to judge yourself harshly, or hold anything against yourself, and when you're done, if you like, you can burn the list, lest it fall into enemy hands. Do, though, tell yourself the truth, because nobody's perfect, but everyone can be honest, and I'll tell you with all the courage of my conviction that the more honest you are with yourself (and not just honest but honest and articulate) about why and how you play the way you play, the better your game will get. That's not a philosophy. That's a fact. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Deception is what you do to others; delusion is what you do to yourself. Your Practice of PokerLet's talk about your goals. Where do you want your poker game to be a week or a month or a year from now? It's a given about goals that you can't begin to move toward them until you state them, so I would ask you to take a moment to think about - and write down as precisely as possible - your poker goal or goals. Here are some possibilities that cross the mind.
Here's a general goal that encompasses all these individual goals and more: to acquire, nurture and enhance my practice of poker. What does it mean to have a practice of poker? Several things. You study and think about the game a lot. You read about the game and discuss it at length with like-minded friends. Every time you play, you try to take some learning away from the game. Every time you play, you devote your full concentration to the matter at hand. In short, you take this shit seriously. You keep score. Of course you keep score. You book every win and every loss, not because you're obsessed with numbers, and not because you have some silly requirement to win every time you play. You keep score because you know that keeping score tells both you and the world that it's your intent to improve and grow in the game. You're realistic and clear-eyed. You know you're neither the world's best player nor the world's worst. You also know that "comparisons are odious," and you recognize that measuring your status against any other player's is a frivolous waste of time. You don't let contempt or envy cloud your thinking. You hold self-indulgence at bay. Your purpose in playing is not to kill time or chase the buzz or distract yourself from other facts of life. Your purpose in playing is to strive for razor-sharp execution on every hand you play. You understand that having a practice of poker means nothing more and nothing less than closing the gap between the player you are and the player you want to be. How do you build a practice of poker? That's easy. Just work a little on your game every day, and soon the act of working on your game will become your habit, as natural as breathing. Whatever your long-term goals, set yourself this short-term one: to be a better poker player today than yesterday. This is a goal you can always achieve, just by thinking about and working on their game, and always trying to play your best. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: To fulfill your destiny you must first define your destiny. Your Guru of GrowthAs we build our practice of poker, it's useful to think of ourselves as serving an apprenticeship. There are a few reasons for this.
On the subject of tools, let's look at some that should be part of your practitioner's kit: A NOTEBOOK. I can think of nothing more vital for growth in poker than a player's journal in which to record discoveries, painful lessons and targets of new opportunity. Much of what you discover will not be new, for others have walked the path before you. But the discoveries you make and record, even if not new, are the ones that carry the force of revelation, and the lessons you learn for yourself are the ones that stick with you most. What form should your notebook take? Whatever form you're comfortable with. You could keep a spiral-bound cheepie in your pocket when you play, or maintain a bigger book for more extensive recollections, or write on a computer like I do. Or all of the above. Just not none of the above. You can't really consider yourself serious about poker if you're not taking notes, or at least note. A SCORE SHEET. What separates poker pretenders from genuine students of the game is a willingness to book all losses and wins faithfully. Absent this commitment, we tend to get fuzzy with our thinking and imagine that we're "generally beating the game" with no real evidence to back that claim. The minute you record your first session-results, your apprenticeship has well and truly begun. Paper and pencil will serve you in this at minimum, though there's no shortage of electronic tools out there, too. Card Player Analyst, StatKing and Poker Tracker all make it easy to record, sort and analyze the hard truth of your play. Again, it doesn't matter which method you use so long as it's not no method. Serious players keep score, and that's that with that. A LIBRARY. "If I have been able to see further," said Sir Isaac Newton, "it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants." With so much solid, sensible poker literature out there, no poker apprentice need ever go through the journey alone. And only through hubris or laziness would one ever ignore or overlook the words that have come before. What books should be in your library? Oh, man, just go off in all directions at once. Every book has something to teach you, if only to show you approaches you don't feel are right for your play. Also remember that you can't enter the same river twice, and the book you read as a neophyte will speak completely differently to you once you've had a chance to grow in the game. What other tools does a poker apprentice need? Well, suppose you tell me... THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Man uses tools; were it not so, we'd still be living in trees wondering where our next banana was coming from. |
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and 
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featuring a foreword by none other than 
from St. Martin's Press.