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Foreword

by David Sklansky

Highly successful poker players do four things:

1. Learn how to play as well as they possibly can (including making others play badly).

2. Play their best at all times.

3. Choose whichever available game offers them the greatest expected value (EV) as long as they have an adequate bankroll for it.

4. Avoid games in which they would be clearly under-bankrolled.

Duh, you might be thinking to yourself, pretty obvious. Why do things any other way if winning serious money at poker is a high priority for you? And I agree. But I also know that most aspiring poker pros do not always do these things, not only because they are psychologically difficult, but especially since they can sometimes get away without doing them.

Concentrating and studying are not easy things to do. Folding almost playable hands when they are your best chance to get “even” for the night takes unusual willpower. Choosing a smaller game than normal, because it offers the greatest “hourly rate” (EV–wise) in the room, means that you must give up the anticipation of making a big score that session. It also may mean that you are confronting the fact that your skill is not as great as some others who would expect to make more in the bigger game. The same is true if you are choosing a game smaller than you want to play because the math equations say you should not take the risk. Passing up this bigger game is even harder to do psychologically if it is particularly “juicy” or if you had previously been playing for these stakes, but presently do not have the bankroll for it.

So you see that those four techniques are not quite as easy to do as they may seem—at least for most people. There are often large psychological and emotional pressures to do something different. You have to learn how to fight those pressures.

Showing you how to fight those pressures is, of course, Dr. Alan Schoonmaker’s specialty. Something he does very well in this book, along with many other things. Winners are indeed “different.” But there’s probably no reason you can’t be one of them.