Your Worst Poker Enemy - Master the Mental Game, Alan N. Schoonmaker
The reviewer of this book is a poker player who, in the long run, wins on a low to medium level. He feels his game is very good and has a wide theoretical knowledge (reading books, forums, talking to other players). However, something has been missing that would help on the mental side to get a 100% performance. Let us be quite honest: How often have you called an All-In Reraise with AK even though you knew that in this specific situation it was not a profitable call? This must have causes!
The book contains - as was to be expected - not one tactical instruction for the game itself but deals exclusively with the psychology! Here psychology does not mean the opponents’ ‘tells’ but the psychological causes which are responsible for errors at poker. The book’s key message is sobering! On the first umpteen dozens of pages the author Schonmaker says (put in our words): 'You have to acknowledge to yourself you are not really a genius at poker poker! If you really were good, you would be winning more! So, try to improve your game, take notes properly, use statistics of your games and find out were you play profitably and were you do not!'. This message from the book is, unfortunately, somewhat drawn out. The reviewer was a little disappointed as he already knew that the problem lay with himself and thus had bought the book. More concrete suggestions would have been desirable.
However, the last 100 pages are very good. On the one hand how to adjust to changing conditions is described which is extremely important in poker. On the other hand the chapter on "Handling Stress' is excellent! Especially in larger live poker tournaments the reviewer suffered from stress symptoms. This prevented him from playing his best poker because he was restless before the tournament and then was tired at the tournament itself. This often caused hasty decisions to be made.
All in all this book is recommend only to those players who have already read a lot of books on poker strategy but on the mental side still do not feel to be getting 100% out of themselves. Sales problem number one for this book, however, is the fact that vain, arrogant players, who should urgently read the book, will never stoop to buy it!
A good to very good knowledge of English is required to understand this book.
