Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em

Dear Troll,

This just in… The best poker players in the world do not automatically = the best poker coaches/authors. In fact, many of the top players would make terrible teachers because they'd let their ego get in the way, and they cannot effectively explain or teach poker concepts to others, and they just plain suck at writing (see Phil Helmuth and Daniel Negreanu)

First and foremost, Ed Miller and company are known for writing very good poker books, not for being the most successful cash game players in the world. (although I'm sure all of them do pretty well at the poker table) The point being you should judge them more for content in their poker books, not their bb/100.

Getting started in Hold'em, Small Stakes Limit Hold'em, No Limit Theory and Practice, Professional NLHE Vol/ 1, and now SSNLHE,  have all received very high praise from the vast majority of players and poker publications for a very good reason, and that reason is not their personal winrate.

For example, David Sklansky is not in the Poker Hall of Fame for his win rate or championship trophies (very few). He is a hall of famer because he is one of the most important poker authors yo date.

To use a sports coaching analogy….look at Vince Lombardi, Bill Bellicheck, Phil Jackson, Bill Parcells, Bill Cowher, Tony Dungy, Dean Smith and John  Wooden. All of these men were not even close to the best players in their respective sports (not by a long shot) Yet they are all considered master coaches and teachers, who have all won numerous world championships teaching their players to be great. (some have also written very good books)  Meanwhile, guys like Wayne Gretzky and Micheal Jordan, who are both considered the absolute best at their respective sports, have both written some terrible books and are very unsuccessful GM's and coaches.

The best players do not necessarily = best teachers/coaches/writers. Not by a long shot. So your argument is invalid.

**By the way I'd be willing to bet Ed, Sonny, and Matt do quite well at the poker table, I was just making a point to the trolls solely concerned with the authors' poker winnings as a measuring stick**

Bryan said:

Anyway, my original claim remains true. These authors have no edge in this game, otherwise they would keep quiet and make money from playing poker instead of selling books.

I know better than to feed trolls and I know better than to open my mouth, but since Matt opened his….

The truth is that I am sick and tired of reading this bs.  Not everyone places the making the maximum amount of money possible at the top of his/her priorities.  First of all, no one except Edward, Matt and Sunny knows what Edward, Matt, and Sunny have made or not made playing poker.  That is their business, and they are keeping their financial affaris private as well they should.  Anyone who claims to know whether or not they are winners or losers is just blowing smoke.  It is public knowledge who wins major tournaments; it is not public knowledge who wins or loses what in cash games, particularly live.

As for Edward, he ENJOYS writing and teaching  and does well at these activities and always has.  I think it is safe to say that he ENJOYS writing and teaching more than he enjoys long hours playing poker.  When he was at MIT, he had to place a sign-up sheet on his door for people who wanted his help preparing for exams.  So many fellow MIT'ers wanted his coaching that he had to limit his time, so he could prepare for his own exams.  Now, by definition MIT'ers are smart, and they all went to class and did their problem sets, etc., and yet they felt that Edward's ability to explain difficult concepts was a plus in their educational experience and helped them achieve better results.  Just so, many poker players have found that Edward's explanations of poker concepts have helped them acchieve better results and speeded up their learning process.  When he was a freshman, Edward said to me, "Mother, all the kids here are smart, but how come I am the only one who can write a paper?" and I replied, "Because you are the only one who had your mother."  Because teaching reading and writing at the university level was my life's work, I made sure that Edward developed these skills at an early age, and he has worked on honing them ever since.

And Edward has done well writing and teaching about poker.  According to Mason, Edward's 2p2 books have sold more than 250,000 copies.  While not up tp Stephen King's sales, that's quite a bit for a niche topic from a small publisher who has absolutely no clue as to how to market his products, save by word of mouth.  And every day posters on the 2p2 forums are still recommending Edward's books, DVDs and videos to newcomers and other who want to improve their game.  Edward's royalties and other poker-related income are not insignificant.  He has certainly made more from these sources than I made in my whole career of university teaching.

Frankly, I would prefer that Edward shift his considerable talents to a new field and away from poker.  And perhaps he will in the not too distant future.  I personally was not too thrilled about Edward making poker his profession in the first place. (I guess that's a typical mother reaction.)  While Edward, of course, wants to have enough resources to provide a comfortable life for his family, making the maximum amount of money possible and living an extravagant lifestyle are not his priorities.  If that was what he wanted he would have joined a hedge fund run by and employing a bunch of his MIT buddies who are rolling in dough–or at least they were (don't know how the downturn has affected them).

As for those who think, poker books in general, and Edward's in particular, are scams, please remember that they are in essence text books.  No one expects a Physics 101 textbook to lead directly to the Nobel prize, but that Physics 101 textbook was almost certainly the first step for those who had the talent, drive, creatiivity, and luck to win one.  Just so, no poker book is going to guarantee the reader a WSOP bracelet and millions of dollars of winnings.  A poker book is really a type of instruction manual.  As such it must make explicitly clear in its introduction what audience it is addressing.  Not every book is aimed at every player.  Those who did not find Edward's books helpful and worthwhile may not have been a part of the intended audience.  People also have a wide variety of learning styles, and not everyone learns well from book reading.  Some will do better with DVDs and videos because they learni best when they can hear an explanation.  Others have a prefernce for kinesthetic learning and would need to sit down with the deck of cards and actually play out the hands on the table.  If reading books doesn't do it for an individual, that does not mean books are a scam and are no good for anyone.  There are of course bad books which are little to no help for anyone, and in poker they have often been written by big "winners" (Hellmuth, e.g.)

Anyway, why waste your time trolling a poker forum?  Go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen or gather toys for less fortunate children.

Happy holidays to all who persevered to the end of this tl;dr post and a +EV New Year,

LOL

Bryan said:

The only people that make a "good" living from commodity and option trading are the brokers. This FACT has been demonstrated through numerous studies of account statements.

I have no intention of getting into a big pissing contest with you.  I am simply going to state the FACT that you don't know what you are talking about.

I know a lot more about trading than I do about poker.  I know about the studies you mention.  The only thing they show is that the majority of traders lose.  They do not that all trader lose.  This is to be expected, because trading is a negative sum game.  Just like poker.

But you don't know what "negative sum" means.  You think it means "impossible to beat in the long run" because that's what you want to believe, and nothing that anyone says will ever convince you otherwise.

For everyone else who is not so narrow minded, I suggest that you go to Tommy Angelo's site and read his excellent article "zero sum minus sum" (you can just google "Tommy Angelo" to find his site).  Like all Tommy A. articles it's entertaining and informative too, and gives you a great understanding of what a negative sum game is all about.

Now go ahead "Bryan" (or is it "onewiseone" or "Jonathan" or "X" or…) you can have the last word.

Post edited 10:29 pm – December 20, 2009 by JJS

Jimmy said:

I have been a stock broker for the last 30 years and I have to say that the original poster is right with respect to short term trading, options, and futures. Some accounts certainly do go on winning streaks but, if they keep trading, they give it all back. I'm not going to lie, as brokers we depend on the commissions these accounts generate. But it's only the long term investor, not short term trader or options/futures player, that makes AND keeps the gains.

I know this is supposed to be a poker forum but since this thread was never about poker anyway, I hope the authors don't mind if keep this going a little longer.

I respect the fact that you have been a stockbroker for 30 years, but even that does not mean that you have seen everything.  A lot depends on the type of place you worked for.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you serviced small accounts, mostly individuals who were trying to make a quick buck but didn't really know what they were doing.  In poker analogy, they were "recreational players".

The number of traders who really do it for a living is so small that you might never have seen one, even in your 30 years. But there are people who research trading systems and can make them work.  Surely you have heard of William Eckhardt and Richard Dennis, and how they trained a group of students (who became known as the "Turtles") and how most of them did very well in later years?  Their success was more than what could be attributed to luck alone.

Have you read Schwager's "Market Wizard" series?  If it's really impossible to win long-term at trading, how do you reconcile that with the stories of the traders in that series?