Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 10 December 2010 / Leave a Comment

On Tommy Angelo's website -- where one can find many of his articles, blog posts, "Tommyisms," and more -- the Ohio native and California resident is described as "a top tier poker coach, poker writer, and philosopher." To that I can add he's also one smart, funny fellow, something to which most everyone who has gotten to know him over the years can probably attest as well.

A coach to many top pros, Angelo has written numerous poker articles over the last decade-plus for Poker Digest, Poker Pages, Bluff Magazine, and Two Plus Two Magazine. His book, Elements of Poker (2007), presents a number of his ideas as well written, humorous, and insightful lessons (presented as 144 "elements").

Not so much a strategy book as a "how to think about poker" book, Elements is a title I recommend whenever I get the chance (see my review here). You can pick up a copy either at Angelo's site or Amazon. Additionally, Elements has recently become available as an e-book (find out more about that here).

I had a chance recently to chat with Angelo about Elements and writing in general, his Deuces Cracked video series "The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment," as well as his upcoming book projects.

The Craft of Writing

Short-Stacked Shamus: Elements of Poker, besides being full of good insights and also very entertaining, is in my opinion an especially well-crafted book. By that I mean to say that anyone who reads it should recognize that you are someone who writes very carefully and precisely, and who values the written word. Elements was your first book, correct?

Tommy Angelo: That's right.

SSS: Like I say, Elements kind of stands apart, in my opinion, from a lot of poker books not just because of its different approach, but because of the care with which you took to present your ideas. What are your thoughts about the current state of poker writing and poker books?

TA: I've hardly read any poker books since I was reading them to improve my poker game, which was a long time ago. So the titles I'm familiar with would be [Doyle] Brunson's Super/System, the early books by [David] Sklansky, and the [Mason] Malmuth and [Ray] Zee books.

The person who inspired me to start write poker articles back in 1998 was John Vorhaus. He was writing for Poker Digest then, and it was while reading his articles that I first realized poker articles could be fun and they could be approached as literature.

SSS: Yes, one of the things I often tell people when recommending Elements is that it has "literary" qualities -- that is, the book is not only about how to think better as a poker player and to improve your game, but it also employs language, presents little narratives, and does other things that one finds in literary writing, too.

TA: Yes, it was from Vorhaus that I got the idea that you could do more than just tell people how to play better or whatever. I thought, "I'm gonna be like that guy... he's having a good time and he writes really well." Then when I started having exchanges with him directly, I came to learn that he was actually a writer first -- he teaches writing. And that also opened my mind to the idea that I could go about writing poker articles "as a writer."

SSS: And not just as a poker strategist or whatever.

TA: Right. I always wanted to be a writer, anyway. I've written stories over the years, and every once and a while I would go "Oh, I want to write a book," but I never got any momentum. Then I read John Vorhaus and I started thinking that I would write poker articles and that I would try to write them really well -- as well as I possibly can.

SSS: You're making me think about how a lot of people, including writers of poker strategy texts, think of poker as a kind of technical skill or something that requires a kind of mechanical know-how. And thus a lot of books are written by people who might be good at the technique -- are good "mechanics," you might say -- but who aren't necessarily the best writers.

TA: I knew early on that I didn't want to write about technical stuff... about strategy. I put a lot of work into my articles. I pass them around to my friends to get feedback. And I revise like crazy. I love that part. The day I finished tweaking my book was actually a sad day for me. About my articles, in my little fantasy world I used to think, "Man, these are nice little nuggets... maybe someday a few of them will be looked back upon as... like... 'classics'!"

SSS: You're trying to write pieces that will have some shelf life. So you take a little extra care crafting something that people will want to read all of the way through to the end...

TA: And want to read again. To get back to the fantasy, it's kind of turning out that way... there have been a half-dozen or so of my articles that still get passed around the web a lot, even though I wrote them years ago.

Thinking About How People Think

SSS: There is a passage in Elements of Poker I wanted to ask you about. In fact it's the one that you chose to put on the back of the book, the one that says "All of my good streaks and all of my bad streaks of every length and depth have had one thing in common. They did not exist in your mind. They only existed in my mind. And this is true for everyone's winning and losing streaks. None of them actually exist. They are all mental fabrication."

Talk about the importance of that idea of understanding that we all make our own meaning at the poker table -- how having that awareness can potentially help us as players.

TA: Yes, I think having the awareness that everyone, by definition, has his or her own unique perspective, is in itself a key awareness. This has been written about before -- how we tend to project our own thought process and just assume that other people are thinking the way we think. Especially once we pigeon-hole an opponent as a certain type of player.

Let's say you've got a guy and you decide "he's a good player." And you think "I'm a good player," too. So now you get involved in a hand with him and when he does something you just assume "Well, if he did that, he must be doing it for the same reason I would have done it." And very often, you're wrong!

SSS: Because he's not you. Or he doesn't see things the way you do.

TA: Right. Just the ability to recognize that everyone has a different perspective is in itself a profitable perspective, and very important. Especially when it comes to bad players. About them we're always so dismayed and shocked, thinking "How could they make such a terrible play?" It's kind of like saying "How could somebody smoke cigarettes, if they know they might get cancer...? How can people be so stupid?" Well, everyone's got his or her own view. And for all we know, the thing that makes that guy happy is making outrageous calls that are long odds. That's what gives him joy.

SSS: He's nuts!

TA: Haha, right. We, the "good players," can't fathom that, but we have to understand that for other people, those decisions are as natural as could be.

The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment

SSS: Talk a little about your relationship to the instructional site, Deuces Cracked.

TA: I am good friends with all five of the founding members there -- Joe, Chris, Jay, Rob, and Chuck. I've known Joe [Tall] from the early Two Plus Two days, and he hired me to coach him -- he was one of my first clients. When he helped start Deuces Cracked, I became friends with all of those guys and then coached Jay [Rosenkrantz] as well. So those guys were talking to me even before they put the site together about how I might be involved.

SSS: Eventually you made "The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment" video series for them. How did that come about?

TA: We had already talked about my doing a video project early on. Then after Elements of Poker came out [in December 2007] we looked into it further. The name comes from Buddhist teaching -- the "eightfold path" -- and it just so happens DC set up their site like a TV station with seasons, each of which is eight weeks long. So the idea of doing an 8-part series based loosely on the eightfold path is an idea that just dropped out of the sky.

The series consists of conversations, carefully outlined, between me and Wayne Lively. In between the conversations is piano music, recorded by me. It all started back when Wayne had a radio show on a website called Hold'em Radio, and he invited me to be a guest. I came on and we talked about the book, and then Wayne had an idea that maybe I could coach him on the air in a series of interviews on his show. Right before that got off the ground, Hold'em Radio temporarily stopped and so we took the idea over to Deuces Cracked.

SSS: And so would you describe the series as an expansion of ideas from Elements?

TA:: It's related to the book only in that I happened to do both of them. We recorded the episodes over the course of about a year-and-a-half, and the further removed in time we got from the book, the more new ideas and new topics came up. So I really don't think of it as an extension of the book, but we do cover some of the same topics because there are only so many topics in poker.

But ultimately, the message of the series -- and in all of my work, now and forever -- is to take care of yourself mentally and physically, to be compassionate with yourself which allows you to be compassionate with others, and thus embark on a path of "tiltlessness."

The Poker Coach

SSS: You're a poker coach. There you are helping others, but what do you get out of coaching?

TA: Besides money? [Laughs.]

SSS: Yes, yes.

TA: Well, for one thing, I get whatever it is that teachers get out of teaching. There's obviously some sort of fulfillment that teachers get, and I get that. It's very exciting to have an idea, or to pass on an idea, that you think is really helpful, and plant seeds in someone else's mind and watch them have "a-ha" moments. Then you hear back from them a month later and they tell you they did what you suggested and it really worked. That's very fulfilling.

SSS: Teachers often talk about how teaching is a wonderful way to learn, too...

TA: Oh, definitely. Absolutely. It's interesting, because if you break down all of the coaching that I do into two categories, there are "betting topics" and "non-betting topics." When I was playing a lot and coaching a lot, coaching about betting strategy helped my game tremendously. Because if the ideas I'm giving these guys are good, and if it's true we all need reminders to stay on track, then every time I coach a guy on solid betting strategy, I'm giving myself these reminders, too. And so the next time I go play, I rate to play better.

Then on the "non-betting" stuff -- the discipline issues, and quitting issues, and tilt issues and all that -- it was the same thing. By reviewing these ideas over and over through the act of teaching, it helps me become stronger over time.

Upcoming Projects

SSS: You have a couple of new book projects currently in the works. Tell me about both of them.

TA: One book is called A Rubber Band Story and Other Poker Tales by Tommy Angelo. This book is like a "greatest hits" of my articles and blog posts. There will be about 50 stories, including a fair amount of new material in that book... some forewords and afterwords about the articles, and some "behind-the-scenes" stuff about my writing process. That book should be out in April or May 2011.

The other book -- the big project I'm working on right now -- is called Painless Poker. I think of it as a "prequel" and a "sequel" to Elements of Poker.

Whereas Elements was kind of a clothesline of topics -- like a bunch of little pieces that could be shifted around -- this book will be more of the type of book that in order to get the full benefit, you'll need to read from the beginning to the end. There will be three parts: "Pain Happens," "Pain Theory," and "How to Make it Stop."

SSS: And what's the timeline for that?

TA: I'm aiming for 2013.

SSS: Wow, two years from now?

TA: Haha, right. I work fast.

Much thanks to Tommy Angelo for taking the time. Head over to Amazon to pick up Elements of Poker, or visit Angelo's website to purchase a signed copy or get info on obtaining the e-book.

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