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Book sharing club.
Please post book recommendations that have improved your poker mindset. It doesn't have to be strictly poker books. Personally i've never read a poker strategy book in my life. But their have been a number of psychology, personal growth books that have impacted my rational thinking in regards to poker.
Here are a few to get started;
1. "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell - We should trust our initial gut feelings, they are usually correct. We sometimes talk ourselves out of the correct play.
2. "The 80/20 Principle" by Richard Koch - Pareto's rule says that 80% of output often flows from 20% of input. Which basically means we should look at the 20% that gets the best results and focus on that. This can be applied for example to poker where you find the format you have your best Roi, whether thats cash, sitngos or tourneys and focus on that.
3. "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - "Work that you treat like a game, with intrinsic rewards and varied skills ceases to be work".
4. "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - We always find patterns, causes and explanations in past events, but they are mostly useless for predicting the future. Emotions can help us make decisions, but also overwhelm our capacity for rational reasoning.
5. "For Richer, For Poorer, Confessions of a Poker Player" by Victoria Coren - The only poker autiobiography i've ever read. Really enjoyable read, it gives you an insight into what it takes to be the only ever 2 time EPT main event winner.
Comments
I will certainly put a couple of your picks on my 'to do' list.
I am not a massive reader but in terms of the psychology link you mention...
There are a series of introductory psychology lectures by a Robb Willer on Youtube which are IMO quite engaging. They are not at all directly related but there are many inferences which can be made and the lecturing style is very laid back.
Linky - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edfKMAePWfE&list=PLUSC1HoMnGTgWbMp4E8YmdFuvPGFYgJG0
Although they are focused on heads up play, the theory, maths and general way of looking at poker will be applicable to all. Its the only mainstream training material i've seen talk in depth about capture-factor and winrate maximisation. It goes deep in to game theory and also how to formulate exploitative play. Much of the books are devoted to post flop concepts and how to construct ranges. Two big beasts that tower over 99% of the books out there.
If you are looking for non-poker specific resources that will help you with your game, look to coursera.
it a platform used by universities to provide top class educational materials for free. I believe many american universities have to provide a public service in order to receive funding and / or tax relief. the result is some first rate material available for no cost and presented in recreational learning enviroment.
some courses i'd recommend to the budding poker player:
https://www.coursera.org/course/gametheory
https://www.coursera.org/learn/game-theory-introduction
https://www.coursera.org/learn/bayesian
https://www.coursera.org/learn/basic-statistics
https://www.coursera.org/learn/creative-problem-solving
https://www.coursera.org/learn/problem-solving
https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
The courses on bayes will be useful as it shows you how to interpret small samples based on what you know about the population. The learning how to learn course is also well worth revisting after completion.15 minute bite size books are always going to have the same problem - you're leaving the interpretation of the content to the person summarising it and, frankly, it misses the actual point of reading - that is to think about how the author expresses a point, and thereby encouraging the reader to actually interpret the text, i.e. THINK.
I don't mean to be so hard to the study of psychology, I think it's a great & fascinating subject, but most of the pop science books that come from don't do it justice & are largely fallacious + full of hype.
Poker mindset books - learn probability + statistics, learn how variance works, try and be calmer, understand how things like diet/sleep/exercise can influence performance
Anything that interests us can be noted and further researched.
Edit: just to add, to be honest, I don't think the vast majority of people know this, and of course the authors know this. It's probably not even an accurate interpretation - many of the authors are probably VERY loosely interpretating the literature in a way that will yield the highest demand. Customers see the word "smarter" or "improve habits" -- /> some chemical gets excreted in the brain which ultimately leads to the purchase of a pop psychol book. rinse repeat. I guess I can't blame the authors too much, supply & demand etc, meh
it adjusts the colour tempreture of your screen. computer screens emit a lot of blue light which mimics the sort of light we are used to getting inn the day. So prolonged sessions in front of the screen can mess up your sleeping patterns. F:lux adjusts the temp of the screen according to the natural light in your timezone. after long session in front of the screen you should find sleep and cool down easier.
im not sure if it available for tablets, but there is an android app called twilight that does something very similar
Staying away from that, however, I'd recommend something to do with game theory. I recently read The Joys of Game Theory & Game Theory Puzzles, both of which provide puzzles for you to work through. The mathematics isn't advanced. It just providez puzzles/games, you're supposed to try and work through them yourself, and the author then tells you the answer with description + analysis. It's quite fun + it likely helps more with logical thinking than any psych book. Well, only if you have the self-control & perseverance to try and complete the puzzles by yourself before asking for the author's help! You don't have to go for the ones I recommended obv, I'm sure there are plenty of ismilar books on the market that all do similar things.
"I don't mean to be so hard to the study of psychology, I think it's a great & fascinating subject"
I think one major problem is that the tide of pressure within psychology pushes psychologists to publish journal articles rather than books.
Dan Ariely who wrote Predictably Irrational which you mention even touches on this point at the very start of this presentation. Indeed he says he only wanted to write a book as he had become so bored writing journal articles and that he wanted to be less constrained and more free (and pay less attention to the science I guess).
To me psychology 'by and large' looks to spot patterns in human behaviour. Obviously these are general finidings which might not be best used to draw absolute conclusions about specific individuals. These patterns can be quite useful to use as a broad lens when viewing situations (such as a hand of poker) as long as they are not viewed as absolutes. As a crude example, study on 'cognitive dissonance' can be quite useful when trying to figure out what an opponent's motives may be for a particular action at the tables.