Biographical Excerpts from Elements of Poker

On this page are four portions of text from "Elements of Poker" that are about me.

• A Love Story
• According to Hoyle
• One Million Hands of Table Poker
• The Making of Elements of Poker
• Nice Things People Have Said About Me

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A Love Story

I started going steady with Poker when I was 14 years old. I'd been crazy about her since we first met, back when I was seven. But she wouldn't have anything to do with me back then. She told me to look her up when I had some money and then we would have some real fun. Well, when I turned 14, I was rolling in cash. I had it coming in from five directions. I was a paperboy, window washer, lawn-mower, snow-shoveler, and a soda jerk for two hours a night at a buck an hour. I knew Poker only wanted me for my money, but I didn't care. I said okay Poker, I'm all grown up now. Take me I'm yours. And that's when Poker and I got serious. That's when we hooked up for real, for good.

Poker and I spent a lot of time together during my high-school years. And then, when I turned 18, everything changed. I don't know what happened, I don't know what went wrong, but somehow I fell in love with another game. I had a long and ecstatic affair with Bridge. For the next five years I was either playing bridge, about to play bridge, or wishing I was about to play bridge. I still saw Poker once a week, but Poker wanted way more from me than that.

My romance with Bridge ended abruptly when I accidentally became a full-time professional musician for eight years. My relationship with Poker stayed strong, even though I continued to split my affections. In my life, I have obsessed for years each at scrabble, and chess, and backgammon, and gin, and through it all, there was Poker, always Poker, ready to take me back.

One by one, as they had come, the other games fell away. It's just me and Poker now, as it was in the beginning.

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According to Hoyle

When I was growing up, there was only one person in the known universe who wrote about card games and his name was Edmond Hoyle. We had some of his books in our house. I still have one of them on a shelf. I haven't opened it since way back when, and suddenly I'm curious what's inside.

I just opened it up. It's a small paperback. The pages are yellow and half-way to crumbling. I am going to leaf through it and look for something meaty or profound that transcends time and rings true today.

::: leafing :::

::: still leafing :::

Pretty dry stuff mostly. I am no longer hoping to find anything in here about the glorious greatness of poker as the ultimate human endeavor or anything like that.

::: leafing :::

Okay, here's something. At the beginning of a section called "Strategy of Poker," there is a list of five big-picture ideas which are then expanded on in the text. Here is the list:

Strategy of Poker

To become a good player, one must:

• Learn the poker hands thoroughly.
  
• Learn the relative values of the hands - what sort of hand may be expected to win the pot.
  
• Learn how many cards it is best to draw to the various poker combinations.
  
• Learn the odds against winning with any particular hand, and how to figure the odds offered "by the pot."
  
• Observe the other players in the game, to learn their habits and to read their probable strength or weakness from their actions and mannerisms; and at the same time avoid giveaway mannerisms of one's own.

It was number five that made me smile when I read it and realize that yes, I know how to play poker according to Hoyle.

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One Million Hands of Table Poker

I became a professional poker player in 1990 when I was 32 years old. Before that, I played music five nights per week in a country-rock band. I performed on drums for four years, and then piano for four years. During that time, playing music was my career and playing poker was a hobby. In 1990, I left the full-time music business and I dropped back to gigging a couple of weekends per month on drums in a classic rock band with guys I'd known forever. There was little pay and lots of passion. To support my food and rent habit, I played poker five nights per week, from 7 p.m. until everybody quit, in a well-populated circuit of home games in my home town of Columbus, Ohio. That was my professional life for seven years. Playing poker every night Monday through Friday and playing music every other weekend. Also, I went on many poker playing trips, to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Washington DC, St Louis, Davenport, Kansas City, and California.

From 1990 to 1997, I spent about 1/10 of my poker time in the dealer's chair. Sometimes I dealt because I wanted to, and then there were times I dealt because I had to. Also during that time I came up with a foolproof method of avoiding huge losses. What I did was I made sure I never had a huge amount of money to lose. I did that by culling my bankroll now and then, using sports betting, blackjack, and other bad ideas. And if that didn't work, I'd just jump in a poker game that I couldn't beat or afford. I have suffered nearly every indignity and insanity known to poker and gambling.

In 1997, I was charged with running an illegal gaming house. I pled guilty, paid my debt, and moved to Northern California to play in the peaceful legal poker rooms there. I live and play there still.

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The Making of Elements of Poker

In 1999, I started writing about my poker experiences. Soon after that, people starting writing to me with theirs. They'd ask me what I thought about how they played a hand. Or they'd ask me about a ruling, or they'd describe an ethical dilemma and ask what I'd do. With each letter I was learning, teaching, and flattered. So I kept writing, and the letters kept coming.

There were only a few guys in the world then who were known throughout the poker community as poker teachers for hire. I thought about becoming one of them. I often visited my ideas as to who, what, why, where, and how I would teach. But I hadn't done anything with my teaching ideas because I was stubbornly unkeen on the soliciting idea.

The World Poker Tour first aired on TV in March of 2003, at the same time as tournament attendance and internet poker exploded. Poker entered millions of homes via televisions and computers, thereby creating a massive market for poker instruction. The internet provided accelerated interaction and experience. The tournaments created clumps of money that became bankrolls. All of sudden there were a lot of smart players with lots of money, and some of them would be hell bent on getting better. Maybe I could be persuaded to help.

Then, in July of 2003, I got this email:

Tommy,

I enjoy your poker articles and your posts at twoplustwo.com very much. I was wondering if you have ever given poker lessons or if you would want to? I'd be interested.

Your fan,

Michael

Michael's letter opened my eyes to a brilliant business model. Because I had done two of my favorite things - play poker and write about poker - I was being offered money to do my other favorite thing, which is to talk about poker. So my plan was to continue to play poker and write about poker, and prepare some helpful things to talk about, and then figure out how much to charge the next guy.

The first thing I did was go online to see if the domain "tiltless.com" was available. It was. I bought it. I was very pleased.

T I L T L E S S

I've had a thing for those letters in that order for a long time. I see them as one word, and also as two words. I'll use both versions in a sentence.

If no one is tiltless then everyone can tilt less.

So, I had a name for my new poker-coaching business. And I had some bedrock ideas that I'd been cementing myself to. As a poker coach, I would:

• Hold all in confidence.
• Remain available for life for ongoing coaching.
• Teach only one-on-one and primarily face-to-face. This was mainly because of fear. I was terrified that I would fail to deliver an expected value. The way I felt was that if I could just talk to a guy and ask him questions and get to know him some, and he me, then I'd be able to say things and write things and do things that were worth the price. I wouldn't be afraid.
• Play in the same game with the client for mutual observation. Everyone I've ever met falls into one of two groups: those I've shared a poker table with, and everyone else. I wanted my clients to be in that first group if at all possible because it would give me more to give.
• Presume that the client wants to score higher.

To help me elaborate on that last point, I'd like to introduce Joe and Moe. Joe and Moe appear throughout this book. They are not consistent characters. They are just names I use for examples. For example:

• Joe is the best player at his casino. Everybody knows it, and everybody says so. When Joe plays his A-game, his expectation is +2 big bets per hour (BB/H). But when he tilts, he tilts hard, and he becomes one of the worst players in the room. Everybody knows this too, and everybody says so. When Joe plays his C-game, his expectation is -1BB/H. Let's say Joe hired me to help him improve his score. What should we work on? Should we work on his A-game? Or his C-game?
• Moe is a loser who rarely and barely tilts. When Moe plays his best game, he loses 1BB/H. When he plays his worst game, he loses 1.3BB/H. Because of his mental steadiness, Moe's C-game will always net only slightly less than his A-game. What should Moe work on? His A-game? Or his C-game?

My premise would not be that the client wants to merely learn how to play better. I would assume that the client's objective is to score higher. Learning how to make your best game better is one way to score higher. Learning how to play your best game more often is another way. My curriculum would put equal emphasis on both ways.

In March 2004, I launched my tiltless.com website, where I described my services. Right away the word was out at twoplustwo.com that I was coaching, and I was instantly in action. Today it is three plus years later and I have 50 clients. Five of my clients were…

Okay, I have to cut in here for a second to talk about the word "client" because my buddy Deva gives me all kinds of shit over it. "How can a poker bum like you have something called a client?" And I'm like, okay, fair enough. So just what would you suggest I call these people? Students? I tried that word for a while and it didn't sit right. So eventually I settled on calling my clients "clients," which technically makes me a "consultant," which is another word Deva gives me grief over.

I must say though, there is one thing I really like about using the word "client." I like being able to invoke the sanctuarial right of client confidentiality. Okay, where were we…

Five of the fifty have been face-to-face clients that were one-session-and-out. Five have been face-to-face one-session-at-a-time clients. Fifteen were/are phone-only clients of various commitments. And the rest have been through my full tiltless program, which is a comprehensive, personalized, face-to-face, three-day coaching blitz, followed by follow-up coaching. My favorite endorsement came during a goodbye when a client said, "This was not at all what I expected, but it was exactly what I needed."

I have taught seasoned pros, scared newbies, college students, and family men. I've coached quiet players and chatterboxes, struggling players and millionaires.

For two years, my material was in a state of constant and drastic revision and expansion. It collected itself into one Word document that I call the master outline, but really it's more like a clothesline. It's a very long list of topics and talking points, some of them in code that only I know, others expanded. Plus analogies, stories, charts, and short writings by me and clients.

To write this book, I looked through the master outline and I selected the topics that I thought would be most helpful to the most players most often. Then I stopped playing poker and started typing.

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Nice Things People Have Said About Me

Here are some nice things clients have said:

"Tommy coached me at poker and it shaved five strokes off my golf game."

"This was not at all what I expected, but it was exactly what I needed."

"This was probably the best investment I'll ever make."

"There is no one in the world whom he could not help."

"I hope you write a book."

"I hope you never write a book."

Here are some nice things that some famous poker people have said:

"Tommy and I sat together on a question-and-answer panel at Lucky Chances. He is a great guy and he really knows his poker." -- Mike Sexton

"Tommy is a born teacher, and a top-notch poker player." -- Lee Jones

"I've gotten to play with tommy a few more times here at lucky chances casino in coma california the last few weeks. i find he plays extremely well, and even likes to invent some really creative plays. i dont know if he posted it yet but he made a double bet into me and i three bet it and he folded before the flop headup. later he told me what he had and actually his play wasnt incorrect totally. but still is another whip in his arsenal. good luck tommy but stay out of my pots please." — posted by Ray Zee at 2+2 forums. (I wrote an article about this hand.)

"Poker players seem to have almost endless problems with tilt in its various forms. If tilt is a problem for you, then Tommy Angelo is your man. Tommy is the world's most awesomest authority on the controlification of tilt. — Ed Miller, from his site: www.notedpokerauthority.com

One of the nicest things anyone ever said about me was at a poker table. I was playing in a game where everybody knew everybody, except for this one guy who didn't know anybody. I wasn't talking at the time. And this occasionally causes people to talk about me like I'm not there. It was one of those times. The guy who was talking about me was not saying nice things. He'd been ribbing me in soliloquy for about ten minutes when one of my buddies spoke up.

About me, the taunter said, "I'm just saying, it wouldn't kill him to say ‘thanks' when I say ‘nice hand' after he sucks out on me, again, and again, and again."

My defender said, "You got a problem with Tommy?"

The ribber came right back, "Yeah I got a problem with Tommy."

My buddy said, "I'll tell you what. If you got a problem with Tommy, then you got a problem."