Aug

20

A colleague recently mentioned The Tao of Poker by Larry Phillips. What an excellent find and addition to one's inner game library. Some of it reminds me of the wisdom Vic and Laurel have imparted over the years.

The author documents 285 rules for playing. The first couple are right up there with trading truisms-

1) Don't dig yourself into a hole when you first sit down.

2) If you think you are beat, get out.

3) Start with premium hands. When you get them, bet them. If the hand starts to deteriorate, get away from the hand.

4) If you don't think your hand is good enough, it probably isn't.

5) If you do make a mistake, correct it as soon as you can.

6) It's important that a player starts seeing "staying too long on marginal hands" as where the money goes.

7) The money you don't lose from staying too long in a hand and the money another player does lose from doing this is often the profit you go home with.

8) The hand you really want to spend your money on may be right around the corner.

I was also touched by the dedication which is one of the most heartfelt and genuine ones I've read in years. And of course strikes at the core of the trading experience.

""To Mandius…This book is dedicated to my grandson, Mandius, and the poker players of the future. As a friend once observed: They'll be a lot like we were– and they'll go through all the same things. They'll gather around the same green felt tables, suffer the same bad beats, and experience the same agonies of seeing an opponent hit a two-outer. They'll know the feeling of being down to their last dollar as the light comes up in the dawn, as well as the exhilaration of dragging in a mountain of chips on days when the angels hover around them. They'll experience high drama and low drama, hear great stories, experience laughter, and free food.

They'll meet people they otherwise would not have met–great people from every walk of life–some of the best people, it will turn out, they will probably ever know in life. If, as James Earl Jones once said, ' Children are a message we send to a time and place we will never see,' then these are our ambassadors to a poker future yet unseen. Accept this note of well-wishes from those who went before you– a message from the past.


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