THE WORLD'S #1 POKER MANUAL - Card Games

Poker Book, Club Poker
17. Never give opponents a break. Make them sweat. Grant them no mercy.
18. In highball, elevate height with extra chair cushions to see more carelessly exposed hands.
In lowball, diminish height and sit low in order to see more cards flash during the shuffle
and on the deal and draw.
19. Highly visible and self-publicized professional poker players, including those who play in
and have won the World Series of Poker, reveal a composite character (with individual
exceptions) of a prematurely aged, physically unfit heavy smoker who is prone to boasting,
gross exaggeration, and gambling. Yet he is a character who is basically intelligent and
shrewd -- though vulnerable to manipulation through his flaws. He is a character who can
be exploited and beaten by the good player.
In six days, John Finn put both public club and casino poker under his profitable control--at least
for the lower-stake and medium-stake games. For the higher-stake games, John had an additional
major problem to deal with--the problem of professional cheating.
XXVIII
Professional Poker Players
Professional poker players generally fall into two classes: (1) those who extract money from private
games, and (2) those who extract money from public games.
Successful private-game professionals explicitly or implicitly understand and use many of the Advanced
Concepts of Poker. Private-game professionals are usually quiet, ostensibly self-effacing, independent
loners who never need to join an establishment[ 32 ] or cheat to extract maximum money from their
opponents. (Cheating would actually decrease both their investment odds and their long-range edge
odds.) Private-game professionals generally prosper more and spend fewer hours playing poker than do
public-game professionals.
While all public-game professionals explicitly or implicitly must understand and use enough of the
Advanced Concepts of Poker to generate a regular income, many public-game professionals
misunderstand or violate various key concepts. For example, many public-game professionals not only
openly boast about their poker abilities, but compromise their independence by joining a tacit
professional establishment. Because of their compromised independence, most of those public-game
professionals limit both their potential winnings and their future. And more and more of those
professionals are depending on cheating (at the expense of playing good poker) to extract money for
their livelihood.
But some public professionals have considerable financial incentives for maintaining a braggadocio,
flamboyant style. Those professionals are supreme hustlers who use their visibility to attract victims. By
becoming famous and highly visible, they not only attract gamblers to back them to high-stake games,
but they also attract wealthy challengers who want action against a big-name player. The better-known
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