Treat Your Poker Like a Business by Dusty Schmidt
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
With a title such as Treat Your Poker Like a Business, I was expecting to read a book with some sort of structure. Instead, readers get the ramblings of an online poker player who apparently has trouble managing his temper. Treat Your Poker Like a Business seems to appeal to those who have a very light understanding of business management.
As someone who is interested in learning about how management process can affect scale efficiencies, I was disappointed with this book. At times, I felt like I was going through a psychological sales process, something akin to a time-share sales pitch.
A process oriented book would commonly begin with an outline of what the reader can expect in the chapters ahead. This book begins by trying to convince the reader to buy into a state of mind. This is a poker book for the uneducated amateur player. It leaves that player with little valuable information, but it does tempt the reader to invest his time trying to improve his game by subscribing to poker training software and coaching services offered by the author’s company. The first chapter is a dead give-away entitled “A Game of Skill, Not Luck”. Oh yeah, this makes sense, first make sure the reader buy into the idea that their previous losses are not the result of luck, but of their lack of skill, and then make them believe only a greater investment of their time (i.e. buying this book and subscribing to the companion website) will make them a winner.
The second chapter made me laugh out loud. The author explains why the book is so brief and why it doesn’t go into any detail. Each “chapter” is comprised of a few pages of light commentary. The reason for the author’s brevity? The author claims it’s not because he is unsophisticated, it’s because the reader is. The author doesn’t want to overwhelm the reader with too much detail, or else the key concepts might get lost. Gee, thanks.
Nowhere in this book does the author suggest a day plan for a professional poker player other a suggestion of a ratio between play to practice. In terms of practice, the author advises readers to subscribe to his website where they can watch videos about poker. But watching videos isn’t practice. Practice would be running thru scenarios on PokerStars using free credits, or running thru pots odds calculations to ensure players can calculate the correct odds quickly. Practice involves running drills to improve your game.
Any serious poker player should avoid this book, it will only serves to re-enforce bad habits and sell you stuff you don’t need.
