Play your opponents, not just your cards! The most important game being played in a poker room has nothing to do with cards-it-s the psychological battle being waged between players. In Beyond Bluffs, poker columnist and psychotherapist James A. McKenna shows you how to elevate your game to a new level by playing your opponents as expertly as you play your hand. With these advanced people skills, you-ll be able to determine how and when a player is bluffing, and know which bluffs to use in respo
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Fuzzy writing from a fuzzy thinker,
With a PhD and decades of experience as a practicing therapist, James McKenna should be a good source of information on the psychology of poker. He has a couple of interesting ideas: He categorizes players based on Jungian personality types (the source of the Meyers-Briggs personality test) and describes their bluffing tendencies and what tells to look for. Unfortunately, his prose is sloppy, many of his concepts half baked, and the majority of his text is one vague generalization after another, ultimately saying nothing. He even confuses bluffing with betting for value. Despite his rampant verbosity, he offers few actionable suggestions. After reading it you will be no closer to mastering the “mysteries” of poker. Don’t fall for the author’s bluff by buying this book.
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This book, and its companion volume “Beyond Tells” turned out to be very disappointing. I expected a person with a Ph.D. to be a better writer, or at least to have the resources to locate a skilled editor/proofreader. I suspect that these books were hastily thrown together merely to capitalize on the increased interest in the game. I only ended up with them because someone gave me a book store gift card, and I bought them without doing any research. Big mistake.
One reviewer described “Beyond Tells” as being the same old stuff, wrapped in McKenna’s pet phrases. I couldn’t have said it better, and the same is true for “Beyound Bluffs.” Every therapist/psychologist has their own language for describing (or attempting to describe) the complex behavior people exhibit, and McKenna is no exception. He believes he has personalities boiled down to six main types, which is a vast oversimplification. He essentially ignores the 720 possible combinations of those six; he doesn’t even go too far into the 30 possible combinations of any two of his six types. Think of the following seven poker players, and decide if six types is enough to describe them: Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, Doyle Brunson, Joe Hachem, Gus Hansen.
When it comes to poker books, there is much, MUCH better writing on the market. In “Beyond Bluffs” especially, McKenna sometimes seems to lose his place when discussing the progression of a poker hand, or a series of hands. This discontinuity became such a distraction, I had difficulty gleaning any nuggets of knowledge.
As for McKenna’s actual knowledge or skill at the poker tables, I’ll just suggest this: use your favorite internet search engine, and try to find anything he’s actually won, as opposed to stuff he’s written. Try even to find his name (that’s James McKenna, not Tom or Mike) in any list of nationally known or ranked players. Each time you fail to find his name, ask yourself, “So what is it that qualifies this guy to write on this subject?” True, not everyone goes to Vegas to make their money, but that makes a fine benchmark for deciding whose books to buy.
Bottom line: Your “poker book” money will be much better spent on Caro, Sklansky, Harrington, or any other person you’ve heard of before.
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