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 response. You'll even be able to predict how different types of players will think and react in any game situation. Go beyond spotting bluffs to reading your opponents! In his acclaimed Beyond Tells, McKenna introduced a unique way of integrating personality types with reading tells. Beyond Bluffs delves further into those six key personality types--The Boss, Party Hardy, High Roller, System Player, Loner, and Hunch Player--revealing the psychological patterns that govern the way they live and the way they play. McKenna shows you how to spot the subtle clues that reveal when a person is bluffing or telling the truth. You'll learn when, how, and against whom to bluff with "garbage" hands, how to avoid bluffing when you don't have to, and the difference between planned and unplanned bluffs. Discover the clues to look for and unravel the mysteries of poker! Plenty of poker books outline strategies that can help you become a good tactical player. Beyond Bluffs goes further, unraveling the real mysteries of the game and providing the psychological advantage that will help you play smarter every time. James A. McKenna, Ph.D., has been a practicing individual and group therapist for over 35 years, as well as a management consultant to Fortune 500 corporations. His column, "Power Poker Psychology," appears regularly in Poker Player and Gambling Times magazines. He lives in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri.

Poker columnist, psychotherapist and author James A. McKenna goes deep into the psychology of poker, revealing how to use the psychological patterns that govern opponents to trap them into making mistakes. McKenna explains how consistent winners use different bait for different prey and how they trap and avoid traps by noticing the difference between players at the table. McKenna demonstrates the different approaches needed for different personalities, outlining the traps for each, and shows readers how to take their game to a higher level.

There are two distinct strands in the literature on gambling: one that focuses on how to play and win the various games of chance and one that focuses on gambling compulsion and addiction. Gambling and Gender forges a new direction, studying gambling as more communication than compulsion, more recreation than deviance, more sociology than psychology. Within that framework it seeks to explore several aspects of gender: How do the gambling behaviors of men and women differ? How have women adapted to and/or changed the historically male dominance of the gambling arena? What gambling activities have women claimed as their own and used to develop uniquely female relationships? How have recent trends in technology and mass media changed the ways in which men and women claim - or reject - their gender identities? The authors use a variety of research strategies, including content analysis, survey research, interviews, and participative observation, to shed new light on this fascinating subject and to suggest ways to explore it further.

Expert guidance that will take players from pure novices to poker pros by providing priceless lessons from a high-profile poker professional. Combining solid poker strategies and entertaining anecdotes about the game, this is truly a must-have handbook for anyone serious about the game of poker.

In Your Worst Poker Enemy, Schoonmaker educates us on the game that goes beyond the table; the psychological game. In Your Best Poker Friend Schoonmaker takes the program to the next level. Beyond tricks, beyond strategy, this book delves deeper into the the mind of the player and helps them to understand that their best poker friend is actually themselves! Written in an informatve and accessible way so every player will be on their way to a royal flush.

A compilation of unique and entertaining stories by women players from all levels of the game - from enthusiastic amateur to top-flight pro. Covering such diverse topics as the history of women in poker, tips on playing, making money, playing in home games, finding love at the table and the pros and cons of women's tournaments versus mixed championships, it's as much about the players as the game itself. Wisdom, humour, insight and advice for women of all levels!

Rough sex, black magic, murder, and the science-and eros-of gambling meet in the ultimate book about Las Vegas James McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper's to cover the World Series of Poker in 2000, especially the mushrooming progress of women in the $23 million event, and the murder of Ted Binion, the tournament's prodigal host, purportedly done in by a stripper and her boyfriend with a technique so outré it took a Manhattan pathologist to identify it. Whether a jury would convict the attractive young couple was another story altogether. McManus risks his entire Harper's advance in a long-shot attempt to play in the tournament himself. Only with actual table experience, he tells his skeptical wife, can he capture the hair-raising brand of poker that determines the world champion. The heart of the book is his deliciously suspenseful account of the tournament itself-the players, the hand-to-hand combat, and his own unlikely progress in it. Written in the tradition of The Gambler and The Biggest Game in Town, Positively Fifth Street is a high-stakes adventure, a penetrating study of America's card game, and a terrifying but often hilarious account of one man's effort to understand what Edward O. Wilson has called "Pleistocene exigencies"-the eros and logistics of our primary competitive instincts.