In the movie “Patton”, George C. Scott (as General Patton) shouts a memorable line as the American forces are taking apart General Rommel’s Afrika Corps like a set of cheap, knock off Legos. He yells “Rommel... you magnificent bastard, I read your book!” While he also said a bunch of other stuff about making the other “poor, dumber bastard die for his country”, we will ignore how many times he used the word “bastard” and focus on the bit about him reading someone’s book. Rommel wrote a book about his view of military strategy, and Patton beat the stuffing out of him with it. Poker pros like Gus Hansen have also written a number of books, and in the case of Mr. Hansen, he is regularly getting kicked in the bankroll by players on FullTilt who are treating the Dane like an ATM machine. Is it a coincidence that he seems more vulnerable since the release of his poker book “Every Hand Revealed?”
Writing poker books has to be a very tempting offer for most poker pros. A publisher backs a dump truck full of money into their driveway, and the poker players write a couple of hundred pages about something they love, like Texas Hold’em. Everybody wins, right? What has been happening to Gus Hansen on FullTilt this year is less of online poker and more akin to a mugging. He is down millions of dollars and people seem to be beating him at will. Is it at all possible that the people treating him like the online poker version of a piñata have read his book, and have an idea of how he thinks, and what to expect when playing Texas Hold’em against the venerable Dane?
In the past I have made a lot of fun of Gus Hansen, but this is mainly because of his dabbling in pugilism, and the fact that he is scared to box anyone at LuanchPoker.com for charity. With that said, it is a shame what is happening to him, but he is only the most current example of a player who has hit the skids after releasing a book about their techniques and strategy. Also, his disasters are playing out online, but I would be he is not unique. I will bet a lot of poker pros out there have written books, and then suddenly found it harder to win.
The long and short of it here is that when a player writes a book they give away a lot of their strategy and thought processes. Anybody who digests what they write has an instant advantage over that player. Perhaps players who want to remain profitable in cash games should think twice before writing books.
