Online Ace: A World Series of Poker Champion's Guide to Mastering Internet Poker

Scott Fischman

Online Ace I've read a lot of poker books over the past few years as I've been trying to take my game up a few levels, and I've found most of them to be useful in one way or another. I'm not sure, however, I've found any of them as useful in as many different ways as Scott Fischman's Online Ace. The reason is simple: Fischman spends far less time talking about the kind of hair-splitting decisions that separate the wheat from the chaff at the highest levels of the game and spends more time talking about the world the rest of us live in. Most importantly, Fischman talks more about playing short-stacked then all the other books on the subject of tournament poker I've read-- combined.

Fischman approaches the game in a more general fashion than most authors; he's more interested in telling you about such things as how to stay in your comfort zone than what to do with pocket jacks if you're under the gun. And let's face it-- if you've read one other poker book, you know what to do with pocket jacks under the gun. But ways to avoid going on-tilt when the guy who calls you has king-0deuce and flops the full house? You don't get that in the other books. As comforting as I've found Dan Harrington's maxim that "if your full house gets crushed by quads, it just ain't your day," had I not spent years as a horseplayer before this, I'd not have figured out long ago that the other side to that maxim actually came from Scarlett O'Hara, not a name one normally associates with high-stakes poker: "Tomorrow is another day." There's always another race when you lose that photo finish; there's always another two cards waiting to be dealt to you. Scott Fischman knows this. Scott Fischman will tell you this. And that's the kind of thing that makes Online Ace well worth your time.