Learning About Life From Poker With 'Oops! I Won Too Much Money'
If you spend anytime looking at the results from poker tournaments, you might pick up on one name from the 2006 tournament season and say to yourself, "Who the heck is that and where did he come from?" when you come across the name of professional poker player Tom Schneider. Tom has had a brilliant run in 2006, with final table appearances on the World Poker Tour, the World Series of Poker Circuit and at the recently complete World Series of Poker itself. With those finishes this year, Schneider has been able to drive himself into the Top 60 in the Player of the Year race.
Schneider has done much more than just play excellent poker, however. He has been a successful cash game player for some time and, as a former CPA and Chief Financial Officer for several companies, the Phoenix, AZ resident has been through the ups and downs of life not only on the poker tables of the world but also in the highly competitive business world and personal life as well. Using the accumulation of those years of wisdom, Tom has come up with a very intriguing book called "OOPS! I Won Too Much Money" which, while not strictly a poker strategy book, can present some excellent points for maximizing success in all aspects of life.
The book (available in bookstores, on Amazon.com and at the website winningwisdomfromtom.com for $16.95) is subtitled 'Winning wisdom from the boardroom to the poker table' and it truly does deliver on that promise. The book is broken into sixty one segments that take particular situations, break down the progression of events and supply a resolution and/or a lesson to be taken from each situation. Through these chapters Schneider, sometimes with tongue firmly planted in cheek and sometimes through the harsh lessons of the School of Hard Knocks, demonstrates that there are many similarities between dealing with the turn of events on the poker tables, in the corporate world and in personal relations. While all of the lessons aren't solved with the happiness of success, they are highly educational when taken together as a whole.
Through such chapters as 'Are You The Tortoise or The Hare?', 'The Business and the Bankroll Killer', and "Oops! I Won Too Much Money" (where he wins too much in prop bets against an opponent at the poker table, only to have said opponent not pay him off…hence, the title of the chapter and the book), Schneider displays not only a truly well honed read on people at the poker tables and the boardrooms, he also has you laughing (in some cases, hard) as he demonstrates his examples for the reader. While these thoughts are pushed across in a comical manner, it would behoove the reader to pick up on what Schneider is trying to teach.
I found Tom's style to be very palatable to a reader while also getting some very solid strategies across for success in all aspects of life. He keeps you intrigued with the different lessons that come across and, if you apply what he is trying to relate, you too can potentially achieve some of the success that we all crave. The lessons that make up the book can be applied in so many areas that it makes it something that people should at least read, if not have in their libraries at home.
Part poker strategy book, part business philosophy book, part self help book, Tom Schneider took an audacious task and hit on each segment very well across the board with 'Oops! I Won Too Much Money.' It would be interesting to learn if, through the application of the lessons he teaches in the book, that it has contributed to the success that he has had at the poker tables in 2006 and in his life overall. Perhaps that could be coming in another book from Schneider, which will have a place in my library right beside this one.
Ed note: Oops, you did it again…won money that is, when you play at Hollywood Poker
