Winning at poker is not just analysis, clever tactics, nor even inspired bluff--although "Total Poker" examines all these in depth. Ultimately, luck works out the same for everyone--there really is no such thing as "good cards" or "bad cards." As the author maintains, winning is a "psychological decision" made by each player. Packed with stories about the application of poker to life in general, "Total Poker" looks at the game's history, culture, techniques, strategies, rules, and probabilities. David Spanier is a former journalist for "The Times" and author of "Easy Money, Little Book of Poker, The Hand I Played," and "Welcome to the Pleasuredome."

This is the autobiography of George Koltanowski, the greatest showman and promoter that chess has ever known. Koltanowski will be best remembered as an exhibitor, writer, promoter and showman. Possessed with an incredibly powerful memory, Koltanowski would often give exhibitions, playing several games blindfold simultaneously. Strangely, what wowed the spectators the most was not that he would win all the games, even though blindfolded, but that after the games were over, he would recite the complete moves of the games without looking at the board, something which any competent master can do. Being an exhibitor giving blindfold exhibitions is what he was best known for, but it was only one aspect of his chess career. He was also a top level player. He defeated grandmasters Flohr and Rubinstein and drew Alekhine, Fine, Kotov and Keres in tournament games.

This rich book distills the experience gained during one of the most brilliant chess careers of our time - a career that has been distinguished equally in chess play and in chess analysis. Lessons from My Games combines the best of Reuben Fine the famous grandmaster, who has been a top contender in many of the century's greatest tournaments, with the best of Reuben Fine the writer, whose matchless books have been landmarks in chess history. Here are Fine's games with World Champions Capablanca, Alekhine, and Euwe, with Dake, Horowitz. Flohr, Kashdan, Tartakower, Lasker, Botvinnik, Reshevsky, and other masters. Here are scintillating games of ten-second blindfold chess, at which Fine is sensational. And perhaps most important for both the amateur and professional, here in generous profusion are Fine's incisive notes and comments on every game, with searching discussion of alternatives, blunders, brilliancies, and turning points. Here, indeed, are not only. the outstanding games of a great career but the lessons from the games, drawn as only Fine could draw them. All this would be enough, but this book offers something else as well, for enlivening the accounts of the matches and tournaments in which he played are Reuben Fine's personal impressions of his great antagonists. As an observer of human nature, he is entertaining and astute, and he shows how the ability to take a foe's psychological measure can help to win. Reuben Fine has been a member of three U. S. World Championship Teams. He tied for first prize with Keres in the great AVRO tournament of 1938 and has won the U. S. Speed Championship four rimes. Among his famous books are The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings,The Middle Game in Chess, Basic Chess Endings, Practical Chess Openings, and his great and continuing best seller, Chess the Easy Way. 246 diagrams.