Two Plus Two Publishing Authors

David Sklansky

David Sklansky is generally considered the number one authority on gambling in the world today. Besides his nine books on the subject, David also has produced two videos and numerous writings for various gaming publications. His occasional poker seminars always receive an enthusiastic reception including those given at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

More recently David has been doing consulting work for casinos, Internet gaming sites, and gaming device companies. He has recently invented a new game called Poker Challenge, soon to appear in casinos.

David attributes his standing in the gambling community to three things:

The fact that he presents his ideas as simply as possible (sometimes with Mason Malmuth) even though these ideas frequently involve concepts that are deep, subtle, and not to be found elsewhere.
The fact that the things he says and writes can be counted on to be accurate.
The fact that to this day a large portion of his income is still derived from gambling (usually poker but occasionally blackjack, sports betting, horses, video games, casino promotions, or casino tournaments).

Thus, those who depend on David's advice know that he still depends on it himself.

Dan Harrington

Dan Harrington began playing poker professionally in 1982. On the circuit he is known as "Action Dan," an ironic reference to his solid but effective style. He has won several major no-limit hold ’em tournaments including the European Poker Championships (1995), the $2,500 No-Limit Hold ’em event at the 1995 World Series of Poker, and the Four Queens No-Limit Hold ’em Championship (1996).

Dan began his serious games-playing with chess, where he quickly became a master and one of the strongest players in the New England area. In 1972 he won the Massachusetts Chess Championship, ahead of most of the top players in the area. In 1976 he started playing backgammon, a game which he also quickly mastered. He was soon one of the top money players in the Boston area, and in 1981 he won the World Cup of backgammon in Washington D.C., ahead of a field that included most of the world’s top players.

He first played in the $10,000 No-Limit Hold ’em Championship Event of the World Series of Poker in 1987. He has played in the championship a total of 15 times and has reached the final table in four of those tournaments, an amazing record. Besides winning the World Championship in 1995, he finished sixth in 1987, third in 2003, and fourth in 2004. In 2006 he finished second at the Doyle Brunson North American Championships at the Bellagio, while in 2007 he won the Legends of Poker tournament at the Bicycle Club. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest and most respected no-limit hold ’em players, as well as a feared opponent in both no-limit and limit hold ’em side games. He lives in Santa Monica where he is a partner in Anchor Loans, a real estate business.

Bill Robertie

Bill Robertie, has spent his life playing and writing about chess, backgammon, and now poker. He began playing chess as a boy, inspired by Bobby Fischer’s feats on the international chess scene. While attending Harvard as an undergraduate, he became a chess master and helped the Harvard chess team win several intercollegiate titles. After graduation, he won a number of chess tournaments, including the United States Championship at speed chess in 1970. He also established a reputation at blindfold chess, giving exhibitions on as many as eight boards simultaneously.

In 1976 he switched from chess to backgammon, becoming one of the top players in the world. His major titles include the World Championship in Monte Carlo in 1983 and 1987, the Black & White Championship in Boston in 1979, the Las Vegas tournaments in 1980 and 2001, the Bahamas Pro-Am in 1993, and the Istanbul World Open in 1994.

He has written several well-regarded backgammon books, the most noted of which are Advanced Backgammon (1991), a two-volume collection of 400 problems, and Modern Backgammon (2002), a new look at the underlying theory of the game. He has also written a set of three books for the beginning player: Backgammon for Winners (1994), Backgammon for Serious Players (1995), and 501 Essential Backgammon Problems (1997).

From 1991 to 1998 he edited the magazine Inside Backgammon with Kent Goulding. He owns a publishing company, the Gammon Press (www.thegammonpress.com), and lives in Arlington, Massachusetts with his wife Patrice.

Mason Malmuth

Mason Malmuth was born and raised on Coral Gables, Florida. In 1973 he received his BS in Mathematics from Virginia Tech, and completed their Master' program in 1975. While working for the United States Census Bureau in 1978, Mason stopped overnight in Las Vegas while driving to his new assignment in California. He was immediately fascinated by the games, and gambling became his major interest.

After arriving in California he discovered that poker was legal and began playing in some of the public cardrooms as well as taking perodic trips to Las Vegas where he would play both poker and blackjack. In 1981 he went to work for the Northrop Corporation as a mathematician and moved to Los Angeles where he could conveniently pursue his interest in poker in the large public cardrooms in Gardena, Bell Gardens, and Commerce.

In 1983 his first article "Card Domination--The Ultimate Blackjack Weapon" was published in Gambling Times magazine. In 1987 he left his job with the Northrop Corporation to begin a career as both a full-time gambler and a gambling writer. He has had over 500 articles published in various magazines and is the author or co-author of 12 books. These include Gambling Theory and Other Topics, where he tries to demonstrate why only a small number of people are highly successful at gambling. In this book he introduces the reader to the concept of "non-self weighting strategies" and explains why successful gambling is actually a balance of luck and skill. Other books he has co-authored are Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players, written with David Sklansky, and Seven-Card Stud for Advanced Players written with David Sklansky and Ray Zee. These two "advanced" books are considered the definitive works on these games.

His company Two Plus Two Publishing has sold over 300,000 books and currently has 24 titles to its credit. These books are recognized as the best in their field and are thoroughly studied by those individuals who take gambling seriously.

Ray Zee

Ray Zee was born and raised in New Jersey, and spent his college years in the East as well. Unlike other students, Ray did more than just study. He began to gamble on the side in school, and when he graduated he was ready to start his career, which just happened to be in the dessert of Nevada.

Ray quickly realized that there were many opportunities in various forms of gambling and began to search for ways to exploit the inequities in many of the games. This included blackjack, horse racing, sports betting, slot jackpots, and of course his favorite game, poker.

It wasn't long before he became known as one of the top poker players and most knowledgeable gamblers in the world. And when we say world, we mean it literally because there are very few places where gambling is offered that Ray has not visited. In fact, you can go to many cardrooms all over the world, mention the name Ray Zee, and get an immediate response.

Ray usually chooses to play in very high stakes cash games, many of which feature some of the best players in the world. It has been said that "He leaves them with their eyes wide open when he departs." Ray is also one of the very few players that is considered expert in virtually every form of poker played for serious money. He is also one of the very few gamblers (still around) that has been to all the World Series of Poker Tournaments at Binions Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Rays book, High-Low-Split Poker for Advanced Players is recognized as the premier book on split pot games, and this has increased his following and helped to promote these games as well. He is considered an invaluable member of the Two Plus Two Publishing team, and his advice and wisdom is widely sought by many of his peers and adversaries at the gaming tables.

Alan Schoonmaker

Alan Schoonmaker earned his Ph.D. in industrial psychology at U of California, Berkeley. He taught and did research at UCLA, Carnegie-Mellon, and Belgium's Catholic University of Louvain. After running management development at Merrill Lynch, he worked as a consultant in twenty-nine countries on all six continents. His clients included the world's largest corporations such as IBM, Mobil, GE, GM, and Chase Manhattan. The annual sales of his clients exceed one trillion dollars.

He has written or co-authored three research monographs and five books on industrial psychology. His work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, and Indonesian. He has also developed several multi-media training programs. His "Selling: The Psychological Approach" was once the world's best selling computer based instructional program for business people. A major theme of his work is understanding and adjusting to different kinds of people, which is also the theme of The Psychology of Poker.

For two years he wrote the "Psychology of Poker" column for Poker Digest. That column now appears in Cardplayer magazine.

His attitude toward our game is unique for a poker writer: "I play only in smaller games because maximizing my profits is much less important to me than relaxing and learning about people. I became a psychologist because I enjoy people-watching, and a cardroom is a wonderful place to do it." "Players in small games are much more interesting than the more serious players. They are more varied, open, and relaxed. They laugh more, tell better stories, and never forget that the purpose of playing any game is to have fun."

"As the stakes get higher, the players become more serious and homogeneous. Most of them study the same books, know the same odds, and try to use similar strategies. In the smaller games there are more rocks, more maniacs, more calling stations, more nerds, more "Deluded Experts," and more oddballs, which means I learn more and get better material for my writing."

"Most poker writers focus on how the champions think and play, but hardly anything has been written about ordinary players. I want to help them to understand themselves and the people in their games."

John Feeney

John Feeney spent his youth in Phoenix Arizona. After attending the University of Colorado he moved to San Diego to pursue graduate work in clinical psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology. His interest in poker was sparked while observing a hold 'em game during a weekend trip to Las Vegas. True to his background, he took an academic approach to the game, studying the poker literature, consulting with David Sklansky, and getting the requisite playing experience. By the time he received his Ph.D., poker was beginning to compete with psychology for his attention. He soon began to log more hours in the cardrooms of Southern California, and ultimately poker became his primary focus.

Today John can often be found in games in his area or elsewhere. When not at the tables John now devotes a portion of his time to writing. His articles in Poker Digest have been well received, and he is a regular participant in poker discussions on the Internet. You may spot his "posts" on the Two Plus Two Forums. Away from poker John enjoys spending time with his wife and two young daughters.

Collin Moshman

Collin Moshman graduated in 2003 with an honors degree in theoretical math from Caltech. Later that year, he began playing $0.10-$0.25 cash no-limit hold 'em and $6 sit 'n go's. By the time he was crushing the $215's sit 'n go's and beyond, he abandoned his post-graduate studies in economics to focus on sit 'n go poker as a full-time career.

During a term of study at Cambridge University, Collin visited Scotland with his father to hoist the famed clach cuid fir -- the Scottish stones of manhood. His exploits are detailed in " An Up-Lifting Journey," appearing in the June 2003 issue of MILO Strength Journal. Other interests of Collin include racquetball, dealer's choice home poker games, free-market economics, and 19th century music.

Lastly, Collin has the Stu Ungar-like quality of wanting to bet on just about everything. His current wager is that he can teach his arts-oriented girlfriend, Katie, to play poker better than she can teach him to sing. Collin considers this bet a lock, barring sudden possession by Frank Sinatra.

Nick "Stoxtrader"Grudzien

Nick "Stoxtrader" Grudzien Nick worked as a Wall-Street trader for ten years before taking a hiatus to play poker "professionally," write this book, and spend time with his wife and two children, ages four and two. He currently spends his time playing high-stakes, online cash games, and traveling to a few of the bigger WPT and WSOP tournaments. He splits his time evenly between limit and no-limit play, and continues to study the game intensely.

Nick started playing poker seriously in the fall of 2003. He rapidly moved up in limits until the spring of 2005 at which point he reached, and has continued to play in, the highest cash games online. As Nick moved up in limits, he had the luxury of a stable job and considered poker to be recreation, at least initially. Bankroll requirements and risk objectives can be much more lax when the limits you play are small relative to your current earning potential, and this is a big reason Nick was able to move up in limits so quickly. Once Nick started playing $100-$200 limit hold 'em online, bankroll considerations started taking a somewhat more serious perspective. Since then, he has always had 1,000 big bets in his poker designated bankroll for any limit hold 'em game in which he has played.

Nick is one of the featured bloggers at Stoxpoker.com and regularly posts entries and produces instructional videos there. He also posts frequently under the name "Stoxtrader" at twoplustwo.com.

Geoff "Zobags" Herzog

Geoff "Zobags" Herzog Geoff received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics from Colorado College where he and Nick were fraternity brothers. After college, Geoff worked briefly as an actuary before enrolling at Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, he moved to Miami to work for a big law firm that specialized in defending financial services companies in multi-million dollar, class-action lawsuits. While there, he met his wife, Laura, who was also an attorney at the firm.

After one year of practicing law, Geoff decided it was time for a change and moved to Jacksonville, Florida to work for a small venture capital company which invested in technology start-ups. Eventually, he became the Chief Legal Officer for one of the firm's portfolio companies. About this time, Geoff got interested in online poker when Nick explained how lucrative it could be. After many hours of coaching from Nick, and in less than one year, Geoff was able to move up in limits, going from $0.50-$1.00 to $50-$100. During this time, Geoff realized he could make more money playing poker than practicing law, so he "retired" to focus exclusively on poker. Since then, Geoff has had success grinding out a large number of short-handed limit hold 'em hands, usually playing 6 tables at a time.

With the free time Geoff gained from playing poker for a living, he decided to pursue his other dream of being a professional hockey player. Even though he had not played competitively since college (8 years prior), Geoff was able to play a few games for the Jacksonville Barracudas of the Southern Professional Hockey League during the 2006-2007 Season.

Geoff is also a CFA(R) (Chartered Financial Analyst) charterholder. He frequently posts at stoxpoker.com and twoplustwo.com under the name "Zobags," and coaches a number of students on their limit hold 'em game.

Matt Flynn

Matt Flynn Matt Flynn grew up in Oakland, California. He received his applied math degree from Harvard in 1990 thanks to an academic scholarship from the Walt Disney Foundation. He earned his M.D. from Duke University in 1996. After internship at U.C. San Francisco, he served as resident and chief resident in dermatology at Stanford. During his training, Matt wrote four bestselling medical Board review books with his intramural basketball teammates and fellow medical students. Matt currently lives in North Carolina with his wife and two sons. He has a private dermatology practice and is the volunteer dermatologist for children served by the Wake County Health Department.

Matt got his start in poker at age 8, when his then-87-year-old great-grandmother taught him to play 7-card no-peek at a Thanksgiving gathering. In 2000, Matt began playing limit hold 'em at Lucky Chances in Colma, California. It was there that he met poker author Tommy Angelo. The two immediately clicked, and over the next few months Tommy mentored Matt into high-stakes limit games. Through Tommy, Matt met no-limit pro Alex Roberts, who taught him the fundamentals and sat him in his first game. It was love at first raise. Afterwards, Alex said, "We have another ex-limit player."

Under Alex's tutelage, Matt apprenticed in the $10-$10-$20 game at Lucky Chances and never looked back. He has played and studied high-stakes no-limit ever since. He met Sunny Mehta in 2005, and through him Ed Miller. This is their first collaboration.

Sunny Mehta

Sunny Mehta grew up in Wyckoff, New Jersey, where music was always a big part of his life. He graduated from the University of Miami School of Music in 2000 with a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz and Studio Guitar. He moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2002 and began playing, recording, and teaching music professionally.

In late 2003, Sunny started playing poker in his free time, and took a great interest in it. After studying the game via the forums on www.twoplustwo.com and honing his skills in local games, he was playing professionally by 2004. He started by playing low stakes online games, and by 2005 he was playing in the biggest no-limit hold 'em games in New Orleans. Through www.twoplustwo.com, he made the acquaintance of Matt Flynn, who shared his interest in analyzing and discussing poker.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Sunny moved to Las Vegas where he became a fixture in the high stakes no-limit cash games. In Las Vegas, he met Ed Miller, a New Orleans native himself. Ed, having already written two books for Two Plus Two Publishing LLC, introduced Sunny to Mason Malmuth. Sunny introduced Matt to Ed and Mason, and a book project took form by early 2006.

Sunny pined for the unique culture of New Orleans and, despite enjoying the success in Las Vegas, decided to move back to the Big Easy in 2006. He continued to play no-limit hold 'em online, as well as in local live games. He has played in a wide array of no-limit games, from $.25-$.50 to $25-$50, online to live, shorthanded and heads-up to full ring, cash games to tournaments.

Sunny currently lives in New Orleans where he plays poker, writes about poker, coaches poker, plays music, writes music, and enjoys the local flavor. For questions pertaining to the book, private poker lessons, or anything else discussion-worthy, you can contact him at www.sunnymehta.com. You can also find him on the forums at www.twoplustwo.com.

Ed Miller

Ed Miller grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. He received an S.B. in Physics and another in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT in 2000. After a year teaching, he moved to Redmond, Washington to work as a software developer for Microsoft.

Looking for a new hobby, he deposited a couple hundred dollars in November 2001 to play $1-$2 and $2-$4 hold 'em online. After losing his initial stake, he sought to improve his game, and he found the books and website of Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. He participated in discussions on the forums at www.twoplustwo.com, and after a few months he turned his losses into wins in a $4-$8 game at a local card room.

By January 2003, he had moved up to $10-$20 and $20-$40, and in March he left his job to play poker full-time. By then he had swapped roles on the online discussion forums from beginning player seeking advice to expert player giving it. After six more successful months playing in the Seattle area, he moved to Las Vegas, where he currently resides. Also in 2003, Dr. Alan Schoonmaker, the author of The Psychology of Poker, introduced Ed to David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, and a partnership soon was born with this book being their first result.

Today Ed usually plays between $10-$20 and $30-$60, but can occasionally still be found in the $2-$4 to $6-$12 games around Las Vegas.

Donna Harris

Donna Harris was born and raised in California and came to Las Vegas in 1979 for the World Cup of Darts, which was held at the Sahara Hotel. She was the first female official for this event. Like many Las Vegas visitors, she was fascinated by the prospect of building a career in the casino industry, and in 1980 she returned to Las Vegas to deal blackjack professionally. Her first job was at the Golden Nugget Gambling Hall in downtown Las Vegas.

That same year, after becoming intrigued by the game of poker (which was played directly across the pit from where she dealt), and then playing poker after work, Donna asked to be transferred into the cardroom where the legendary Bill Boyd was the manager. Her initial position was as a "shill dealer" -- a dealer who only dealt when the "regular" dealers were out of the lineup -- usually to play poker. Her other early job duties included brushing tables, getting fills and player's checks, and "playing poker" as a shill. She dealt poker until 1985.

In 1982 Bill Boyd retired, turning the cardroom over to another legend, Eric Drache. At that time very few women were in poker management and Eric felt that many of his regular customers, who originally played in "smokey back room" type environments, would not respect the decision of a young and inexperienced female floorperson. However, Donna persisted and was given the opportunity to succeed.

In 1985 Donna became the relief shift manager at the Golden Nugget. When The Mirage opened in 1989, she was selected to be the swing shift manager for the new cardroom and became cardroom Manager in 1989. She has also held positions in both The World Series of Poker and Grand Prix of Poker tournaments held in Las Vegas. Her experience includes traveling with Poker Cruises International, whose routes to most ports in the Caribbean and Mexico have now been taken over by Card Player Cruises and Classic Poker Cruises. She was also aboard the first "poker cruise" to England on the QE II in 1985, and worked poker tournaments in such exotic locales as Marakesh, Morocco, and Port Vila, Vanuatu. As of this writing Miss Harris is still employed at The Mirage. She has been with the Golden Nugget/Mirage Corporation for nearly eighteen years.

Lynne Loomis

Lynne Loomis has been a professional freelance writer and editor for 20 years and has written countless articles on gambling and other industry-related topics. She also occasionally can be found in casinos and cardrooms around the country.

Sylvester Suzuki

Sylvester Suzuki is the pen name of a freelance writer who currently resides in southern California. As a teenager in the late 1940s, Mr. Suzuki, who was born and raised in the Seattle area, began his poker-playing career with such penny-ante favorites as "baseball" and "spit in the ocean." He then steadily progressed to no-limit lowball as a merchant seaman in the mid-fifties.

Shortly after graduating from the University of Washington in 1959, Suzuki departed for assignment as a civilian administrative officer with the Eight United States Army in Seoul, Korea. During a twenty-five-year career with several Department of Defense agencies, primarily in overseas areas, Suzuki was a poker-playing regular in a variety of officers clubs, bachelor officers quarters, and on-base family housing facilities.

Since his retirement in 1984, Mr. Suzuki has been playing poker primarily in the casinos of California and Nevada.

Dan Paymar

Dan Paymar was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. Before turning to a career in the poker industry, Dan spent four years at Michigan Tech, becoming an engineer. His first work in the computer industry was in field service for Bendix Computer, which was bought out by Control Data in 1963. In 1967, Dan moved on to develop a text editing system for Encyclopædia Britannica.

With two other engineers, Dan started Educational Data Systems. Their goal: to write a BASIC language interpreter and disk operating system for the Data General Nova computer to handle up to sixteen users. As far as we know, this was the first time-sharing system ever to run on a minicomputer. When the company began manufacturing its own computers Educational Data Systems became Point 4 Data Corporation.

Always the idea man, Dan then developed an accessory for the Apple-II computer which he sold via his own mail order business and through retail outlets.

In 1989 Dan changed his career direction about 180 degrees and returned to school -- to become a poker dealer. That same year, he moved to Las Vegas.

After five years working as a poker dealer, playing some poker, and getting interested in video poker, Dan became an instructor for poker dealers at Casino Gaming School. Not satisfied with the instructional materials then available, the original edition of this book was born. Starting as a booklet of fifty pages, the text evolved as new situations and questions came up in class that were not covered. In 1995, the second edition of the original text, with eighty pages, was published and sold in gaming bookstores.

Dan has been playing video poker since 1989 and began analyzing it and writing about it in 1991. Several of his articles have been published in Card Player, and he has a regular column in Blackjack Forum. Dan and associate newsletter editor Doug Reul are highly respected among both professional and recreational video poker players for their accurate analyses and easy-to-use strategies.

Ray Michael B

Ray Michael B. is a semi-retired neuro-surgeon, a recreational player, and a poker aficionado, which he defines as a serious student of the game.