Lee Jones sent me this screenshot from Amazon. He added the two red boxes and the comment. You can click on the image to see a larger version.
The comment he wrote says, “What I was looking at on Amazon.” The arrow points to the “The DellTM UltraSharp TM3007 WFP-HC 30-inch WideScreen Flat Panel Monitor.” That’s the item for which it is true that Customers-who-bought-this-item-also-bought the six pictured items, five of which are electronic accessories, and then there’s my book, Elements of Poker, right between the laser mouse and the lens cleaner.
Why would people who buy big monitors buy poker books? It’s because when you play poker on the internet, you can do what’s called “multi-tabling.” That means playing in more than one poker game at the same time. It’s like what Bobby Fisher used to do at chess, except multi-tabling is spectacularly faster, and it’s for money, and you can bluff, and everybody can play as many games as they want. Okay, so it’s barely like what chess masters do. It’s more like what video gamers do, which is: AS MUCH AND AS FAST AS POSSIBLE OF COURSE!!!
How many games do people play? The most I’ve ever heard of is 24 at once. Lots of online poker players play 10 tables or more. To those people, square inchage is vital. Imagine if you had a dozen programs open and you needed to see them all at the same time. That’s how it is when you multi-table. What would you do if increasing your visual real estate would increase your income? You’d buy a bigger monitor, or two. Which is exactly what many poker players have done, and do.
So it’s not all that surprising that a poker book would show up in a “Customers who bought this item also bought” section at Amazon when “this item” is a 30-inch monitor. But why my book? Yes, it’s well regarded and selling well, but that’s true of dozens of other poker books. Why would poker players who are expanding their playing capacity buy my book?
Lee’s guess is that they were thinking, “Hmmm. I’m going to be playing a lot of tables at once. Now more than ever, I need to tilt less…”
