Once, during a poker discussion in Las Vegas, several top strategists were debating how to play pocket kings under the gun. Then Tommy Angelo popped in with “I can tell you the best way to play two kings. Decide in advance that no matter what happens, you won’t go on tilt!”

Insights like that are what drove the popularity of Angelo’s first book, Elements of Poker, a tome highly regarded for its fresh and practical perspectives. Since he began offering coaching in 2004, over one hundred students have paid for his candid advice, wanting more of what they found in his 100 articles and 18 videos.

In 2017, Angelo completed Painless Poker. “I have no words left,” he wrote to his mailing-list fans. "I put them all in here.” Painless Poker combines sections of Angelo’s own history with a fictional poker-coaching seminar featuring seven suffering poker players, in an innovative combination of memoir, fiction, and poker instruction.

When at home in Oakland, California, Angelo writes, cooks, reads, and makes music, as part of what he calls his “urban monastic lifestyle.” He cohabits with two cats, and Kay, his wife.