Quick Facts
Biography
Tommy Angelo (born August 25, 1958) is a professional poker player, writer, and coach. He moved to Palo Alto, California in 1997 from his childhood home. He attended Ohio State University for one year. Tommy was a career musician in the 1980's, performing rock and country on drums and piano. In 1990, he became a full-time professional poker player. Since then has since written 100 magazine articles and published two books.
Tommy has appeared as a guest on the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast, DeucePlays podcast with Bart Hanson of DeucesCracked, Pokercast.com, HouseofCardsRadio.com, ruKusradio.com, and Badugi All-Stars.
Poker Writer
From June 2006 to September 2007, Tommy wroteElements of Poker, which was released on 13 December 2007 and published by Tommy Angelo Operations. He has also written articles for Poker Digest Magazine, PokerPages.com and Bluff Magazine.
On 1 May 2011, Tommy released his second book entitled A Rubber Band Story and Other Poker Tales, which contains a collection of articles, blogs, and stories from Tommy Angelo's last 12 years of writing as a poker professional.
On 21 November 2009, Tommy announced that he is writing his third book. On 28 November 2010, Tommy revealed that the title of the book will be Painless Poker in a podcast interview hosted at PokerStatic.
On 22 September 2011, Tommy Angelo was used as a verb.
On 27 September 2016, Tommy announced at his website that his new book, "Painless Poker," would be released on March 1, 2017.
Poker Coach
Since 2003, Tommy has offered his services as a teacher and poker coach. He only offers face-to-face, one-on-one coaching. His program is titled The T i l t l e s s Program.
To date, he has coached several top-flight poker players, including Jay Rosenkrantz, Phil Galfond, David Benefield, Jeff Williams, Simon Munz, and Ashton Griffin.
In 2015, Tommy became a coach for the poker training site, Run It Once. His videos focus on mental game topics for professional poker players. These lessons often include audio clips of Tommy playing the banjo as he transitions from one topic to the next.
The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment
In 2009, Tommy, working alongside Wayne Lively and Rob Cole, produced an eight-episode poker-coaching video series titled The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment (EPTPE) that focuses on the role of psychology for professional poker players. The title of the series derives from one of the principal teachings of the Buddha, the Eightfold Path. The soundtrack for each video episode consists of several conversations between Tommy and Wayne separated by sound-clips of piano music, which come between topic changes. The graphics are mostly part-animated Powerpoint slides. EPTPE was released during the summer of 2009 at DeucesCracked.
EPTPE contains many musical samples, all performed by Tommy Angelo on piano. The style of the music, which includes a selection of well-known classical and rock tunes in addition to several original songs and renderings, changes to match the topic being discussed.
Custom graphics were drawn for the series by Wendelin Montciel. Several photographs, some taken by the creators, and others taken from istockphoto and flickr were used as backdrops in the videos.
Musician
Just Another Band
Tommy plays drums, piano, guitar, and bass, and produces his own music. Tommy has performed on stage over 2500 times. The majority of those gigs were with one band, called Just Another Band. As a member of Just Another Band, Tommy shared the same stage with many country music greats, including Willie Nelson and Randy Travis.
A Work of Aardvark
In 1980, Tommy self-released the LP A Work of Aardvark under the name "Tom Angelo". Tommy claims that this work is built upon an earlier recording entitled Noah's Aardvark. The LP consists of original piano and drum music.
I'm Running Bad
In 2001, he released a six track CD album of poker-related songs entitled I'm Running Bad.