Professional poker players generally fall into two classes: (1) those who extract money from private games, and (2) those who extract money from public games.

Successful private-game professionals explicitly or implicitly understand and use many of the Advanced Concepts of Poker. Private-game professionals are usually quiet, ostensibly self-effacing, independent loners who never need to join an establishment³² or cheat to extract maximum money from their opponents. (Cheating would actually decrease both their investment odds and their long-range edge odds.) Private-game professionals generally prosper more and spend fewer hours playing poker than do public-game professionals.

While all public-game professionals explicitly or implicitly must understand and use enough of the Advanced Concepts of Poker to generate a regular income, many public-game professionals misunderstand or violate various key concepts. For example, many public-game professionals not only openly boast about their poker abilities, but compromise their independence by joining a tacit professional establishment. Because of their compromised independence, most of those public-game professionals limit both their potential winnings and their future. And more and more of those professionals are depending on cheating (at the expense of playing good poker) to extract money for their livelihood.

But some public professionals have considerable financial incentives for maintaining a braggadocio, flamboyant style. Those professionals are supreme hustlers who use their visibility to attract victims. By becoming famous and highly visible, they not only attract gamblers to back them to high-stake games, but they also attract wealthy challengers who want action against a big-name player. The better-known big-name players have won up to $1 million in a single session against such wealthy but foolish challengers. But some big-name professionals have also set themselves up for being cleaned out by shrewd, unknown Advanced-Concept players posing as foolish challengers.

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^{32Professionals who get involved with establishments or cliques usually limit their potentials and acquire rigid, stereo-typed characteristics that the good player can identify. Once he has identified the stereotyped characteristics of those professionals, the good player can predict their actions and consistently beat them—even when they cheat. The good player or superior professional, on the other hand, usually remains independent and avoids stereotyped characteristics. And often his opponents never realize that he is a good player who is winning all of their money.}