Book Announcement: Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game Coming 2019

I have some fun news to share, and for some reason April 1 felt like a good day to share it. This one is a long time coming, something I’ve hinted at here on the blog a few times before.

The “poker & pop culture” book is happening. No foolin’! (And no shinola.)

The book will be published by D&B Poker. After many years of publishing strategy books, D&B Poker has widened its scope a bit to include other poker-related titles like Tricia Cardner and Jonathan Little’s books on psychology and poker, as well as autobiographies by Mike Sexton and Phil Hellmuth.

You’ve probably heard as well about Lance Bradley’s book due to appear this summer titled The Pursuit of Poker Success: Learn From 50 of the World’s Best Poker Players that features Bradley interviewing many of the game’s best known and most successful players. You can preorder Lance's book now either via D&B Poker or Amazon.

My book will be titled Poker & Pop Culture: Telling the Story of America’s Favorite Card Game. Ordered somewhat chronologically as a history of the game, the book primarily will focus on poker’s prominence in American popular culture or the “mainstream.” In other words, I’ll be examining the game as it has been discussed and portrayed over the last two centuries-plus not just at the tables, but in newspapers, magazines, letters, memoirs, paintings, fiction, drama, radio shows, music, film, television, and elsewhere.

The book will additionally highlight poker being frequently evoked in politics, business, economics, warfare and diplomacy, business, economics, sports, and other “non-poker” contexts, with all of those references furthering the argument for poker’s importance to U.S. history and culture.

Such references to poker popping up day-to-day American life also tend to foreground links between certain ideals and values considered “American” -- things like individual liberty, self-reliance, the frontier spirit, egalitarianism, the “pursuit of happiness,” the ideologies of capitalism, and so on -- and so that obviously will be part of the story, too.

The idea of doing some sort of poker book probably began for me way back during the early days of the blog (begun almost 12 years ago), at some point not long after I picked up the habit of writing about poker on a regular basis both here and then soon after for a variety of different sites and publications.

For a few years that was mostly just an idle thought encouraged by the fast-growing number of Hard-Boiled Poker posts. However, once I developed and began teaching my “Poker and American Film and Culture” class in 2011, the idea began to take on a more concrete shape as I envisioned creating a book that might serve as a kind of textbook for the course.

Then in 2014 things got even more specific when with the help of an agent I began shopping book proposals and developing blurbs, detailed outlines and annotated tables of contents, sample chapters, and the like.

That process evolved into a year-and-a-half long mini-adventure that was interesting for me though less so for others, I imagine, so I’ll gloss over the details. Instead I’ll just skip ahead to the happy ending of D&B Poker entering the picture. I’ll be spending most of this year writing and rewriting as I get the manuscript together, with the 2019 World Series of Poker being the current target for the book to hit the stands.

I’ve written a book-length disseration and two novels before (Same Difference and Obsessica), and so I have had some experience planning and completing long-term writing projects. As in poker, patience is a big part of seeing such things through and having something to show for it in the end.

But this will be something different, a new and different kind of writing challenge. And I expect it ultimately to be a lot of fun for your humble scribbler and (hopefully) for some of you, too.

I’ll keep you updated on the project over here as well as on Twitter. Meanwhile big thanks to everyone who has read posts here and other articles of mine, and whose support and feedback encouraged me to keep writing. I know already the list of people I’m going to want to mention in the Foreword will be a long one.

Image: A Friend in Need (1903) by Cassius M. Coolidge, public domain.

Cards from Coast to Coast

Had a chance not too long ago to have a fun conversation with poker player and author Ashley Adams. He has been writing about poker for some time including authoring a couple of strategy books and contributing some strategy articles over at PokerNews. He also hosts the House of Cards Radio podcast, a weekly show that often features interesting guests. In fact just last week he had WSOP Main Event champion Joe McKeehen not long after his big win.

Ashley has been playing poker for over half-century. Since the early 1990s, he’s been especially dedicated to the game, having played in many different countries and all around the United States. About a decade ago he realized he’d played in more than half of the states in the U.S., and soon thereafter made it a goal to try to play in all 50 of them.

About a month ago Ashley achieved that goal, with Oregon being the last state in which he managed to play America’s favorite card game. At the very least he’s tied a record, for certain. A couple of weeks later he and I had a conversation about his journey, and you can read the interview over at PokerNews here: “An American Odyssey: Ashley Adams Completes 50-State Poker Tour.”

Our conversation covered a lot of ground (pun intended). I asked him to comment on different playing styles in different areas of the country, kind of half-anticipating some generalities about “east coast” and “west coast” games. But interestingly he pointed out how the game has been somewhat “homogenized” over the last decade or so, primarily because of the “boom” and spread of televised poker, as well as the overall increase in knowledge of strategy.

Ashley has plans to write a book about his poker journey, which I think is a great idea. I also can imagine making use of such a book in my “Poker in American Film and Culture class,” where we learn a lot about how poker was played in the past in a few regions -- in particular New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Nevada, and California, and a little bit of New Jersey -- but don’t necessarily get too much into contemporary poker culture including home games (an area in which Ashley perhaps has a more varied experience than just about anybody).

Check out the interview for more.

Book Learning

There was a time years ago when I’d read any poker strategy book I could find. I scribbled about many of them here, and ended up writing reviews of dozens for various outlets over the years, too.

My consumption of such titles has slowed down considerably of late, as I imagine it has for most of us here in the distant wake of the poker “boom.” But I’ll read one every now and then, and will review them occasionally, too.

A couple of days ago Daniel Negreanu wrote a blog post offering to answer the question “Which Poker Books Should You Buy?” in which he makes a few different points about how to judge strategy texts, most of which make sense to me.

Negreanu spends some time in the post distinguishing between “mental game” books or those that might be filed with other sports psychology texts, and nuts-and-bolts poker strategy texts. He notes how when it comes to the former category, the author’s own record as a player isn’t necessarily a crucial issue. After all, people can help you become mentally stronger without necessarily even being poker players themselves.

However, when it comes to strategy texts or “books that teach you how to play the game better,” Negreanu maintains that “it is essential that the author is a successful, winning player over an extended period of time.” Thus does he strongly advise readers to check the credentials of the strategy authors -- i.e., their results -- before considering reading their books.

It’s reasonable advice, and I tend to agree with the distinction Negreanu makes between poker and other sports in which successful coaches need not have been players themselves.

Negreanu doesn’t really focus on the fact that there are plenty of very good players who aren’t so great at writing strategy books. (I’m remembering a few of examples of such books, some of which still gather dust on my shelf today.)

Thinking back, I’m remembering I actually reviewed a couple of Negreanu’s books back in the day -- his Power Hold’em Strategy (compiling chapters from many contributors) and More Hold’em Wisdom for All Players (which collected syndicated columns he’d written). I liked both books, although I’m remembering there were some sections of Power Hold’em Strategy I liked more than others, including Negreanu’s own good explanation of his “small ball” strategy.

Poker is also unlike other sports in another important way, one not irrelevant to this topic.

Most of us know instinctively whether or not we are expert enough at basketball, baseball, football, tennis, golf, or other sports to advise others. In poker, though, where accurate self-assessment can be more elusive, it can be a lot harder to arrive at such certainty.

Queen Victoria!

Was simply a terrific day here on the farm yesterday where Vera and I hosted family for an Easter meal and a very relaxing time amid perfect spring weather.

Would eventually turn on NBA playoff basketball to watch my Bobcats play their first playoff game in several years, hanging tough for two-and-a-half quarters before fading versus the Miami Heat. Charlotte’s a huge underdog, obviously, even to take a game off the defending champs. And speaking of pulling for underdogs, like a lot of you I followed closely the delayed online stream of the final table at EPT Sanremo, enjoying watching Victoria Coren Mitchell’s come-from-behind win to grab the title (photo by Danny Maxwell for PokerNews).

Coren Mitchell had begun the penultimate day of play 16th of 16 in chips on Saturday, then managed to squeak into yesterday’s final table still on the short side and in fact eighth of the remaining eight to start play. Thus did it seem reasonable to think she probably wouldn’t be getting too much further. Even she consistently downplayed her prospects pretty much the whole way this weekend, demonstrating what Rick Dacey on the PokerStars blog styled “the power of positive pessimism.”

She didn’t really begin to build a stack, either, until after there had been a few eliminations, then took the lead with three left after a hand in which both she and start-of-day chip leader Jordan Westmorland flopped trip tens, but she had him outkicked.

That hand saw Coren Mitchell having to call a Westmorland river shove after having led out, a call that had to be made but was nonetheless still difficult. And while she’d been dealt some good cards in that hand as well as in the final one in which she flopped two pair with Q-J to crack runner-up Giacomo Fundaro’s pocket aces, she also made some good decisions and savvy plays throughout the final table.

Today on Learn.PokerNews Nate Meyvis talks about one small hand from early on that showed Coren Mitchell playing smartly postflop. There were other good hands for her, too -- including an inspired four-bet from the hijack seat at seven-handed when she was holding after Fundaro had defended his small blind with a reraise (and happened only to have had ).

So because of the chip situation for much of the last couple of days, her winning was unexpected. Also the fact that the EPT had gone 97 tournaments and nearly 10 full seasons without having a two-time Main Event winner (!) made the prospect of it actually happening this weekend with Coren Mitchell seem all the more unlikely to occur.

It had become a running gag of sorts with the PokerStars bloggers who have been more or less obligated to trot out each EPT over the last several years the fact that no one had won the sucker twice. As every Main Event wound down to the last couple of days, if there were a former champ around in the field notice had to be given regarding the “streak” and the prospects for it finally ending.

I’ve written here before on several occasions about Coren Mitchell. She’s been a prominent presence on the poker scene for more than a decade now.

She was a participant during Season Two of Late Night Poker back in 2000, the popular U.K. show about which we recently ran a three-part history by one of the show’s creators, Nick Szeremeta, over on Learn.PokerNews. She then took a turn as a commentator on the show with Jesse May during the show’s third season.

It was at EPT London during Season 3 that she won her first Main Event title back in 2006, becoming the first woman to win an EPT. She’d join Team PokerStars soon after, then in early 2010 her excellent “poker memoir” appeared, For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair With Poker, a book I continue to recommend to anyone looking for interesting (and sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny) nonfiction poker writing.

I reviewed For Richer, For Poorer for Betfair Poker when it first appeared (here, too), then interviewed the author as well. Among my questions for her was one about the book’s title, an obvious allusion to marriage and the wedding vows.

“Well, poker is not a job for me (I enjoy it too much) and it’s not a hobby (I devote too much time to it),” she answered. “It's a way of life; I have embraced a life. In that sense, it’s like a marriage -- or like a marriage should be. For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, poker and I are together for the long haul. I might kick against it sometimes, it might annoy me, I might hate it, but deep down I will love it for ever and I never plan to say goodbye. If I ever get married, I hope I’ll feel the same way about my unlucky groom.”

Of course, she would get married in November 2012 to the actor and comedian David Mitchell who is probably best known for his role on the British show Peep Show where he stars with his comedy partner Robert Webb (one of several hilarious productions with which Mitchell has been involved). Meanwhile Coren Mitchell has an especially large following of non-poker people in the U.K. thanks to her weekly columns in The Observer and The Guardian and her co-hosting of the popular quiz show Only Connect.

The mainstream press across the pond have already been trumpeting Coren Mitchell’s win loudly, encouraging some to whisper about another “boom” of sorts for British poker perhaps being a consequence of her win yesterday. And as often happens when women win big tourneys -- no longer as great a rarity as back in 2006, although still noteworthy especially given the disproportionate number of women who play big buy-in events versus men -- that, too, won’t hurt going forward when it comes to promoting the game and getting women interested in poker.

Of course, as even just that quote above suggests (I think), Coren Mitchell is a tremendous ambassador for poker, not just because of her mainstream connections and celebrity but also because she’s great at explaining why the game is both fun and worthwhile, especially to newcomers. “Queen Victoria!” tweeted a few following her win yesterday, a title she’s earned not just for having beaten the other 97 EPT Main Event champs to two-time-champ status but for her already-established position as an influential promoter of the game.

Lots of reasons, then, why her win yesterday should rightly be considered “good for poker” (in the general sense). Inspiring, too, for those of us who like to write about poker, and who like her have a great enough love for poker and the endless stories and characters it can produce that it has become more than just a hobby but a “a way of life.”

There are a lot of us who thanks to that love of the game are in poker “for the long haul.” It’s fun, then, to see someone else who is as dedicated to our favorite game and who does well describing what’s so good about it do well.

2013 WSOP, Day 35: Talking Tells

Was a quiet, restful day for your humble scribbler yesterday as I enjoyed what might be a final day off before the last big push through these next couple of weeks helping PokerNews with the coverage of the 2013 World Series of Poker.

As I mentioned yesterday, I did indeed make it a priority to fill the rental’s tank with gas. Actually took a couple of visits to Terrible’s as the lot was too packed with cars on the first try and I did not relish sitting in the heat for even 10 minutes to wait for an open spot. But I did fill the tank, probably for the last time until I head back to the airport in a couple of weeks. And after sleeping late both yesterday and this morning, I feel more or less replenished energy-wise, too.

I did make it to the Rio briefly yesterday, although didn’t look in on any of the poker happening. Following the reports I saw that the $50K played all of the way down to 26 players, meaning the tension is rising considerably there as only the top 16 get paid. Doyle Brunson was among those eliminated on Day 3, and was tweeting a short while ago that he felt he’d only brought his “B” game to the event.

Noticed as well that a woman other than Vanessa Selbst won the first bracelet in an open event in six years as Dana Castaneda won Event No. 54, another of the $1,000 NLHE events.

Several women have made final tables this summer, and while I don’t have current numbers I know that WSOP Communications Director Seth Palansky tweeted a week-and-a-half ago that women made up 4.1% of the entrants through the first 39 events. That would represent an increase in women participating from recent years. For instance, I see in a post I wrote during the summer of 2011 the percentage was about 3.2% through the first 29 events.

I imagine Castaneda’s win won’t hurt that upward trend. Incidentally, there were two women among the 132 who played the $50K Poker Players’ Championship, Jennifer Harman and Vanessa Selbst. Selbst busted Day 1, while Harman got knocked out yesterday along with Tex Dolly.

Like I say, though, while I was at the Rio briefly, it wasn’t to follow any poker. Rather I was there to visit with Reading Poker Tells author Zach Elwood (@apokerplayer on Twitter) over a mid-afternoon lunch. I reviewed his book a while back on Betfair Poker and have mentioned it here from time to time. Like many who have read it, I found it especially insightful and well presented, and am liking hearing other good reviews of it since I wrote mine.

Zach has been in town for a few weeks playing some events and in the cash games while promoting his book. He’s done really well, in my opinion, when it comes to making those who would be most interested in his book aware of it.

Among our topics of conversation was the relative importance of tells in poker, something which I think Elwood addresses well in his book when he points out that “tell-reading is only a small part of playing great live poker.”

I mentioned how when I played that Golden Nugget event a couple of weeks back I couldn’t honestly remember any instances where my decisions were affected by having noticed an opponent’s tell, and that more often I was thinking of others’ betting patterns. He made a great point that when it comes to tells there is a big difference between tourneys and cash games, namely, that in tourneys many players are less likely to reveal them.

He also shared a neat story with me about interacting some with Bill Perkins over recent months, including recently during Perkins’s deep run in the “One Drop High Rollers” event where he finished third.

Zach had analyzed some earlier video of Perkins from High Stakes Poker and the two had gotten in touch afterwards. Edwards has probably improved as a player in several ways over the last couple of years, and while I didn’t get a chance to see any of the tournament last week, I don’t think it is too farfetched to say he might have benefited from Zach’s analysis and advice, perhaps in a hand or three.

After we parted, I joked on Twitter that while I enjoyed our meeting, I didn’t want to say more and give away any “post-meal tells” (an allusion to Zach’s “post-bet tells” category). “I soul read you for IBS” he replied. (I am glad to report his read of my gastrointestinal system was incorrect.)

Will be back over there later this afternoon for Day 1 of the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw (Event No. 59). Having memories of one of my favorite events I ever covered at the WSOP way back in 2008 when F-Train and I were on this same event. John Phan won it and David Sklansky took sixth, and a couple of months afterward I wrote a post here about the contrasting styles of those two.

As always, head over to PokerNews to follow along.

The Congressman Who Wrote a Poker Book

Poker players are well accustomed to legislators’ unending debates over our favorite game. Indeed, laws to forbid, restrict, and/or permit the playing of poker have been part of its history ever since the game’s introduction back in the early 19th century.

It is perhaps surprising to learn, then, that the person often credited with writing one of the earliest rulebooks of poker was in fact a U.S. Congressman.

It was almost by accident, really, that Robert C. Schenck, a former member of the House of Representatives, came to author a short book explaining how to play five-card draw.

After representing his native Ohio in Congress from 1843-1851, Schenck served as an ambassador in South America, supported Lincoln in the 1860 election, fought with the Union as a general in the Civil War, and served once again in Congress as one of Ohio’s representatives from 1863-1870.

Upon losing a close race for reelection in 1870, Schenck was then appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as Minister to the United Kingdom and the following summer he sailed to England where he would remain for the next five years.

It was while in London that Schenck would pen his brief primer, Draw. Rules for Playing Poker. Some have suggested he wrote the book in order to introduce the American game to Queen Victoria, although in truth it was following a weekend of card-playing with friends in Somerset that Schenck had been asked to write down the rules by his host. Complying with the request, Schenck was later surprised to see his rules having been reprinted and circulated by his friends as a book.

Schenck’s little “how-to” book came some time after editions of the American version of Hoyle’s Games began including references to poker, with poker’s first mention coming in the 1845 edition of the “American Hoyle.” Schenck’s slim volume nonetheless stands as what many regard the earliest example of a book entirely devoted to poker.

It is tempting to think that an ex-Congressman and U.S. ambassador having authored such a book must indicate that poker -- at the time still a game played in saloons, gaming dens, and on steamboats and rife with cheaters, cardsharps, and various ne’er-do-wells -- had become relatively accepted in American popular culture.

That wasn’t quite the case.

As Schenck himself explains in “The Author’s Apology” -- added when the book was later reprinted in the U.S. in 1880 -- even though the printing of his book had been “intended as a compliment” by his English friends, its appearance had “unwittingly brought down on me the wrath and reprehension of so many good people in America.”

As it happened, by the time Schenck wrote that “Apology,” his reputation had already suffered somewhat thanks in particular to his involvement in a speculative venture gone wrong -- the Emma Mine Company of Utah.

It hadn’t been long after Schenck got to London in 1871 that he was recruited by Emma Mine to try to sell shares of the company in England. Unsurprisingly, the Minister drew criticism for having done so, although when Schenck asked Grant for guidance the president told him he could continue as long as he conducted himself honestly.

In early 1876, the Emma Mine Company collapsed, which meant ruin for those English investors to whom Schenck had sold shares. The House’s Foreign Relations Committee met to discuss the situation, and it was decided Schenck would have to relinquish his post as Minister. Soon he was back in Washington, D.C. practicing law.

All of which means when Draw. Rules for Playing Poker was republished by a private Brooklyn printer a few years after his return, Schenck had already drawn “the wrath and reprehension” of some outside of his endorsement of draw poker. Still, his statement shows how when it came to the culture at large, many Americans still weren’t too sure about the game.

Despite being a Congressman, Civil War general, and an ambassador, when Schenck died in the spring of 1890 it was that tiny book about poker that appeared destined to be his most lasting legacy. A note by the editors of Life just a few weeks after his passing shows how the name Schenck would forever be associated with America’s card game.

“Many a man makes his fame out of the most unexpected materials,” they wrote. “Who ever thought of General Schenck without thinking at once of poker? And yet General Schenck’s poker was only an incident in a pretty active life.”

Schenck’s book lays out the rules for five-card draw while including some strategy advice as well. The rules are essentially what we know of the game, describing the deal, an opening round of betting, the draw, a second round of betting, and (if necessary) the showdown. Meanwhile, the strategy tips also conform pretty well to what we know of the game today.

Schenck actually begins the book by stating “The deal is of no special value and anybody can begin.” However, here he seems to be referring more to the logistics of getting started rather than the significance of position. Indeed, later on his advice demonstrates an understanding that position matters.

The Congressman explains the role bluffing can play in the game, too. “It is a great object to mystify your adversaries,” writes Schenck. “To this end it is permitted to chaff or talk nonsense, with a view of misleading your adversaries as to the value of your hand, but this must be without unreasonably delaying the game.”

Schenck makes reference to tells as well, noting how “a skillful player will watch and observe what each player draws, the expression of his face, the circumstances and manner of betting, and judge, or try to judge, of the value of each hand opposed to him accordingly.”

Toward the end come some specific suggestions about how to play certain hands, and while these pointers hardly reach Mike Caro-levels of detail they do articulate commonly agreed-upon ideas about frequently-faced situations in five-card draw.

Schenck’s concluding summary of advice to the draw-poker player indicates the former Congressman possessed not only a solid understanding of the game but a certain level-headedness that probably helped him at the tables as well: “The main elements of success in the game are: (1) good luck; (2) good cards; (3) plenty of cheek; and (4) good temper.”

In his historical survey of games’ impact upon American culture Sportsmen and Gamesmen, John Dizikes tells how “Schenck had come back to America in 1876 in what would have conventionally been thought of as a state of disgrace. But he seems not to have felt this or to have been the least bothered by his dismissal, keeping throughout the good temper that he had identified as one of the poker player's most necessary attributes.”

Schenck would be officially cleared of any wrongdoing with regard to his representation of the failed Emma Mine Company. Dizikes suggests he lived out his remaining days continuing to play poker in the nation's capital where a number of elected officials were known to enjoy the game as well.

As many still do. When not battling over legislating the game, that is.

HBP Home Games Season 2 Continues, Books for Top Three

Them football picks went well yesterday. Was 3-for-3, as I did end up going with the Skins in that toss-up versus Dallas.

A tougher slate of games coming up Sunday, though, with nine of the 12 games currently sporting spreads of three points or less. Then Monday night my poor, pitiful Panthers are playing the equally execrable Eagles in what has to be one of the worst MNF match-ups in recent memory. Not to mention another hard game to pick.

Speaking of looking ahead to Sunday, I wanted to report that Season 2 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games at PokerStars is in full swing, with two more tourneys scheduled for Sunday night. This week will be Event Nos. 13 and 14, a six-handed pot-limit Omaha tournament (at 20:00 ET) followed by a H.O.R.S.E. tourney (at 21:00).

As was the case with Season 1, there will be 20 tourneys altogether this season, with everything wrapping up by the end of December. The top three finishers in the league standings will win books which I will be shipping to them. I have three ready to go for prizes. What I thought I’d do is let the first-place finisher pick one, then the second-place finisher select from the other two, with the third-place finisher getting the remaining one.

One of the books is the great Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling (2006) written by David G. Schwartz who heads the Center for Gaming Research over at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. It’s a nice hardback copy donated to the cause by our friend and occasional HBP HG player Mike Fasso.

Another is Zach Elwood’s Reading Poker Tells which the author himself donated as a prize. I reviewed Elwood’s book for Betfair Poker a while back, and many others have chimed in on the web and on Twitter regarding how useful the book is for identifying and understanding tells at the table.

Finally, I have a copy of Byron Jacobs’s 2011 strategy book Think Like a Poker Pro to give as a prize. I have to admit that I haven’t read all of it, but what I’ve read seems good and the book did get some praise here and there on the forums, in particular for its limit hold’em advice. It comes with a three-hour video CD, too.

(By the way, if anyone out there would like to donate poker and/or gambling books for me to give as prizes in future seasons of the HBP HG, let me know.)

Anyhow, like I say those finishing in the top three will get to choose which titles they’d like according to their order of finish. Through 12 events, linglemungo is leading the points race with Kevmath second, **GMONEY*722 third, and Season 1 winner thejim2020 currently in fourth.

If you haven’t been playing tourneys in Season 2, there’s still time to collect enough points to move up the leaderboard. See the right-hand column for info about upcoming HBP HG tourneys as well as the club ID/invite code to join my PokerStars Home Game.

On Reviewing Poker Books

Over the last few years I’ve reviewed a number of poker books, both here on Hard-Boiled Poker and elsewhere. I’ve also had many opportunities over the years to write reviews of non-poker books and films.

It’s more challenging that it looks, I think, to write a decent review. One has to be able both to summarize well and to provide some sort of useful evaluation.

Neither is simple.

Summaries of novels or films can be particularly challenging, in my opinion, as one generally wants to give a complete overview of the premise, plot, and primary characters without going so far as to include any “spoilers.” After all, a review is really a kind of advertisement for the experience of reading the book or watching the film, albeit an advertisement that needn’t necessarily be positive or an unambiguous endorsement. The review should stand to the side and helpfully point, not get in front and block the view.

Of course, when it comes to reviews of poker books, especially those focused on strategy or theory, there isn’t such a need to worry much about “spoilers.” In fact, when I review a poker book, I take it as an obligation to be somewhat thorough with the summary. Anyone reading the review is going to want to know what exactly the book covers, and hopefully my review adds something more to what might be discovered by simply glancing at the table of contents.

When it comes to evaluating the book, there’s a real challenge there, too. I try to be balanced and point out what seems most useful or effective as well as whatever deficits a book might have. More often than not, I tend to be more positive than negative in reviews, but that isn’t always the case. There are bad books out there, but oftentimes if a book seems especially poor -- that is, if I don’t think I can avoid writing an overly critical review of it -- I’ll choose not to review it.

That’s not to say there isn’t value in negative reviews. Can be very helpful, actually, to read a persuasive, informative review that is negative and thereby save oneself the time, money, and mental energy that might have been wasted on a bad book. I’m just saying that when given a choice, I’d rather write about good books than not so good ones.

Finally, when it comes to reviewing books of poker strategy, I am always mindful of one crucial principle, something that perhaps makes reviewing poker books different from writing other kinds of reviews. Namely, that every reader/player is different, coming to a given book with a wholly unique set of experiences, knowledge, and understanding of the game.

That necessarily means that the usefulness or applicability of the instruction present in a given book is very likely going to be different depending on the reader. It would be silly, therefore, for me to read a poker strategy book and then tell you without qualification how it will make you a better poker player. Wouldn’t it? Or even worse, that by reading the book you will absolutely make more money at the tables. How can I possibly know that to be true?

If I think a given book contains something of value -- say, what appear to be genuinely innovative ideas about how to approach certain situations, or even a better way of explaining less original ideas -- I can certainly suggest as much. If you were to ask me which books I thought might prove most useful to you as a beginner, or as a player with some experience, or as a long-time successful pro, I can offer suggestions along those lines, too.

But really, I can’t even begin to predict how effectively a given reader/player is going to apply what he or she reads in a book of poker strategy. Not without undermining my own credibility as a critic, anyway.

No, I should be telling you in some detail what to expect, offering opinions about how well the material is presented and the quality and depth of the ideas, then letting you judge for yourself what the book might be worth to you.

I think with poker books there sometimes exists a mistaken idea of “value” that encourages some to want to identify an objective-seeming “bottom line” about what a book might be worth. That notion then leads to weirdly definitive claims about what the book will do for you.

To me, though, such bold claims usually say more about the value of the review than about the book.

Have Books Lost Their Hook?

Had exchanges with a couple of friends this week, both of whom happen to review poker books now and then. As I have done, on occasion, both here and elsewhere.

One was asking me if I could recommend any recent books of poker strategy. I had to admit I wasn’t aware of too many. Most of the poker books I’ve read and reviewed of late have been autobiographical narratives, books like Vicky Coren’s For Richer, For Poorer, Doyle Brunson’s The Godfather of Poker, or Dr. Pauly’s Lost Vegas.

I do know of a few strategy titles either in the works or currently being distributed as “e-books,” but when responding to the question, I couldn’t really put my finger on any recently published, “must-read” (print) books of poker strategy. No obvious ones, anyway. (I did receive a print copy of Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn this week, but that’s not really a new title as the electronic version of that one was published last summer.)

In the other conversation, my other poker-book-reviewing friend was sharing with me something a friend of his -- a poker author, in fact -- had mentioned to him a week or so ago.

This fairly well-regarded author was saying that most of the poker strategy books that have been published over the last few years were essentially already out of date. I’m imagining he was probably referring especially to those many books put out during that brief explosion of titles that followed the Moneymaker “boom” in 2003.

Remember all of those books? Shelves and shelves of them at the bookstore. Seemed like for a while there we kept hearing about title after title of books we just had to read if we were at all serious about improving our games. There were those players, of course, who proudly noted they had never read a poker strategy text, but there were just as many others who said they did read them -- or who were writing books themselves.

His reason for saying that the books had gone out of date was the game is changing so rapidly -- both online and live -- any print book of poker strategy is likely to contain advice that no longer applies. The process of book publishing has sped up immensely over the last few years, but it still takes time to get a book out there on the shelves and/or available for purchase online. And such a delay is necessarily harmful when the advice contained in those books is about something as ephemeral as poker and how it is currently being played.

I’m not remembering every detail of what the author was saying here in my second-hand report. But the gist seemed to be that perhaps now it can finally be said that we’ve moved beyond the era of “book learning” in poker, a proclamation my earlier struggle to recommend any new strategy titles seemed to confirm, in a way.

It has been the case for some time now that serious students of the game often seek instruction via coaching, online videos, participation in forums, or other means, with books appearing well down the list of sources for such guidance, if at all.

As someone who has always been a reader -- not to mention an inveterate collector of books -- I’m surprised to report that I do not especially lament the end of the era of poker strategy books (if it is even accurate to suggest that is where we are at present).

Although I’ve read and appreciated dozens of poker strategy books, I have to admit I’ve always been a tad uncertain about whether or not books are really the best delivery method when it comes to poker instruction.

I know for certain that books are an especially good way to tell a story -- such as those authors of the memoirs I mention above do -- and can do so in ways that are not only different from, but arguably better than other modes of storytelling (movies, plays, etc.).

But poker strategy books generally aren’t trying to tell stories. They are trying to teach us how to play a game successfully. We don’t read poker strategy books for the experience of reading them. (Not usually, anyway.) We read poker strategy books to affect our experience when we are not reading but elsewhere, playing. The fact is, there will always be a bit of a disconnect between sitting at the table playing and sitting in your favorite chair reading.

Some authors of poker strategy books are particularly good at helping readers bridge that divide. And some readers are especially talented, too, at applying at the tables what they’ve learned about from reading a book. But I do think it is the case that we’re seeing fewer and fewer of both -- authors and readers -- bothering to try.

But does that really mean we have reached the end of the story of poker strategy books?

On Poker Books

On Friday I was writing about a recent poker strategy book I had read, Jeff Hwang’s Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha, Volume I. (Lot of great comments, by the way, regarding the hand example from Hwang’s book I brought up -- check ’em out.) As I mentioned then, I think both of Hwang’s Omaha books are particularly good examples of the genre, and thus recommend them to anyone interested in learning more about PLO.

That post -- in which I talk about and endorse a poker book I had recently read -- got me thinking a bit over the weekend about the current status of poker books. What is the place of the poker strategy book in today’s world?

You might recall I was also last week lamenting here a bit about how reading, generally speaking, is not really a favored activity among the great majority of us. The fact is, only a small percentage of us actually read books anymore, those works printed on sheets of paper and bound together between covers. Most of us do read, though mostly what we read appears on computer screens, on our iPhones (or similar devices), or in the scrawl passing along the bottom of the television screen.

There’s a big difference, though, between that kind of reading -- hurried, distracted, transitory -- and the lengthy mental commitment required of us by a book. I refer back to that “time is money” ideer that possesses most of us so completely (especially poker players). Indeed, when recommending Hwang’s new book to you I should probably have told you that it is kind of a monster -- more than 500 pages! Lots of hand examples in there, too, which considerably slow down the pace at which one can turn the pages.

So, never mind the price of the book. Can you afford to give up the several hours it’s gonna take to read it?

When it comes to learning about poker strategy, we may well have moved beyond the moment when the book was considered the primary avenue by which most players seek such instruction. In fact, that “moment” might have only lasted six months or so -- probably, say, somewhere around the first half of 2005 when the first two volumes of Harrington on Hold’em originally appeared.

You might recall that period, just after the “boom” but still before the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was signed into law by Bush in October 2006. Remember all of the new books appearing on the shelves then? And new editions of the old ones, too? Many, many new players, having signed up for their first online accounts during that stretch, soon afterwards made that visit to Borders or Barnes & Noble or wherever to find a book or two with which to get started. Were you one of them?

New players still make that trip to the bookstore, I think, but with less regularity. And very few do more than buy one or two or five books before they are done with them, with the more studious typically moving on to the forums, podcasts, and online video instruction, from which one can learn as much or more -- often more quickly.

Although I’m certainly a fan of books -- and up to now can say unequivocally that I’ve gotten much, much more out of poker books than from other learning methods -- I’m not going to make some argument here promoting books as better than all other ways one might improve one’s game. I know better than that. And, the fact is, few poker books are as consistently good as Hwang’s. Really, among the eighty-plus I have on my shelves, there are probably fewer than ten I can recommend without some sort of qualification.

One reason why I have so many poker books is that for a good while I’ve had the opportunity to write reviews, meaning publishers have been sending me review copies on a regular basis. It has been a good gig, though the run has ended now as poker book reviews have become less of a priority. Sign of the times.

I thought it’d be interesting to mark the occasion of the apparent end of my career as a poker book reviewer with a picture of the poker books I currently own. (Oh, and if anyone reading this is looking to hire a poker book reviewer, I might be yr guy. Let me know.)

I pulled ’em all down off the shelves and stacked ’em up for the photo (larger version below). I was thinking perhaps of eventually writing up short synopses of each and posting them somewhere around the site here, if folks would be interested. (Would you?) Not full-fledged reviews, but just indications of what each book contained and perhaps general recommendations of whether or not I thought the books were worth yr time.

Anyhow, here they are. Look fast -- before they topple over: