Poker For Dummies

Poker is America’s national card game, and its popularity continues to grow. Nationwide, you can find a game in progress everywhere. If you want to play, you can find poker games on replicas of 19th century riverboats or on Native American tribal lands. You can play poker at home with the family or online with opponents from around the world. Like bowling and billiards before it, poker has moved out from under the seedier side of its roots and is flowering in the sunshine.

Maybe you’ve never played poker before and you don’t even know what a full house is. Poker For Dummies covers the basics. Or perhaps you’ve played for years, but you just don’t know how to win. This handy guide will help you walk away from the poker table with winnings, not lint, in your pockets. If you’re a poker expert, you still can benefit – some of the suggestions may surprise you, and you can certainly learn from the anecdotes from professional players like T.J. Cloutier and Stu Unger.

Know what it takes to start winning hand after hand by exploring strategy; getting to know antes and betting structure; knowing your opponents, and understanding the odds. Poker For Dummies also covers the following topics and more:
Poker games such as Seven-Card Stud, Omaha, and Texas Hold’em
Setting up a game at home
Playing in a casino: Do’s and don’ts
Improving your play with Internet and video poker
Deciphering poker sayings and slang
Ten ways to read your opponent’s body language
Playing in poker tournaments
Money management and recordkeeping
Knowing when and how to bluff

Poker looks like such a simple game. Anyone, it seems, can play it well – but that’s far from the truth. Learning the rules can be quick work, but becoming a winning player takes considerably longer. Still, anyone willing to make the effort can become a good player. You can succeed in poker the way you succeed in life: by facing it squarely, getting up earlier than the next person, and working harder and smarter than the competition.

Foreword by Chris Moneymaker, 2003 World Series of Poker Champion.
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Doyle Brunson’s Super System: A Course in Power Poker

Along with David Sklansky’s Hold’em Poker, Doyle Brunson’s Super/System, originally titled How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker, heralds the beginning of what I would call the “modern age” of poker. More than anything else, I believe that the rise in poker’s popularity over the last 25 years is due to the amount of good information that has been made available about the game, and Super/System is preeminent among the information sources that brought about this surge in popularity. However, it may be asked, how does this classic stand up more than 20 years after its initial publication?

The book begins with some introductory remarks, including an abbreviated history of Brunson’s poker career, before the author launches into some general strategies for winning poker. This is all stuff that today’s well-read poker player will take for granted: keep emotional control, carefully watch the competition, play patiently, etc., but it’s pretty much all good advice. I can’t say I completely agree with Brunson’s feelings about ESP, but the information he provides isn’t damaging.

Then, for the bulk of the book, Brunson has someone he considers to be a true expert in a given poker game lay out their advice on how to be a consistent winner. He assigned draw poker to Mike Caro, 7 card stud to Chip Reese, the various forms of lowball to Joey Hawthorne, 7 card stud high-low split to David Sklansky, and Bobby Baldwin and Brunson himself tackle limit and no-limit Texas hold’em, respectively. This is as solid a lineup of poker players as has ever been assembled. The book concludes with a glossary and a compendium of poker numbers and charts compiled by Mike Caro, explaining the various possibilities of various occurrences in the games covered in the book.

Many of the games considered in Super/System have undergone considerable change since the book was written. When the book was published limit Hold’em structures were quite different than one would typically find today. It would be very difficult to find a draw high game spread in a card room today, and even lowball, once the core of the California poker scene, is rarely spread any more. This limits the applicability of some of the advice given in the book. The section that’s probably still most relevant is Brunson’s own no-limit advice, and I believe this book is still required reading to play this game at the highest level.

Don’t get me wrong, this book is filled with good advice. However, much of it is about games that aren’t played any more or are played differently these days. Along with structural changes, the players in these games have changed themselves, and winning strategies have had to adjust to keep up. I believe I can name a better single book on each one of the games covered in Super/System, but by no means does that mean it isn’t worth reading. I also don’t believe there were any books available that were better references on any of the games covered at the time Super/System was originally published. Moreover, even if the strategies presented in this book were completely outdated, which they’re not, the book would still be entertaining to read and have considerable historical value. I still believe that all serious poker players should have this book in their libraries. It’s just no longer the bible that it once was.
Capsule:

In much the same way that Beat the Dealer is associated with the game of blackjack, Super System is a poker classic that has more historical benefit these days than value as a poker text book. Many of the games it mentions aren’t played or play very differently in card rooms today. Nonetheless, there are still many real gems of advice in its pages, especially regarding No-Limit Holdem, and the book is well worth reading. These days the book is more revered than it probably ought to be, but it will continue to belong on the shelf of every serious poker library for some time to come.

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