Poker in Print

Author: Simon Dexter

A friend, who happens to be a publisher, asked me recently whether I would be interested in helping him put together a book about poker tips and poker strategy. Maybe I have this thing about seeing my name in print, so naturally I concurred, but with one proviso: that we were not assembling yet another instructional poker rules manual that resulted in its contributors being labelled ‘poker guru’. “No,” he confirmed, “it’s much more interesting that that.”

Like many poker players, I find that while reading up on poker strategy undoubtedly has a beneficial effect upon my game, trying to absorb every single nuance, move, card and suit combination pre-and post-flop can be a tad tedious.
Besides, aren’t there enough books about poker tips already out there? According to a search I completed on Amazon a few minutes ago, the company currently has 858 poker-related books for sale. Granted, some of them are later editions of the same publication, such as Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold ‘Em, published in paperback in June 2005 and there are various versions of David Sklansky’s Theory of Poker, but there are plenty of obscure titles too that repeat what Harrington and Sklansky have already said.

For poker students wanting to explore the game further, perhaps reading books that apply poker strategy to real-life situations can hit home more forcefully. I recently picked up Steve Lubet’s Lawyer’s Poker for example which, as you may expect, was written specifically for legal situations, although it contains the sort of business-minded explanations that are wholly applicable to poker rules. Want to play poker for fun? Fine. Want to play for money – think like a lawyer occasionally.

Lubet splits his tome into lessons, presumably the most thumbed of which in solicitor’s offices across the land will be his chapters on ‘Lying’, ‘Cheating’, ‘Scamming’ and ‘Moral Hazards’. That’s a joke, of course. But Lubet manages to illustrate just how close poker rules and the legal professions actually are.

“As every card player and lawyer should understand,” he says, “you can only maximise your winnings by taking the long view. In contests where no outcome is ever certain, the key to success invariably lies in avoiding unnecessary losses, choosing your battles and exploiting favourable opportunities. The first step… is to stay out of losing situations.”

Poker is a dynamic game: situations, personalities, stakes and settings change, making it difficult to describe exactly which poker strategies should be applied in every instance. Which is why Lubet’s advice is so good and why the first draft of my pal’s manuscript has been so entertaining.

Without giving too much away, one part of it focuses on the most outrageous bluffs ever to win big tournaments. Had the holders of some of the duff-looking hands gone along with what some manuals’ poker tips advise, they would have folded every time. Instead, because bluffing is an integral part of poker, they emerged victorious.
The 1970s witnessed two of the best examples.

Hal Fowler, who won 0,000 at the WSOP in 1979, faced a guy called Bobby Hoff in the main event. Hoff drew pocket aces and Fowler had an unsuited 7 & 6; at that point, Fowler had only an 18% chance of winning, but his intuition kept him going when the standard advice would have been to get out. He ended up with a gutshot draw – cards that made a straight – while Hoff failed to improve, yet moved all-in and Fowler cleaned him out.

The 1976 WSOP champion, Doyle Brunson, faced the wonderfully-named Jesse Alto with a 10, 2 of spades, while Jesse had the more powerful-looking ‘Ajax’ hand: A, J. At that point, Alto was the clear favourite, yet when the flop revealed another A, J & 10, Brunson went all-in. No poker instruction manual ever written would advise such a move, but Brunson’s boldness paid off. Another 10 came up on the river and Doyle was home and dry.

More recently, both Joe Hachem, world champion in 2005 and Chris Moneymaker, the 2003 WSOP winner, have pulled off the most incredible bluffs. Hachem in particular: at one point in his game against Steve Danneman, the odds against him winning were lengthy to say the least, yet he succeeded. Is this down to pure luck? Is it flair? Or perhaps it’s because fortune does occasionally favour the brave.

Undoubtedly, a basic appreciation of any game, pursuit or pastime can always be improved upon: be it football or golf, fell-walking or kite-flying. Poker is no different, although too much detail, apart from being tedious, can serve to confuse players. Applying poker tips to real-life situations as Steven Lubet does, or reading about extraordinary bluffs and blags is not only more entertaining (I hope), it’s at the very heart of what poker is all about.

The Roman philosopher Propertius once said that “Even if strength fail, boldness at least will deserve praise: in great endeavours even to have had the will is enough.” That sounds like the perfect preface to my pal’s poker book, although it wouldn’t work in Lubet’s text; but isn’t that sense of being able to play the game in a variety of ways one of poker’s most attractive features?

Tags: legalised deception, poker book, poker guru, Theory of Poker, WSOP

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Poker Strategy.