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Poker
Tips
Poker
Strategy
The last two decades
have witnessed an explosion in the number of poker books available to
the aspiring player. This has significantly impacted the way poker is
played in today's casinos and card rooms. However, just because poker
has grown like wild over the last several years doesn't mean that the
first poker book was written in 1979. One of these earlier books was A.
D. Livingston's Poker Strategy and Winning Play, written in 1971. This
book was reprinted in 1991 as Poker Strategy. So, how does it compare to
more recent works?
Overall, most of
Livingston's strategic advice is sound, including the admonition to play
tight. Many of the concepts he writes about have been echoed by more
contemporary authors, including his belief that bluffs should pay for
themselves. That is, that Livingston believes that bluffing just for
advertizing is a mistake. On the other hand, it will come as no surprise
that some of his notions are very much dated. For example, the high-low
split games discussed in this book never require a qualifier for low.
Also, it's amusing to hear Livingston talk about an exciting new form of
poker called "Hold Me" played with two cards dealt down and five
community cards dealt face up on the table. His advice on strategy for
this game isn't any good by contemporary standards, but even without a
great deal of experience in the game, the author realized the importance
of kickers, which shows some general understanding of the game in
question.
The second section of
the book covers mathematics. His introduction to determining event
probabilities using combinations is reasonably well explained, but much
of Livingston's calculations aren't very important in the games that are
commonly played today. The general focus of the book is not on the games
that are typically found in the modern card room, but rather on home
games. Therefore, determining the probabilities of events in Cincinnati
or Deuces Wild Draw is on topic for the book, even if it won't seem
terribly relevant to most poker players.
The third section of
the book is a description of many kinds of poker played in home games,
including some brief strategic information about each game. Much of this
would be pretty obvious to the veteran poker player, for example, that
one should play awfully tight without the ace of spades in the hole if
the game is Chicago. At the same time, some of it is insightful.
Occasionally, the terminology used in the book may be a little confusing
to people used to the vocabulary of contemporary poker literature. When
speaking of games with community cards, Livingston refers to every round
of betting in which a new card is exposed as a "turn". As long as the
reader is aware of this, it probably won't be too distracting.
By today's standards,
nothing in Poker Strategy would be considered ground breaking. There are
some strategic errors in the text, but at the time it was originally
written it probably contained some of the better poker advice available
in print. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, no updates have been made
to the original printing. Poker Strategy might be useful to those
players who either want some pointers on how to improve their chances
when someone calls for Baseball in a home game, or if they want to learn
about some different and unusual games they might want to play next
Friday night. Poker book junkies might find this book an amusing read,
but I believe that $15 is a little steep for a book that hasn't been
updated in over 30 years.
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