Running as Root

Bad Beats and Lucky Draws – 1 1/2 stars out of 5

The full book title is Beats and Lucky Draws : Poker Strategies, Winning Hands, and Stories from the Professional Poker Tour. I guess they wanted to cram a summary of the book in the title for good measure. That or they're competing for some sort of longest title award in the field of poker books. The book is mostly Hellmuth and a handful of guest writers summarizing and doing some very very light analysis on pivotal hands they were involved in or witnessed. About 90% of the hands written about are Texas hold'em.

If you enjoy reading or hearing about other peoples' bad beat stories then this is a great book for you. I'm not really one of those people though, so I found the book barely entertaining and completely non-educational in terms of poker theory. The "analysis" usually boils down to Phil writing, "I like my raise here" or "I don't like my call here." I realize this isn't supposed to be a book on poker theory, but maybe it should have been. It's a shame because his other book Play Poker Like the Pros is a lot better. I recommend it for a low math, easy theory introduction to basic poker strategy for most of the more popular types of games today (Hold'em, Stud, Stud 8/b, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, etc).

My other big dislike of this book is that it is used as an opportunity for Phil to congratulate other players in print. The whole thing comes off as feeling fake:

• "Congratulations, Noel Furlong, you are the 1999 World Champion of Poker!"
• "Continued good luck and good health to you, Gus!"
• "Two big WPT tourneys in one week and two nor'easter winners: congratulations to Paul Darden and Howard Lederer."

It seems like he's trying to develop this "gentleman of poker" reputation. As if he's grown up somewhere along the way. It makes for reading that is too syrupy for me. And besides, I don't care if he's an asshole or fussy baby at the table. The guy knows how to play hold'em like nobody's business. Also, people love to hate him. I think he needs to fully embrace this and become the pro wrestling villain of poker.

To sum up, skip this book unless you really like hand histories. I'd also try to get it on the cheap since it's not too popular (I got my copy new for $3 at a local book outlet).

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Entertainment, Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.