Customer Reviews

How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is a hilarious book. As Penn Jillette explains at the beginning, Penn (ostensibly) met Dickie Richard when Penn was hitchhiking as a teenager, and Dickie taught Penn everything Dickie knew about how to cheat at cards. Penn himself isn't a card cheat, doesn't condone card cheating, and feels bad about publishing this book. But Penn owed Dickie a favor, and Dickie wanted his memoirs published, so Penn agreed. The memoirs were horribly written so Penn and his co-author rewrote them. The bulk of the book, then, is a first-person narrative from Dickie about how he cheats at poker.

Dickie explains that you could cheat in a casino, but it's too hard. Instead Dickie shows up in a town, makes "friends", and then plays poker with them, takes their money, and skips town. Dickie cheats any way he can -- from bottom dealing to marking cards to simply walking out the door with the cash box. Dickie's descriptions of what he does are amusing yet appalling -- he is a sociopath and an egomaniac, and yet he manages to be so entertaining, you can't help liking him (a bit).

Is Dickie a real person? I highly doubt it. As Penn tells us at the beginning, Dickie is a "fictional" character -- that's a big clue that you shouldn't take the narrative veridically. Does this book teach you how to cheat at poker? Kind of. It doesn't actually teach you how to bottom deal, for example, but Dickie correctly says that you can learn that from any standard magic book. It doesn't teach you a system to follow for marking cards, but Dickie correctly says that you wouldn't want to follow a standard system, since that would make your cheating easier to detect.

As I see it, the point of this book isn't to teach you how to cheat -- though you might learn about how to detect cheaters (even though Dickie insists that's not a goal of the book). The book is a novel about a card cheater. Dickie epitomises an amoral, larger-than-life showman who lives life to its fullest. I get the sense that Dickie represents a somewhat darker side of Penn. Penn manipulates cards -- and people -- to entertain others and make money. That's what being a professional magician is all about. Dickie manipulates cards and people to make money -- the entertainment comes in being able to read about it.

If you want to learn how to palm cards, uncut a deck, deal from the bottom, the second or any other part of the deck this book is not for you. In fact, in the first chapter the book cuts through those lessons by recommending you to purchase "Expert at the card table" by Erdnase to learn all those moves as "he can teach you better than I ever could.."
The book is basically stories about a card cheat and his experiences over thirty years and if it teaches anything its how to scam people for extra money when you are already an accomplished card cheat and how to find games and not get the life kicked out of you on a daily basis. Ok so after reading the book you aren't ready to go out and take on the world as a card cheat nor do you learn much more about poker. What you do get is a pretty entertaining read about the life of a card cheat and the situations they end up in. If you are looking for a factual "how to" guide then look elsewhere. If you are a poker fan and looking for an entertaining novel this is the book for you. Do I feel cheated ? Yes :) Its not what I paid for. Would I wipe the book from my memory for a refund? Probably not.

As a fan of Penn & Teller's other books, I was going to buy this, but in reading parts of it in a bookstore, I discovered that it's not the fun, clever, amusing book about tricks you could use to cheat at cards or even ways to have fun with your friends at a poker night.

This book is a dark and seedy account about the life of a professional (and possibly fictional) poker cheater. There's nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't the book I thought it was going to be so I wanted to post a warning to make sure you knew what you were getting.

I found this book refreshing, a possibly honest book from a sociopath's viewpoint who isn't a business person or lawyer.

If you enjoyed "Catch Me If You Can" by Frank Abagnale, You'll probably enjoy this book.

as for the language: I've heard worse on South Park. If you find a little lewd humor offensive you should probably stay away from poker in general, maybe try gardening or collecting bottle caps.

The advice given is accurate, like: Don't be flashy, practice your moves in front of a mirror thousands of times before using them in a game, If you're going to burn a game park a couple of blocks away with your car ready to go, etc

This is an ugly book.
It purports to detail the adventures of an accomplished card mechanic, a man so practiced and skilled, that he can control the flow of cards through an evening of poker and, according to the way he tells it, win 100% of the time.
The lightest part of the story is of how Penn meets this character and the subsequent collection of a debt, a sort of debt of honor. Many years ago Penn told the card cheat 'I owe you one' and thus, years later, he collected. Having Penn and his co author Mickey D Lynn transpose the random notes of his life and then navigate the waters that are modern publishing on his behalf. That is if Penn is to be believed, he said the same story on NPR, but the whole thing stinks. It stinks a lot more if it is all true. The mysterious narrator, given the name Dickie Richards for the book, is a total freak. He must have been locked in the cupboard under the stairs for most of his formative years, being only let out for weekly beatings. His regard for his fellow man is best described by the heading of this review. The book details his journey through America ripping off small time, middle class poker afficianados. One very BIG time game is the exception here. He details techniques which come down to sophisticated lying. Using a moral code that resembles a pretzel he constantly berates the reader. 'You are a dirtbag for buying this book' 'You are a dirtbag for using or not using the lies and deceits contained herein.' You are basically a dirt bag for having the temerity to get up this morning and take a breath.' Whatever your status, you remain simply 'a bag of money with hair.'
If you enjoy reading about societies outsiders, as I do, then you will enjoy this book as long as the unending grey ribbon of a life spent cheating, weaseling and lying does not get you down. If, however you are simply caught up in the current poker revolution and think that this book will give your 'Hold Em' game a lift, forget it. You would be better off looking elsewhere.

Warning - if you like Penn & Teller, or poker, or both, and you think the cutesy title sounds like fun - do not pick up this book. It's a fictional(?) first person account of a sociopath.

"Dickie" cheats at poker, but many of his techniques aren't clever or interesting at all. Announce a bet of 500 but only splash the pot with 400? Swipe chips when making change with the pot? Grab someone's chips when they aren't looking? That isn't too much fun to read about.

He's beyond a cheat, though - he's really a complete sociopath who sees other human beings as things to exploit. He suggests swiping a wallet, or the cash box, or kidnapping a pet so he can "find" it and build a relationship with a mark. Ugh. Repulsive.

If it's fiction, I'd say Mr. Jillette should stick to magic. If it's non-fiction, I hope Dickie gets some help. He's as disturbed and dangerous as any terrorist, and no benefit comes of reading his twisted words.

I paid $1.00 for this book off the discount rack and I'm pretty sure I overpaid. What a complete waste of time. Don't get me wrong - I read the title, I understood what the book was about -but it left me unimpressed and in need of a shower. It's hard to know what is meant to be satire or outright fiction in the book. But, the guy who wrote it is a sleazebag (he admits as much all the way through). Perhaps most disappointing is it doesn't give you any useful information about how to cheat (or more importantly how people cheat so you can know what to look for so you DON'T get cheated). He makes vague references to palming cards, dealing seconds and marking cards - but nothing you can really use. About the only useful section of the book is the glossary of poker terms in the back. Boooooo.

The book was interesting, if not completely enjoyable to read. Dickie Richard is a sociopath, and there is no sign of redemption in these pages. His biggest regret is not cheating in a key game.

There are several very amusing anecdotes, but these are sort of lost by the end in all the bravado. I guess it's just hard to like this book because you can't like the narrator.

It begins as I'd expect from Penn Jillette: a tongue-in-cheek romp with a dash of course language, and it's funny for those not offended. But by page 20 I realized that, yea verily, this is a serious treatise on cheating techniques.

Imagine all the card tricks that a career magician like Penn Jillette must know, and him focusing that expertise on cheating in a poker game. He's done us a favor in this age of unprecendented poker popularity by wising us up. I *agree* that it's disturbing, but one can take heart in something he points out: "You can't buy the practice." In other words, these techniques take a long time to perfect.

This is useful for vigilance. One can acknowledge that, yes Virginia, there ARE such things as "card mechanics" however rare, or one can hide one's head in the sand. When Barry Greenstein (BG) mentioned "a false shuffle and cut" I wondered how anyone could get away with such a thing! Well folks, here's how it's done. BG recommends being aware of losing when you think you should be winning. Penn actually gets into the nuts and bolts of how the cheater does it.

This also got me thinking about other ways cheating could occur in a casino (such as a modified ShuffleMaster). Disturbing, but good to have tucked away somewhere in one's awareness. There is a section on cheat-proofing your own home game, and the thickest (and crudest) glossary of poker slang I've seen to date.

Only useful information in the book is when he tells you to buy "The Expert at the Card Table"

This guy wrote this book as nothing more then a means to brag. His stories aren't interesting enough to save the book.