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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Insights,
By Roger Smith "roGER" (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: RealPoker:The Cooke Collection (Paperback)
The world of poker is sharply divided.On one side of the cardroom are the tournament players, "famous" within the closed world of poker, but occasionally exposed to the real world limelight when a famous tournament such as the annual World Series of Poker takes place. Its an amusing little secret that many of these players aren't that good, and owe a lot of their success to a lucky break or two that establishes their reputations. On the other side of the poker room are the work-a-day professional players. These are the guys (they are almost exclusively men) who play the game to make money, day in day out. They keep a low profile but are the true stars of the game when it comes to ability, competance and discipline. And among the most respected and feared of these players is Roy Cooke. Cooke played professional poker for well over a decade, and still plays semi-professionally today. The only reason we know of him is through his regular column in CardPlayer magazine, and this book collects all those columns in one chunky volume. Card Player is a free magazine, distributed in casinos and card rooms around the USA and the quality of its writers is variable, to say the least. Cooke's column is the great exception and has been for years. The columns are well written thoughtful pieces that cover almost every aspect of the game, provided your game is Hold 'Em. Cooke plays at the upper middle limits, $20-$40 or occasionally $30-$60. These limits are among the highest spread regularly in Las Vegas, and are some of the toughest games in the world. Typically Cooke takes you through his thought processes as he plays a hand, and uses it to illustrate a principle or particular tactic. Unlike most other knowledgable poker writers Cooke has a secret weapon, John Bond. Bond may not be a good player himself, but he can certainly write, which is what distinguishes this book from all the others - you have excellent advice and insights written in an entertaining and stylish way. Some of the jokes are even funny, unheard of in a poker book... There are a couple of minor niggles. Firstly, most of us play at much lower limits where many of Cooke's sophisticated tactics won't work (paradoxically, to make fancy plays at poker you need fancy opponents). Secondly, like one or two other poker theorists, Cooke can't help but use "insights" gleaned at the table and tell us they apply to real life as well. These occasional "preachy" pieces of bar-room philosophy can become irritating, although thankfully, there aren't too many of them. Perhaps the best effect of the book is accidental. Taking these individual articles as a whole, you gradually realise how difficult it is to play top level poker consistently, day after day, year after year. Cooke has seen hundreds of professional players come and then go, and doesn't ignore some of the uglier aspects of a game that "brings out the worst in people." Highly recommended if you are a serious poker player, or those of you who play casually but want to get an insight into how complex and tough this deceptively simple game can be.
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