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 Doyle Brunson first published the classic Super System in 1978. Today
it's mostly famed for Brunson's monstrous, folksy, money-winning no-limit
hold'em treatise, but what Brunson created with Super System was far superior
to a single book on a single game. What he created was a manual of advice on
all major types of poker being played in that day and age from the foremost
minds in the game. That Sklansky, author of the Super System chapter on
high-low split poker, would nine years later publish his own textbook for
students of all poker games is no surprise given Brunson's admiration for his
thinking on the game.
The Theory of Poker is inarguably a classic text on the American game,
if for no other reason than its explanation of the Fundamental Theorem of
Poker, which begins like this: "Every time you play a hand differently from
the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards,
they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would've played
it if you could see all their cards, they lose." That basic explanation has
become gospel, the basis for most of the published advice on the game since it
was published. And why not? It's the kind of explanation that allowed a
vocabulary of describing poker to be developed, and that vocabulary gives any
student the power to make the best possible decisions in any situation.
Among some people The Theory of Poker has a reputation for being dense
and difficult material. The problem isn't so much the difficulty of the
material, as it is that Sklansky is a mathematician first and a writer second.
(Come on, do you remember any engrossing reads in high school Algebra?) Your
head may not spin from the beauty of his prose, but the information Sklansky
presents might just be worth overlooking even if you do require
Pulitzer-quality writing. The feeling of reading a textbook is hard to get
away from, but anyone who's serious about understanding the basic building
blocks of poker should have no problem with that. The book is arranged into 25
chapters, most of which are under 15 pages in length. These short chapters
take basic poker concepts and define or explain them. Then, examples of the
concept in play are shown and discussed. The only thing really missing is a
workbook with exercises to complete after you finish each chapter.
Most of the concepts are so fundamental to understanding poker that they've
become keywords for poker discussion boards all over the internet. Even if pot
odds, the free card, and the semi-bluff are all concepts that most players
serious about the game understand on some level whether or not they've read
The Theory of Poker, there's definitely something to learning these
concepts from the original source. Sklansky's analytical thinking teaches you
not what to do in specific situations, but what factors to consider before
deciding what to do. That's a different approach than most other books, which
tend to focus on a particular game and sometimes give very particular advice
for different situation without a basic factual explanation why.
While The Theory of Poker may not be the only book you want in your
poker library, it is definitely one you should have. It's the kind of book
that's good to pick up every couple of months or so just to brush up, and then
once a year or so for a thorough review. Like any classic, you can get
something from it every time you pick it up. Other poker books provide more
information on nuances of specific forms of poker, but The Theory of Poker
provides a way of thinking that can allow you to successfully play any game of
poker. A thorough knowledge of the thought processes espoused in this book is
the sort of tool that can help you to get more from the other poker books you
own. If that alone isn't worth the price on the front cover of the book,
there's probably nothing that is.
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