Review of Eat Professional Poker Players Alive!

Title:

Eat Professional Poker Players Alive!

Author:

Frank Wiese

Publisher:

Just Fold Enterprises

Date:

2009

ISBN:

978-0-578-01127-1

Pages:

295

Price:

$24.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@jetcafe.org

June 21, 2010

The development of a poker player from neophyte to long term winner follows a treacherous path. In Eat Professional Poker Players Alive!, Frank Wiese attempts to guide players along this course. For no-limit Texas hold'em, Wiese provides three progressively more complex strategies, which he labels "Fish", "Barracuda", and "Shark". He also provides strategies for a variety of other poker games, including deuce to seven triple draw, Omaha, razz, and seven card stud. Wiese also provides information on some of his favorite poker rooms in the United States, poker magazines and web sites, online poker rooms, and popular poker tournament tours.

Needless to say, the book is quite broad in scope. Even though Eat Professional Poker Players Alive! weighs in at almost 300 pages, only the first 130 or so cover no-limit hold'em, and only about 220 cover any form of poker strategy. For no-limit hold'em, Wiese advocates a strategy he calls "medium ball". This strategy appears to involve making minimum raises pre-flop, although his examples don't always follow this advice. Even after reading this book I honestly don't know what the proper bet size should be for subsequent streets, except that he seems to advocate a check and call approach with hands of mediocre strength in order to keep pots relatively small.

The chapters on other games are necessarily sketchy. There's not much room for nuance when ten pages is devoted to a single game. Of these chapters I thought Wiese's deuce to seven triple draw strategy was the most reasonable. Given the space constraints, I think his introduction to the game isn't too bad. On the other hand his Omaha chapter, which appears to cover no-limit and pot limit Omaha high and Omaha high/low of indeterminate structure, isn't very good at all. I think his starting hand advice in Omaha high is way off base, and if he thinks flopping an unspecified two pair in any form of the game constitutes a good hand, I suspect he's in for a rude surprise. Wiese admits he's not a good seven card stud (high or high/low split) player, so he has others contribute to those chapters. I'm forced to wonder why strategies for games outside of his expertise would be included in the book.

As if the scope of the coverage weren't adequate evidence, the book lacks focus. As one example, chapter sixteen of Eat Professional Poker Players Alive! is devoted to recounting the final table of Jerry Yang's 2007 World Series of Poker main event victory. It's also worth noting that Yang contributed the Foreword to the book. I'm sure there is a great deal of poker wisdom to be gleaned from how the final table was played, but Wiese's chapter is a chronicle of hands played rather than an evaluation of the play itself. It's not much different than what I expect one could find at any of several poker news sites, and I don't have an explanation for why it was included in this book.

The last several chapters veer from strategy into advice on online card rooms as well as a very abbreviated guide to a couple of poker rooms and tournament tours. I have to say that this appears as filler material. Instead of writing one book that covers a little strategy and a haphazard travel guide, I would have preferred that Wiese do a complete job on just one task or the other. Further, if it were strategy he chose to tackle I think he would have been well advised to focus on just one game. If he can't fill a book with strategy on one game, I have to wonder why an author would feel compelled to write a book in the first place.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out one part of the book that I found especially disturbing. At the end of his chapter covering the World Series of Poker, he includes a bunch of information on the tax consequences faced by each of the players at the 2008 main event final table. This struck a chord with me, so I did a little research. The reason that it seemed so familiar is that it was lifted almost verbatim and without any attribution from Russ Fox's "Taxable Talk" Internet blog.

While I should point out that Russ is a friend and a co-author, my outrage at uncovering plagiarism isn't any greater because of my familiarity with the victim, although that factor certainly contributed to my ability to recognize this crime. Plagiarism in any form is simply inexcusable, and even if the rest of the book had been good enough for me to recommend, which it wasn't, this by itself would have been sufficient reason for me to encourage prospective readers to not purchase this book.

Overall, I believe Eat Professional Poker Players Alive! is a mess. Moreover, parts of it were lifted without permission from other sources. I have to encourage prospective readers to actively avoid this book.

Capsule:

At it's best, for the span of a chapter or two, I found Eat Professional Poker Players Alive! to provide some passable advice. However, the majority of the book is not well thought out or executed. The author gives scant coverage to a wide variety of topics doing a sufficient job on none of them. As if this weren't enough of a reason to pass on it, he then tries to pass off the work of another author as his own. I recommend avoiding this book.

Note: I received a free review copy of this book from the author, I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this book.