Review of Evolution of a Poker Player

Title:

Evolution of a Poker Player

Author:

Steven James

Publisher:

SpecBooks.com

Date:

2003

ISBN:

0-9727558-3-7

Pages:

98

Price:

$14.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

May 23, 2004

There is a lot more to being a successful poker player than merely having the will to win. Mental discipline, the drive to continue improving one's game, understanding of one's opponents, and basic math skills are all key ingredients for success. Some folks, though, have problems getting the hang of the last item. Some even avoid the issue of poker math altogether, having a reaction to the topic that can best be defined as "phobic". Steven James' book, Evolution of a Poker Player, is a story designed to help these sorts of people painlessly fill this hole in their game.

Much like Jim Childers' Life is a Game of Poker, James' book should be read as a parable. The author is relating an autobiographical situation (which may or may not be true, it doesn't matter) designed to help the reader realize that basic poker math skills are incredibly valuable to a poker player and remarkably easy to learn. In the story, the author is a poker player who is having a tough time beating low-limit games. He becomes a reluctant student to a mentor who makes him go through the process of learning basic poker math (computing pot odds, enumerating starting hand and flop combinations, etc.). Through this process, our hero becomes a winning poker player, and all this math stuff is not nearly as hard as he had first thought.

To make it even easier on the reader, the main text of the book itself doesn't even contain any math, all of this is relegated to appendices. Further, what's in the appendices is related using as few numbers and formulae as possible. Consequently, the book can be read through once by the truly math-phobic without encountering even the most basic equation. In fact, the few references to mathematics in the text are burried inside the book's narrative, which is what can only be described as a card-room soap opera. People in the story get along, hate each other, fall in love, fall out of love, get married, move away, and die as a back story for the protagonist to learn how to determine pot odds.

It's tough for me to be really fair to this book because in no way do I have the difficulties with mathematics with which the hero suffers. In fact, overall math has come pretty easily to me. Would this book be useful for poker players who know that a lack of understanding of math is hurting their game? I really don't know, and I'm not sure how I could evaluate this honestly. It is possible that it is, although I can't be sure, but I have to honestly say that I doubt the book would be terribly useful to anyone else.

So, if the reader is a poker player who doesn't understand basic poker math, knows that understanding it is important, and just can't seem to find a way to learn how to calculate the simplest poker math problems, this book might be helpful. I honestly don't expect that it would be of much benefit to anyone else.

Capsule:

Evolution of a Poker Player is a soap opera story that surrounds the saga of a losing poker player becomming a winner by learning some very simple poker math. If this sounds helpful, by all means check it out. If it doesn't, I can't think of a strong reason to spend time with this book, even though it's very short.

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