Review of

Title:

How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker

Author:

Penn Jillette and Micky D. Lynn

Publisher:

St. Martin's Press

Date:

2006

ISBN:

0-312-34905-X

Pages:

249

Price:

$19.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@jetcafe.org

January 14, 2011

As I continue to try to make some headway against the stack of books I accumulated during the poker boom, I ran across this one, How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker by Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn. This has been a controversial book, not just because of it's subject matter, but also because if its tone. Nonetheless, it's skillfully written and interesting enough to hold my attention.

First, I want to straighten out the authorship issue. Ostensibly, the subject matter of the book was written by an anonymous career poker cheat Jillette labels "Dickie Richard". Allegedly, the manuscript he submitted was a mess, but was cleaned up by Jillette and Lynn, resulting in the book in question. Jillette is obviously the famous stage magician and noted social commentator. I don't know anything about Lynn. I honestly don't know if there is a "Dickie Richard" or if this is a persona invented by the book authors. For the sake of argument, I'm going to assume that the story Jillette tells in the Introduction is on the level.

In the book, "Richard" describes how to cheat in poker. Even though the book claims that cheating can be effective in casino games, the book's focus is on home poker. The writers spend a great deal of time defining the methods by which one can effectively cheat at these games. The narrator refer the reader to other sources for many specifics regarding card manipulation techniques, such as bottom dealing, dealing seconds, false shuffles and cuts, etc.. On other topics such as using reflective surfaces to track the deal and marking cards, How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker is pretty specific. In all cases, the book insists that a staggering amount of practice to achieve the necessary proficiency to pull off these moves. I didn't think I'd ever admire the work ethic espoused in a book on cheating, but this aspect of the book seems to me to be on the money.

What makes the book controversial is that this isn't just some exposition about cheating in poker, particularly in home games. It's a defense of the practice. Through the authors, Richard claims that not only is cheating in poker defensible, players who don't cheat are suckers who deserve to lose their money. Richard decries legitimate poker players and goes to great lengths to justify his behavior. The book does include a list of ten factors that will inform poker players about what they can do to try to stop cheating in their games, but the narrative voice in the book insists that the list itself isn't worth anything, and that it was included only at the insistence of the publisher. This made me laugh.

What I find most interesting is the way that Richard espouses his lifestyle. He insists on living the life of a gypsy, not accumulating possessions, making attachments, or forming relationships of any sort. Frankly, I find his expositions on the professional cheater's lifestyle to be the best argument against it. Even if I wanted to expend the energy necessary to learn the cheater's craft, Richard's life of running from town to town, hustling his way into big money home games, lying to everybody he meets, living out of motel rooms with hookers and cigarettes as his only companions is not the way I want to spend the limited time I have available to me on this planet.

There are inconsistencies in the advice Richard provides. He says that when it's time to leave town to do so at the drop of a hat, yet he advises having two cars, a nice one for one's own purposes, and a run down one that the reader should be willing to abandon. How exactly does one blow town on a moment's notice with no colleagues and two cars? At one point he recommends not accepting checks, living a cash-only lifestyle off the grid, but later he talks about setting up temporary bank accounts and cashing checks. Richard also espouses paying no taxes, but it's difficult to set up and tear down several bank accounts in one year and pay not taxes without attracting a great deal of attention. The whole thing just doesn't make sense to me.

The philosophy of cheating espoused by Richard is crap. It's not even good sophistry. Richard wants to equate the ethics of finding a hundred dollar bill on the street and not reporting it with armed robbery. He wants to make it seem like a romantic lifestyle to not make any friends or form any lasting relationships. It's these sort of things that make me really wonder about the truthfulness of the book. I suspect that Jillette is entirely capable of mixing a book on cheating techniques with an indirect parable about why using these skills for "evil" is no way to live. I don't know that he's done it, but if that's his goal, he's constructed his story with considerable skill.

The key thing I set out to do when I write a book review is to try to find the proper audience for each book I've read. In this case, this task is especially difficult. I suppose that those who are considering a life of home poker grift would be well served by reading this book, even though I'm not at all interested in helping those folks out (I guess, though, that shows where my priorities are in writing reviews.) As a result, there seems to be a small primary market for this book. However, despite the fact that the book is adamant about being only for those who want to learn how to cheat and that others reading this book, and playing poker without cheating, are wasting their time, I actually enjoyed reading this book a little. It's no classic, and I'm not suggesting that folks put it on their "must read" list, but I found it enjoyable even if it wasn't enlightening. I can't really justify it to a wide audience, but I found it to be surprisingly entertaining.

Capsule:

How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker is exactly what the book's title implies. This is a manual not only to the skills necessary to be a card cheat, but a justification of the lifestyle, although I don't expect many people will find it all that appealing. Despite the fact that the book is downright insulting to "straight" poker players or folks who read the book but don't want to put its techniques into practice, I found it surprisingly entertaining. I don't know how much I can recommend it, as I have problems identifying a target audience for it besides "wannabe card cheats", but I was mildly amused by it.

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