Review of How to Win the World Series of Poker (or Not)

Title:

How to Win the World Series of Poker (or Not)

Author:

Pat Walsh

Publisher:

Plume

Date:

2006

ISBN:

0-452-28736-7

Pages:

160

Price:

$13.00

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

January 31, 2007

An experienced writer goes to the World Series of Poker with the intention of winning it all. Since Jim McManus wrote his poker epic, "Positively Fifth Street", this has practically become its own literary genre. I now have a stack of books that follow this basic plot device. In each, someone who fancies himself an author and is interested in poker hones his skills, travels to the WSOP, and then ignominiously busts out of the main event. Some of these are worth reading, some aren't. How to Win the World Series of Poker (or Not) is another book that follows this basic plot line.

First, it's quite clear that the target audience of this book are the casual poker fans, not the hard core players. This is fair enough, as the former group is certainly a larger potential audience than the latter. This is also for the best, as Walsh starts off his book with extremely limited poker experience, having never set foot in a public card room in his life.

He slowly gathers experience playing online, in the back rooms of bars, in church basements, and even in the swank houses of Bay Area socialites. We are given a lot more color than poker details through these encounters, although Walsh does share some of the lessons he learns from his experiences. Some of these seem overly results-oriented to me, but he does make some reasonable points. Overall, though, the amount of significant poker advice in this book fills only a few pages, so don't expect this book to be a strategic guide. How to Win the World Series of Poker (or Not) was written primarily to entertain, not to inform.

Walsh finally makes his way to a public card room and experiences "real" cash games and tournaments for the first time. He wins for a while and then loses for a while, but we don't have enough information on his play to really evaluate whether he knows what he's doing or not. He seems to usually play reasonably solid, although occasionally he loses focus. I don't see much evidence that he thinks about the game all that deeply, although that could be due to the limited amount of data he provides us.

It seems to me that after online entries, "book advances" may have made up the second largest segment of WSOP main event buy-ins, and Walsh contributes his toward the end of his story. I don't want to give anything away, but since our hero doesn't buy into this tournament until Chapter 9 of a nine chapter book, I suspect that's a pretty clear giveaway about how well he does.

I'll give Walsh some credit. Even though the book is quite short, it is well written and the author is quite amusing in spots, even bordering on downright funny. Despite this, How to Win the World Series of Poker (or Not) doesn't break new ground and really doesn't provide any significant new insight about the game of poker. I'm guessing that casual poker fans might enjoy this book, but they will enjoy it a lot more if they haven't already read it under several different covers. Serious poker players won't get much out of it from a poker standpoint, but, again, it's not a strategy book. I enjoyed it a little, but I can't rate Walsh's book a "must read".

Capsule:

In How to Win the World Series of Poker (or Not), writer Pat Walsh hones his poker skills before entering the main event at the WSOP, where he makes no splash. This has almost become a sub-genre of poker books, so the story is familiar by now. The book is short and amusing, but there's not enough here for me to really recommend this book with the quantity and quality of similar books available on the market. Walsh's book is aimed more at casual poker fans than experienced poker players, and I think both would enjoy it, but it's not a "must read".

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.