Review of Serious Poker
- Title:
- Serious Poker
- Author:
- Dan Kimberg
- Publisher:
- Dan Kimberg Books
- Date:
- 2000
- ISBN:
- 0-9703789-0-4
- Pages:
- 318
- Price:
- $12.95
June 17, 2001
At the time I write this, Dan Kimberg is probably my biggest competitor for
the title of "Most Influential Gambling Book Reviewer on the Internet".
Kimberg's web site, at
http://www.kimberg.com/poker/,
contains a large collection of poker book reviews written by many people,
including the author of Serious Poker. One can assume
from this that Kimberg has spent some time thinking about poker. But,
as I'm well aware, there is a difference between critiquing someone
else's work, and coming up with enough original thoughts of one's own
to fill a book. The
question is, are the thoughts that he transcribes in these pages worth
reading?
The beginning of Serious Poker is obviously aimed at
relative novices. Kimberg first addresses the rules to commonly spread poker
games, and provides a general guide to getting around a public card room.
In my opinion, navigating a poker room for the first time can be a
daunting experience, and I'm glad to see any advice that beginners
might read which may help alleviate that. He
then moves on to basic strategy advice. The information he presents
here is usually sound as far as it goes, but it's really too limited to be
useful as a general-purpose strategy guide. I could raise some
objections with some of his phrases, but they would be pretty trivial
objections at this level of detail. Of course, a complete
novice may find some of this information useful, but even then a more thorough
strategy guide, such as Harroch and Krieger's Poker for Dummies
or Lee Jones' Winning Low Limit Hold'em will serve
the reader better.
Kimberg then talks about "Taking Poker Seriously", where he discusses
issues like luck, variance, game selection, self reflection, and how
to study the game. I believe this to be his best section. Some of
these ideas are very important, and while most of this information
has been discussed elsewhere in the poker literature, very little of
that has been aimed at beginning players. There are places where
Kimberg's irrelevant footnotes get a bit distracting, a phenomenon
that's not totally unexpected in a self-published book, but the writing is
generally clear. The author is quite adept at getting his message
across.
The next section covers miscellaneous topics, including tournaments,
cheating and angle shooting, tells, and more. Again, my biggest criticism,
with this section and with the book in general, is that these topics
are all covered rather superficially. For example, Kimberg laments that
while at least one good book and many articles talk about detecting
tells in others, there's very little in print about how someone could
go about limiting tells in one's own play. Kimberg provides five
suggestions on this topic, but I can easily think of several more, plus
there's little discussion on techniques for actually practicing the
methods that do get mentioned. I'm just not sure that the information
that is contained in these pages is likely to really assist anyone.
Toward the end of the book,
the author provides some more detailed mathematics, including an explanation
of poker simulations, a brief introduction to combinatorics, and
bankroll calculations. For those who don't understand the basic
probability and statistics terminology and methods used in many
advanced poker books, this is a pretty good introduction. Also,
several good formulae are presented here, including risk of ruin,
fluctuation calculations, and suggestions on how to determine what
constitutes a sufficient bankroll for various games. The book
concludes with a brief section with some recommended reading, a list
of the author's on-line resources, and a print copy of the author's
on-line poker glossary. The glossary is likely to be helpful to the
inexperienced poker player, even though I disagree with the author's
definitions of some of the terms.
This book contains some good suggestions, but because a lot of the
topics are covered rather narrowly, there are few sections that are
likely to appeal to even the intermediate poker player. Much of
the book reads like an expanded version of Malmuth and Loomis'
Fundamentals of Poker, so if that sounds appealing, then
this book is probably worth reading. For those intermediate players
who want to ease in to understanding poker math or want to receive
a pep talk on not relying on luck, parts of this book can be helpful.
In this case, I'd suggest starting at Chapter 8 and proceeding from
there. Advanced students of the game can safely pass up Serious
Poker.
Finally, I'd like to say that I do admire Dan Kimberg as a reviewer
who has "put his money where his mouth is" and written (and published!)
a book himself, which is no mean feat. Perhaps some day, I'll take
the plunge myself, and Mr. Kimberg will have the opportunity to
be equally critical of my thoughts.
Capsule:
Serious Poker contains mostly good suggestions about
approaching the game, but many topics are covered in a very superficial
manner, and almost every topic has been covered in some depth in
other works. Therefore, while beginners are likely to obtain worthwhile
information from this work, and there will probably be some parts
that will appeal to intermediate students, more advanced poker players
and those who are fairly broadly read on the topic of poker can almost
certainly afford to pass this one up. There are some good ideas here,
but overall I'd have to say I was only moderately satisfied with
Serious Poker.
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