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Before I go any further then I need to say that I have derived most of my education from poker books and so I cannot really fault them. However there is one overriding problem with poker books and this is that they do leave an awful lot open to interpretation. In fact it is very difficult not to interpret something in your own words when you read a book. This often leads to people having a very warped and misguided view of what the author is actually trying to say. I believe that poker books hinder as many people as they help.

The process is a twofold one, firstly the player looks to educate themselves and there is fundamentally nothing wrong with this. Players rapidly move away from first base when they seek out education. However everyone else who is serious about the game also seeks out education and so what makes you think that your information is superior to someone else’s? Clearly then once you have moved beyond a certain level then your opponents are every bit as keen and dedicated as what you are.

However what you need to remember is that there is really only one measure of success and that is how much you win over what period of time. I think that you need to educate yourself in what can happen at a poker table but you also need to learn how to think as well. There is little point in allowing some book to do your thinking for you because the best that you will become is a player with more education than a beginner who then fails to make money once they move higher up.

Many people have asked me what the most important poker books are to read. Well this all comes down to your own skill level and where you are in the game and where you are trying to get to and what games you want to play. Firstly if you want consistent income then you should be reading up on cash games and there is no better place to start than the Harrington series on cash games.

This two book volume is a comprehensive primer on the game that will take your game from novice to an advanced level. These books are not sufficient on their own because they do not address many of the issues of modern online poker and that is their weakness. But for a novice then there are no greater books on the market in my opinion that will take your game away from that of someone who knows nothing about the game and elevate it over a period of a few months to someone who knows the game very well indeed.

But if tournament poker is your thing then Dan Harrington has also with Bill Robertie produced a three volume series for tournament poker as well. In fact this could get you far closer to being a strong tournament player than the cash game books do for cash games. I wouldn’t have any doubts about recommending these books to anyone who wanted to come into poker and learn either cash games or tournament strategy.

I was having a discussion the other day with a couple of people regarding the merits of poker books and it they could still be of strategic value in the modern online game? To be fair then the modern poker books or many of them are in fact very good and cater for the changes that have been made to the modern game and especially on the Internet. However it is the older books that perhaps need addressing because it is the older stuff that has been downgraded down to primers that were in fact the best around years.

What has happened online is that the standards have risen and the coaching sites have been responsible for that. However a lot of this has then filtered down into book form because the poker writers that are now writing books are coming from the same breed of player who also realises that the bar has been raised so to speak in terms of where they need to be with regards to the coaching material that they need to impart.

So in a way then the online coaches at the top level coaching sites have been responsible for the level of coaching material in books rising. I still like to get my education from books and probably is something that I will always want to do. So whether you are reading about limit hold’em, no limit hold’em tournament poker, SNG’s or PLO then the books of today are miles better than the books of ten years ago…….but then again they need to be.

There have been some absolutely stunning books brought out in the past 45 years that have changed the face of certain casino games. For example there was perhaps the first great casino game related book that hit the shelves in 1966 when Ed Thorp published his book “Beat the Dealer”. This book launched a wave of card counters that was so great that it forced the Vegas casinos to change the rules of the game. There have been other (in my opinion) great books depending on what you wanted to do.

There was the seminal “Roulette Wheel Study” by Ron Shelley which delved into all sorts of interesting areas including wheel bias, cheating and dealer signature. When I first read this book (it is actually a folder more than a book) then it totally changed my view of the game despite the fact that I had spent the better part of ten years in and around roulette when I worked as a Croupier. So it is clear that you can get some very powerful information from books as long as the books are good books.

However you always need to be aware that when it comes to locking horns with professionals then they tend to be aware of what has been printed and what strategies are out there. Although in my experience then you can often find some areas of the world that lag behind. In games like poker for example then reading the information from some very good poker books often elevates players above the level of novice and even intermediate players who play by their own gut methods. So the answer to the title of the post is……it is possible but the word “possible” has big consequences.

There is a certain evolutionary process with blackjack players to being true experts. Unfortunately there were many “deluded experts” who fell by the wayside……why was that? Well as someone who played the game for four years without ever being barred or detected then I feel that I can comment on this topic somewhat. Firstly under no circumstance will fancy blackjack software packages and books give you all that you need.

Sure, they will help you count faster, learn the mechanics of different counting systems, comprehend variance and effect of bet spreads and they will even help you to shuffle track. However when you are in the casino then no software or book in the world will prepare you for that and this is when experience is king. Getting away with placing larger bets on the table is a skill and you will also need what I call “natural talents” to get away with it.

Show me someone who is street smart and a good “blagger” and a great actor who can also think at high speed and they have the credentials to make a great card counter even if thy have never previously played the game in their life. I have known several card counters who knew the theory but were too wooden and deliberate when they played. Against knowledgeable casino staff then they wouldn’t have stood a chance to be honest and several of them were quickly barred.

The best card counters are not always the best in terms of technical knowledge but they have survival and “combat” skills that leave many of the “theoretical experts” for dead.

There are a myriad of books on casino gambling and betting and I am often asked if reading any of these books would help you to make money from casinos? Well seeing as I have written two such books then I owe it to you to answer that question honestly and fairly. Firstly most of the casino games have fixed payouts and so these games cannot be beaten by betting systems or any other type of conventional play. Roulette for example is one such game but yet it has vulnerabilities that mean that the game can be beaten in other ways…..in theory!

One such way is in discovering and exploiting biased wheels! This is not only a very painstaking discipline but it is also not clear how much profit you could make even if you find one. There are numerous cheating methods that infest roulette and the 35/1 pay offs make it a haven for cheats unlike other games like blackjack. Even blackjack has a stigma attached to it because of card counting. However as an ex card counter then I can confirm that this game is still difficult to beat even if you have the knowledge. A combination of poor games, electronic shufflers, getting barred and long losing runs often devastate you as a counter!

Reading books on casinos and how to beat them can be entertaining but I am not sure if you can really take anything of practical use out of these books in all honesty. I think that there is a difference between beating something in theory and doing it for real. So in my opinion then you can read these books for entertainment value and no more and even if you do become aware enough to beat the casinos, just how long do you think that the casino would allow that for before they prevented you from playing or took counter measures?

While it is true that the act of card counting is old hat now, then does this mean that playing blackjack is not worth the effort? Well card counting has been essentially with us since the 1950’s where it was very little known. This spread to the 1960’s where card counters were still a very small number. This all changed of course after Ed Thorp’s pivotal book Beat the Dealer came out. After that there were legions of card counters hitting the casinos and it was so bad for them that they temporarily changed the rules. In the states then card counting grew in popularity and this led to the casinos learning the techniques and pit bosses and dealers were trained in how to spot counters.

This carried on into the 1980’s where card counting became increasingly difficult to get away with. However in other areas of the world then the knowledge was well behind that of the states and in my first years in gaming then card counting was still a viable avenue of making money from 1990-1998 in the UK. Then automatic shuffling machines entered the fray and six deck games and the profit potential was almost eliminated in that form of playing blackjack. However casino staff know about card counting these days and this massively reduces its advantage even on games with shoes.

I would never advise anyone to go down the blackjack route as a career not when all of their time and efforts could be directed to learning to play poker and then playing it online. However you need to be creative in how you can extract money from blackjack games without counting cards and for that purpose I advise reading Blackjack Secrets by Stanford Wong.

I read a book on blackjack some years ago that discussed the merits of beating blackjack games with automatic shuffling machines. The book discussed the older models that were not quite random with their shuffles. However I believe that these flaws have been well and truly corrected now and so beating these games in that way is impossible in my opinion. However there have been some very good books down the years which have discussed tactics for beating blackjack by not counting cards.

Many experts would say that this is impossible but card counting is not the only way to extract money from blackjack. Remember that we are not just talking about fair play here but by any means possible. In fact to put a finer pint on that then what we are actually talking about here is cheating plain and simple. But this is exactly what people do when they beat shuffling machines. Strictly speaking of course we are not talking about beating shuffling machines at all but blackjack games with shuffling machines on them which is not the same thing.

So in a sense here what we are talking about is exploiting the dealer by way of errors. These could be accidental errors or manufactured errors but it is the manufactured errors where the skill really comes in. I do not recommend even attempting to find the information out to go down this path and I am certainly not going to tell you because it would not lead to a long career. Casinos know who their opportunist players are after a while and you are going to get a bad reputation. Also and this is key, is the fact that you will still be beating the game. Casinos log their punters in how much they win and lose and so you will still have many of the problems of a card counter.

I had someone contact me the other day by e-mail and ask me how to go about writing a book about casino games and how to beat them. I think that doing this in 2010 is very difficult. The first reason is that most of what there is to know has already been written.

This was the problem that I faced in 2006 when I wrote Princes of Darkness : The World of High-stakes Blackjack and again in 2008 when I wrote Killer Roulette. It is difficult especially with blackjack to really come out with material that has not been seen before. Although I was proud with both of my books that I did place material in both of those books that had never been seen in print before.

I basically told accounts of events that had happened in my life and thought that these would prove of far greater interest to readers than merely reading about even more theory. I do not like theory, especially mathematical theory and tables which basically turns me off with some exceptions.

It is different with poker, this game is evolving far faster than blackjack but with blackjack then the game has basically evolved. Sure there will be some new features on the games from time to time but this will be the casino industry trying to inject new life into the game.

For anyone who wants to write a book on casino games then I would advise them to write a factual entertaining book. It always helps to have some experiences to fall back on. If you don’t have any then why not join a casino or two. It will not be long before you have some stories of your own to tell.

After nearly 20 years of working in casinos and visiting them then you can imagine how much data I have at my disposal which is probably why I am writing on here

See you soon

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