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Rating: 
Summary: the best book on poker ever written
Review: I first bought this book in 1963.I played poker 3 nights a week for the next 20 years & like the author never had more than 3 consecutive losing games. It is a great read and I am at present reading it again for probably the 7th or 8th time. A must for any poker devotee
Rating:
Summary: The Underground Book for Good Poker Players!
Review: I have an old moth eaten, doggie-eared copy of this, in pocket book form. I think I got it for pennies in the discount bin way back when. What a steal! My good friend and I used to practice magic, had all kinds of card books by John Scarne and others. I bought several on card manipulation, and poker strategy. When you like to play around with card tricks, I guess poker just comes along naturally as a game. This book was put aside for a long while, and then one bored evening, I started to read it. Wow, what an entertaining book I thought. It featured colorful stories of a young punk, getting involved with a cagey veteran gambler. What he learned in each of these stories is a strong life's lesson on playing poker. Actually, if you can believe, and adhere to the next few statements you don't need this book. The book teaches you in an interesting story like format to, play the odds. It teaches you not to go after loser hands, to get out, even if you're leaving money on the table "if" the odds are against you. It teaches there is no such thing as luck. Some nights you can do no wrong no matter how badly you play, but if you play badly in the long run, you will lose! I still recommend you read the book, even if you buy into what I just said. Losers will take exception to this I know, but that's why they lose! Here are a few of my own experiences. I had attended a mid-west university on a shoestring budget. I was down to my last few hundred dollars, with gas and food to buy for the rest of the semester, nearly three months! I got involved in a poker game that some of the guys did on Friday. It was a popular game with six to seven regulars, and a few occasional players. I'm not one taken to gambling; I'd never bought a lottery a sweepstakes ticket before this, and in the years since, have only bought one in an office pool. Playing for money was serious business to me, and this book served as my bible. The first night I played I was going from memory, the books lessons served me well. I won that night and continued to play for the next few months every Friday. I re-read the book just to bone up on the finer points of playing again, but never showed it to the competition. In about 15 weeks or so of playing, (not big time games, this was nickel ante poker, we were poor college kids) I lost once, about 8 dollars. The other 14 games (we generally played for about six hours), I routinely won around $15-$30 each evening. The interesting thing about this was that most of the other players, some good, and others very poor, typically won and lost between $5 and $75. Sometimes even the bad players had a good night. Because of the way, this book had me playing, I rarely lost, and neither did I win every hand either. Poker is about odds and tactics not luck. If you are not going to win, you fold! It was interesting what came of this; my reputation in the game was of someone with great luck, who always "had" the cards. It even enabled me one evening to pull a legendary bluff. I had a friend named Art who had played with me in several games. He was a classic loser, because he was one of these guys, whose greatest fear, was giving away money to a good bluff. Consequently, I'd seen him call people in a stud game, when it was obvious he was beat, even from the "cards on the table"! I had made it a point in many games with him to, "always have the cards" when he was left in the game. One night in a game we played with about a dozen wild cards, I had started by making a bad play. I forgot about all the wild cards, because my regular hand looked so good, and I was still in the hand, well after I should have dropped out. The hand came down to me, and Art. I thought, "oh heck with it", I looked at him, smiled, and raised him the maximum limit. I knew he had me beat, and I knew he had this thing about having to call. He'd never beat me head to head, and I guess something told him it was time to give it up. He folded! His hand was a wild card laced "royal flush"! I had a full house, which was a weak hand, with that many wild cards in the game. Art said later, he was certain I had five aces to beat his royal flush, I'd done it to him too many times before. This kind of mentality is explained in the book. There's a reason the used copies, cost twice what the list price was. Try it out, you'll see what I mean!
Rating:
Summary: The Underground Book for Good Poker Players!
Review: I have an old moth eaten, doggie-eared copy of this, in pocket book form. I think I got it for pennies in the discount bin way back when. What a steal! My good friend and I used to practice magic, had all kinds of card books by John Scarne and others. I bought several on card manipulation, and poker strategy. When you like to play around with card tricks, I guess poker just comes along naturally as a game. This book was put aside for a long while, and then one bored evening, I started to read it. Wow, what an entertaining book I thought. It featured colorful stories of a young punk, getting involved with a cagey veteran gambler. What he learned in each of these stories is a strong life's lesson on playing poker. Actually, if you can believe, and adhere to the next few statements you don't need this book. The book teaches you in an interesting story like format to, play the odds. It teaches you not to go after loser hands, to get out, even if you're leaving money on the table "if" the odds are against you. It teaches there is no such thing as luck. Some nights you can do no wrong no matter how badly you play, but if you play badly in the long run, you will lose! I still recommend you read the book, even if you buy into what I just said. Losers will take exception to this I know, but that's why they lose! Here are a few of my own experiences. I had attended a mid-west university on a shoestring budget. I was down to my last few hundred dollars, with gas and food to buy for the rest of the semester, nearly three months! I got involved in a poker game that some of the guys did on Friday. It was a popular game with six to seven regulars, and a few occasional players. I'm not one taken to gambling; I'd never bought a lottery a sweepstakes ticket before this, and in the years since, have only bought one in an office pool. Playing for money was serious business to me, and this book served as my bible. The first night I played I was going from memory, the books lessons served me well. I won that night and continued to play for the next few months every Friday. I re-read the book just to bone up on the finer points of playing again, but never showed it to the competition. In about 15 weeks or so of playing, (not big time games, this was nickel ante poker, we were poor college kids) I lost once, about 8 dollars. The other 14 games (we generally played for about six hours), I routinely won around $15-$30 each evening. The interesting thing about this was that most of the other players, some good, and others very poor, typically won and lost between $5 and $75. Sometimes even the bad players had a good night. Because of the way, this book had me playing, I rarely lost, and neither did I win every hand either. Poker is about odds and tactics not luck. If you are not going to win, you fold! It was interesting what came of this; my reputation in the game was of someone with great luck, who always "had" the cards. It even enabled me one evening to pull a legendary bluff. I had a friend named Art who had played with me in several games. He was a classic loser, because he was one of these guys, whose greatest fear, was giving away money to a good bluff. Consequently, I'd seen him call people in a stud game, when it was obvious he was beat, even from the "cards on the table"! I had made it a point in many games with him to, "always have the cards" when he was left in the game. One night in a game we played with about a dozen wild cards, I had started by making a bad play. I forgot about all the wild cards, because my regular hand looked so good, and I was still in the hand, well after I should have dropped out. The hand came down to me, and Art. I thought, "oh heck with it", I looked at him, smiled, and raised him the maximum limit. I knew he had me beat, and I knew he had this thing about having to call. He'd never beat me head to head, and I guess something told him it was time to give it up. He folded! His hand was a wild card laced "royal flush"! I had a full house, which was a weak hand, with that many wild cards in the game. Art said later, he was certain I had five aces to beat his royal flush, I'd done it to him too many times before. This kind of mentality is explained in the book. There's a reason the used copies, cost twice what the list price was. Try it out, you'll see what I mean!
Rating: 
Summary: not all that
Review: My literary poker-playing hero, A. Alvarez, speaks very highly of this book. It did very little for me. It's quite dated, and of virtually no help in playing today's poker.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth it for the stories alone!
Review: This book is worth reading just to read Yardley's stories about playing poker in small-town Indiana before World War I. The popular image of a happy, law-abiding Midwest (as in for example "The Music Man") gives way to a sinister picture of drug addiction, abortionists, and high-stakes gambling in the back streets, where men could and did lose their farms or businesses in one afternoon. Converted to today's dollars and considering that this was just one small town, the amounts won and lost at Monty's are staggering. I'm no poker expert, but it seems to me that while Yardley's detailed advice is dated, his fundamental themes (know your opponents, don't bet bad cards, know the odds, don't be afraid to raise) are timeless.
Rating:
Summary: Worth it for the stories alone!
Review: This book is worth reading just to read Yardley's stories about playing poker in small-town Indiana before World War I. The popular image of a happy, law-abiding Midwest (as in for example "The Music Man") gives way to a sinister picture of drug addiction, abortionists, and high-stakes gambling in the back streets, where men could and did lose their farms or businesses in one afternoon. Converted to today's dollars and considering that this was just one small town, the amounts won and lost at Monty's are staggering. I'm no poker expert, but it seems to me that while Yardley's detailed advice is dated, his fundamental themes (know your opponents, don't bet bad cards, know the odds, don't be afraid to raise) are timeless.
Rating:
Summary: A good read, and maybe even educational
Review: While I have my doubts about the truth of some of the stories, their intrigue and artistry make amends for whatever license Yardley took with the facts. He was obviously quite a character and self-promoter, and debates continue to this day over exactly how valuable his contributions were to US cryptology and intelligence... if any. His other major work, The American Black Chamber, caused a major stir when it was first published in the 1930s (including at least one Congressional debate)--and is an equally enjoyable read.
The book is rather thin, and it's certainly not a wondrous tome of poker strategy. However, it was a welcome contribution in an age when there was a dearth of serious books on any gaming strategies, let alone gambling. It's a very readable introduction to some basic poker knowledge, much more so than many modern works on the subject.
His strategy advice mainly focuses on playing the odds, and he repeatedly emphasises that people (he calls them "simpletons" or "suckers") who blindly gamble without taking probabilities into account will soon be parted with their money. That's good advice even today; I don't know how well his recommendations would work against more sophisticated modern players, but it's a decent place to start and should stimulate some new ideas in novices. And his advice, basic as it is, would definitely give an edge to the typical "kitchen table" poker player.
If you have any interest in poker or "spy stuff" (the half-true kind), it's worth reading at least once. You might even learn something.
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