Book review of <i>Zen and the Art of Poker</i> by Michael Hunter

I quickly scan the games section during my frequent bookstore visits just to see whats considered sellable. Its often very scary. Either nothing or mostly tripe. Rarely inbetween. But on my last outing I came across Zen and the Art of Poker by Larry W. Phillips (Plume, 1999, ISBN 0-452-28126-1). I'd usually just scan through the TOC of a new book and read a random paragraph or two and probably stuff the title away for a dejanews search but since I'd seen a short review of the book in a recent Ciaffone column (Card Player, Dec. 24, 1999) I decided to spend the $14.00 and give it a read.

The book is structured around 5 chapters (Fundamentals, Calmness and Rhythm, Nuts and Bolts, Warrior Zen, Emotions and Opponents) with a total of 27 subsections and two appendices containing a total of 4 subsections. The total page count is 175 pages.

I was very encouraged by the opening chapters which set out the reasonable goal of apply some of the Zen concepts and precepts to poker. The author is very careful to outline the places that Zen and Poker diverge or contradicts each other. Additionally the author encourages the reader to study the fundamentals of poker. It is interesting that the author mentions Card Player and Poker Digest by name but doesn't give a rundown of any technical poker literature that complements his book. The book would have been strengthened by a bibliography of relevant poker titles.

Its was even stranger that the cover claims "Plus: ... The latest computer poker software" but the subsection in Appendix II entitled "Notes on Zen and Poker Computer Software" managed to not mention a single software title. Instead its a five page list of the pros and cons of poker software, a mention of Shay Addams book, a suggestion for poker software uses, and a warning against poker software abuses.

The core content of the book is organized into 100 "Poker Rules". Personally I think of "rules" and Zen as being contradictory. My mind quickly stopped seeing the words "Poker Rules" and started seeing "Poker Zen Concepts". A second nit is the number 100. This book is better then most in that the 100 isn't padded out with junk just to make us base 10 headed humans happy. What does happen is that two subsections before the end of chapter five we encounter "Poker Rule 100" and then the next two subsections don't have the rules called out or numbered.

The book quickly falls into the rhythm of a rule followed by some discussion. Most of the rules fall into a pattern and flow one into the next. Most of the quotes in the book come from various Zen literature and make the basic concept easier to follow. There are parts of the book where it appears that there are more quotes then connective material but in general the style works for this book.

In general I agreed with many of the concepts put forward by this book. Most of them are what we would hope are baseline behavior but is sometimes the kind of behavior that takes a bit more effort then it should. The one very strong criticism I have of this book is its attempt to talk about "luck" as if its cyclical and predictable in some fashion. One section which talk about this is "Poker Rules #32" (pg. 45):

"First, watch for any clues that you might be gettin cold. And by this I mean early clues. (Your starting cards are consistently terrible, or you have good hands that keep coming in second, or you seem to "hit the wall" every time you make any kind of move in the game, or whenver you do get good hands they only win a quater of the pot, and so on.) Don't let losing over and over at the end of the hand be your first clue that you're cold."

Its my strong belief that any sort of hocus-pocus used to predict a cold or hot streak is a leak in your game. If you choose to get out of the game because you have a bad image because you've been losing, your tired, the table is tough, etc. that is fine. But leaving because your cold should only mean you are off home to get your jacket. It appears that Mr. Phillips understands my viewpoint because he says in "Poker Rule #51" (pg. 75):

"Mathematician tell us that each hand takes place independently of all others. This is good advice to ignore. If things are going badly, back off. You may be playing in a game clser to your bankroll than your opponents are (or the experts), and thus cannot afford to test out the theory. Don't go home from a cardroom with a horrendous loss just because you read somewhere that mathematically "every hand is independent of every other," so you just kept betting away, despite the fact that you were losing every hand, one after the other. For your purposes the hands weren't operating independently of each other."

There are so many good reason for leaving a game (one even mentioned in the text of this paragraph) that its hard to understand where the rest of this comes from. Many other parts of the book are very good about pointing out when to stop and when not to start a game that I'd almost like to believe the author didn't mean to include these sections.

Given the strength of much of the advice in this book I'd suggest it to anybody who feels they could use just a little more emotional control in some situation. Its almost certain that this book provides positive specific advice for your leak. It is always worthwhile to read critically and I believe the few sections of this book that delve into playing by feel or leaveing when you get cold should be read with a sucker of salt in hand.

Michael Hunter

All quotes were takes without premission. All options are those of the author of this posting. Your results will vary in all games of chance.

Review or buy Zen and the Art of Poker : Timeless Secrets to Transform Your Game by Larry W. Phillips

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