I’m only 26 years old and I’ve wanted this book for decades. Most books about poker that I’ve tried to read bore me to tears, mainly because they’re about playing poker “seriously” (i.e. for “real money”) instead of playing it as a GAME. But this book is not only entertaining; it’s far more comprehensive. It deals with important issues such as “What food should I serve?” and “Wait, you brought him?” subjects the so-called poker “expert” Hoyle seems to have overlooked.
Chapter 1: Hosting Your Poker Game
The first chapter eases the complete Poker novice (such as myself) in nice and easy, not even explaining the rules yet. There is the occasional (temporarily) baffling reference to things that are explained later, but it’s pretty straightforward. Tips include having two decks of cards with different backs and if your friends really want pizza they should be locked in the kitchen to keep grease off the cards.
Chapter 2: The Basics
If you’re confused about why your friends call 2s “deuces”, then this is where the book really begins. They start with the list of possible poker hands which range from “High Card” (worst) to “Five of a Kind” (Better than a Royal Flush, but only possible with wild cards or special rules). Then there’s a page in which they explain all the rules of basic Poker and why it's rarely played. Then the fun begins: Five Card Draw, Seven Card Stud and Texas Hold’Em (the games most folks think of as "Poker") as well as basic variants such as Lowball and High-Low are explained. It wraps up with an in-depth look at House Rules before starting on the phantasmagorical smorgasboard that is…
Chapter 3: 200 Poker Games, Most of Them Good
If the last chapter was like D&D For Dummies, this chapter is like The Portable Hole Full of Beer but the size of the Monster Manual. (For GURPS players, the previous chapter was like GURPS Lite and this chapter is like Illuminati University the size of the Character Compendium.) (For Savage Worlds players, the previous chapter was like the Test Drive rules and this chapter is like Savage Heroes and Shark Bytes put together.) (If you play any other RPGs, you should come up with your own analogies. It’s fun!)
My gosh, this chapter is even better than I thought it would be. The various games are arranged alphabetically, from Aces Wild to Zombie Nation. It has The Big Ten, the ten “best” Poker variants including Omaha and Follow The Queen. It has simple add-ons like Call The Kings and Fusion. It has EVIL ones like the appropriately named Diablo and Night Baseball. It has hilariously named ones like Baby Seals and Brian Snoddy’s Midget Porn. It even has several sidebars on Games That Aren’t Poker like Magic 8-Ball and Acey-Deucey.
This chapter is the real reason to buy this book, even if you’re an expert card sharp who has made millions in Vegas and likes to fuel the fires of his private riverboat casino with $100 bills. I still bet there are a few in here you haven’t heard of. I haven’t got to play most of them yet because there’s so many. But most of them sound pretty good (or, occasionally, downright awful when appropriate). I mean, c’mon, there’s even one called The Lord of The Rings Trilogy.
Chapter 4: Who Likes What?
Because everyone has different tastes in games, and the two main types of people are Loonies and Lumps (read the book, it’s explained in there), this is an important, if not vital, chapter.
Chapter 5: Strategy
This is the shortest chapter in the book because James, Phil & Mike understand that folks like me already know about the thousand other Poker books out there. Besides, most advanced Poker strategy doesn’t and can’t apply to many of the variants, especially when you start COMBINING them and many of the variants have their own sections on strategy anyway. That said, this chapter does contain basic tips that do apply to most or all of the games in the book. For one thing, if you’re a girl and the other players are all guys… Well you don’t need the helpful and instructional cartoon to figure that one out.
Chapter 6: How To Talk Like a Poker Player
This chapter is basically a very good glossary.
The only flaw I found with the book is that there’s no list of the Big Ten, so you have to manually hunt them down in Chapter 3. Presumably, if you actually start playing Poker regularly, the Big Ten will be familiar enough that you’ll know the rules to all of them anyway, but it did seem an odd omission.
Dealer’s Choice is the best book on Poker I’ve ever read. I give it a (Lowball) The Wheel for substance and Five of a Kind for style.
