Online Poker
Doyle Brunson

Seeing who the author was, and knowing that his other titles have been universally applauded and are rated amongst the best, I was attracted to this one straightaway. I've been chancing my pennies at the online hold'em tables for over ten years now and I looked forward to discovering some nuggets of wisdom from one of the poker greats that would stand me good. I play sit'n'gos and thought that there was bound to be some useful stuff between the covers which I could add to my inventory of incompetence and that the reading time would be time spent well?

As soon as I took this one out of the envelope however, and before I'd even parted the covers, my doubts were raised. I noticed on the back cover that this was another one from the Cardoza Publishing stable and at that stage I did wonder whether this would be another one of their offerings that was simply an exercise in turning trees into $$$s? Regrettably, despite its high profile author, it ticks that box.

The book runs to 192 pages. Of these, I'd say that around 30 have something of value to offer (such as advice around hand values, and how these might differ between live and online games) with the remainder being just wordage and padding; a combination of ads for other Cardoza Publishing titles (9 pages), copious plugs for the online poker site that the author was affiliated to, rules for different variants of poker, three pages dedicated to selecting an avatar and handle for use at the online tables (seriously?) and a huge amount of the bleeding obvious. If you've never played poker before and are looking to take up playing one of the main variants, and/or believe that computers come with a mouse because at heart they're pet-lovers, this title might represent good value for the £9.95 cover price. But if I'd parted company with that back in 2005 when it was published I've no doubt I would have considered myself to have been right, royally ripped-off. You can pick up a copy now for a just a couple of quid but quite frankly I don't think it's worth even that.

In summary then, for me this one was a big disappointment and will be taking up residence in my "awaiting disposal" box very shortly.

Doyle Brunson is one of the greats of the Poker world and in 2018, after a lifetime of making his living at it, he retired from the competition circuit at the age of 85. During his playing career he has picked up ten WSOP bracelets and has been WSOP main event champion twice (1976 and 1977). He is the author of two seminal works on the game of poker; Doyle Brunson's Super System - A Course in Power Poker, which was published in 1979, and its successor Doyle Brunson's Super System 2 which was published in 2005. He cut ties with the online poker site Doyle's Room, which is heavily promoted in Online Poker, in 2011 after some key personalities behind two other online poker sites (PokerStars and Absolute Poker) and their online payment processors were charged with offences under the US Federal Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Full details of Doyle Brunson's life and playing career can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doyle_Brunson.

May 2020.