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Education of a Poker Player
A lusty, funny, cool and knowing introduction to the great American sport of poker by one of the great masters of all time.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 30, 2011
The epitome of tight play
Reread the above, repeatedly, and then ponder. Go back, reread again, and always remember to stay in the 'deep freeze' just a bit longer. Nuff said.
Reread the above, repeatedly, and then ponder. Go back, reread again, and always remember to stay in the 'deep freeze' just a bit longer. Nuff said.
September 21, 2017
This book is widely heralded as the first treatise on poker. It is an interesting read, filled with interesting stories by a man who has, by all accounts, led an interesting life. But I suspect most are not here to read about Yardley's exploits in life.
Yardley died in 1958, just before the onslaught of Texas Hold'em on the poker world. Today, the games described by Yardley have all but been displaced by Texas Hold'em. Players of Texas Hold'em would, I suspect, not find much useful reading in this book.
That being said, Yardley does a fantastic job of explaining the thought process of a poker player when it comes to betting. Most of it is, surprisingly, still relevant in the modern game. Lastly, Yardley's observations on the general nature of poker itself is timeless. Intelligent players will no doubt gleam some useful information from Yardley regardless of the game they play.
Oh, what I would give for Yardley to be alive and playing at the WSOP Main Event.
Yardley died in 1958, just before the onslaught of Texas Hold'em on the poker world. Today, the games described by Yardley have all but been displaced by Texas Hold'em. Players of Texas Hold'em would, I suspect, not find much useful reading in this book.
That being said, Yardley does a fantastic job of explaining the thought process of a poker player when it comes to betting. Most of it is, surprisingly, still relevant in the modern game. Lastly, Yardley's observations on the general nature of poker itself is timeless. Intelligent players will no doubt gleam some useful information from Yardley regardless of the game they play.
Oh, what I would give for Yardley to be alive and playing at the WSOP Main Event.
March 15, 2018
I read several poker books in 2011 and this was perhaps the weakest of the group, though it is considered by many to be a classic.
June 5, 2024
How had I never heard of this book? It’s about code breaking during World War II and an early strategy book on how to win at poker. Somehow these strategy and stories work together but few authors could pull it off.
Biography Elements
If you can believe the biography elements, they are interesting. If you don’t believe them, you will appreciate the storytelling ability it took to write them. They begin as young Yardley learns poker from a saloonkeeper before World War I. They finish with a poker game that captures a German spy in 1930s China.
Strategy Elements
These tips are what you might consider rudimentary, but you could still win most home games by following his advice on draw and stud games. He explains how not to chase losing draws which is the leak in most people’s game. Follow it perfectly and you’ll be giving up expected value in limit games where the pot odds would have you call many places where our author would fold. Still it will teach you to drop lost causes early in the hand when the pot odds are terrible which is a good lesson to master before you play the math in later betting rounds.
Yardley doesn’t talk about odds much at all except to make the minimum starting high hand in Stud Hi-Lo better because your improvement only scoops half. He does seem to be able to read the other players, but the winning hands are more of a function of starting tight and reaching milestone of improvement along the betting rounds.
This was enjoyable in several ways, the last being an understanding of how much poker has been studied since and how good players knew things instinctively long before the math could tell them precisely where they stood in a hand.
Biography Elements
If you can believe the biography elements, they are interesting. If you don’t believe them, you will appreciate the storytelling ability it took to write them. They begin as young Yardley learns poker from a saloonkeeper before World War I. They finish with a poker game that captures a German spy in 1930s China.
Strategy Elements
These tips are what you might consider rudimentary, but you could still win most home games by following his advice on draw and stud games. He explains how not to chase losing draws which is the leak in most people’s game. Follow it perfectly and you’ll be giving up expected value in limit games where the pot odds would have you call many places where our author would fold. Still it will teach you to drop lost causes early in the hand when the pot odds are terrible which is a good lesson to master before you play the math in later betting rounds.
Yardley doesn’t talk about odds much at all except to make the minimum starting high hand in Stud Hi-Lo better because your improvement only scoops half. He does seem to be able to read the other players, but the winning hands are more of a function of starting tight and reaching milestone of improvement along the betting rounds.
This was enjoyable in several ways, the last being an understanding of how much poker has been studied since and how good players knew things instinctively long before the math could tell them precisely where they stood in a hand.
March 7, 2024
I’m reviewing my poker library after re-reading each of the books and formatting them for ease of reference.
Poker player experience level required: INTERMEDIATE
Original publication date: 1957
Reviewed: 2023
Game: Multiple Stud & Draw
Book information is relevant at time of review: For Strategy
Content:
It's always to come across a pleasant surprise to reinforce fundamentals of poker - and this is one of the early guides essentially covering positional range card selection and strategy. Throughout the book the author covers the reasons for choosing starting hands and reinforcing a tight aggressive approach to the games are the best way to make money. It amazes me that poker players think that preflop card selection is a new thing. It isn't.
The nice aspect of this guide is that much of the fundamentals contained within stud and draw carry over to the many of the games played today. The anecdotes are also pretty amusing as well.
Definitely worth a read, but the reader should have some basic knowledge to glean the finer points from the text. This is kind of the pre cursor to Super/System as it covers:
5/6/7 Card Draw/Stud with Variations
5 Card Draw/Stud with Variations
games rarely seen anymore like Baseball, Dr. Pepper etc.
Poker player experience level required: INTERMEDIATE
Original publication date: 1957
Reviewed: 2023
Game: Multiple Stud & Draw
Book information is relevant at time of review: For Strategy
Content:
It's always to come across a pleasant surprise to reinforce fundamentals of poker - and this is one of the early guides essentially covering positional range card selection and strategy. Throughout the book the author covers the reasons for choosing starting hands and reinforcing a tight aggressive approach to the games are the best way to make money. It amazes me that poker players think that preflop card selection is a new thing. It isn't.
The nice aspect of this guide is that much of the fundamentals contained within stud and draw carry over to the many of the games played today. The anecdotes are also pretty amusing as well.
Definitely worth a read, but the reader should have some basic knowledge to glean the finer points from the text. This is kind of the pre cursor to Super/System as it covers:
5/6/7 Card Draw/Stud with Variations
5 Card Draw/Stud with Variations
games rarely seen anymore like Baseball, Dr. Pepper etc.
May 6, 2026
"That night I found seated at the table Hairlip Slocum, the banker's son; Salty, the horse trader; Chic Chillum, the chicken picker; Bert Wills, the land speculator, and Doc Prittle. Chic, Salty and Doc were small fry. Hairlip, if he could get the money from his dad, could be tapped."
i'm a sucker for sentences like that.
i'm a sucker for sentences like that.
July 24, 2026
Look like a poker player’s Bible.
Even if one gets lost in all the subtleties of poker discussed in this book, the cast of colorful characters and the intrigue of espionage will keep you reading.
Even if one gets lost in all the subtleties of poker discussed in this book, the cast of colorful characters and the intrigue of espionage will keep you reading.
October 29, 2019
Covering now defunct forms of poker, but just as much a reflection on poker as life. Timeless.
September 2, 2020
A genuine classic on the ruinous game.
December 24, 2012
Favorite Quotes:
The next morning we were on our way to the tailor's, where I had ordered several suits of clothes. The tailor, while fitting me, began to jabber to Ling.
“What does he say?” I asked.
Ling spat judiciously, Western style. “He wants to know what side of your trousers you wear your waterspout.”
“Well, I'll be a son-of-a-bitch,” I said, imitating Monty after all these years. “Tell the bastard he flatters me.”
— p71 — Tags: funny
All officialdom becomes involved in red tape and suffocates under its own documents, but the Chinese, without the aid of dictaphones, duplicating machines, and other devices, are peculiarly lost in their own memoranda. They must be years and decades in arrears of events. One can visualize the governmental departments of the future steadily losing ground until eventually the morning memorandum on the desk of an executive will have to do with events which occurred in his grandfather's time and the Chinese ideal of identification of the living with their dead ancestors be wholly realized.
— p92 — Tags: funny
“Kid,” said Monty, “I'm going to read you excerpts from 'The Purloined letter'.” He took from the shelf a volume by Edgar Allan Poe. “If you give what I read some thought, you will profit in your poker playing.”
“This,” continued Monty, opening the book, “is one of the characters Poe invents, Monsieur C. Dupin. Dupin is discussing the intelligence of the Prefect of the French police. He says:”
'Many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years ago whose success at guessing in the game of even and odd attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and that lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, “Are they even or odd?” Our schoolboy replies, odd, and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd;—he guesses odd, and wins.'
'Now with a simpleton a degree above the first' (Monty continued reading) 'he would have reasoned thus: This fellow finds that in the first instance I guess odd, and in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even;—he guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning by the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed lucky—what, in its last analysis is it?'
“Poe is asked this question,” said Monty looking up from the page. “Poe replies:”
'It is merely an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent.'
“Do you grasp what I have read in its relation to poker?” Monty asked, sipping his drink.
“I think so,” I said. “If you overvalue or undervalue another's intellect you will guess wrong. If you want to know when to call and when to bluff, identify yourself with your opponent's cunning.”
“Exactly,” said Monty.
— pp14-15 — Tags: enlightening, interesting
The next morning we were on our way to the tailor's, where I had ordered several suits of clothes. The tailor, while fitting me, began to jabber to Ling.
“What does he say?” I asked.
Ling spat judiciously, Western style. “He wants to know what side of your trousers you wear your waterspout.”
“Well, I'll be a son-of-a-bitch,” I said, imitating Monty after all these years. “Tell the bastard he flatters me.”
— p71 — Tags: funny
All officialdom becomes involved in red tape and suffocates under its own documents, but the Chinese, without the aid of dictaphones, duplicating machines, and other devices, are peculiarly lost in their own memoranda. They must be years and decades in arrears of events. One can visualize the governmental departments of the future steadily losing ground until eventually the morning memorandum on the desk of an executive will have to do with events which occurred in his grandfather's time and the Chinese ideal of identification of the living with their dead ancestors be wholly realized.
— p92 — Tags: funny
“Kid,” said Monty, “I'm going to read you excerpts from 'The Purloined letter'.” He took from the shelf a volume by Edgar Allan Poe. “If you give what I read some thought, you will profit in your poker playing.”
“This,” continued Monty, opening the book, “is one of the characters Poe invents, Monsieur C. Dupin. Dupin is discussing the intelligence of the Prefect of the French police. He says:”
'Many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years ago whose success at guessing in the game of even and odd attracted universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and that lay in mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, “Are they even or odd?” Our schoolboy replies, odd, and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd;—he guesses odd, and wins.'
'Now with a simpleton a degree above the first' (Monty continued reading) 'he would have reasoned thus: This fellow finds that in the first instance I guess odd, and in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even;—he guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning by the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed lucky—what, in its last analysis is it?'
“Poe is asked this question,” said Monty looking up from the page. “Poe replies:”
'It is merely an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent.'
“Do you grasp what I have read in its relation to poker?” Monty asked, sipping his drink.
“I think so,” I said. “If you overvalue or undervalue another's intellect you will guess wrong. If you want to know when to call and when to bluff, identify yourself with your opponent's cunning.”
“Exactly,” said Monty.
— pp14-15 — Tags: enlightening, interesting
December 30, 2012
I've had this in my backlog of poker books and forgot about it. The author had a pretty interesting life (seriously, look him up on Wikipedia) and this book gets in to the two main parts of his life with regard to gaming.
The first part is as a youth in Indiana who learned to play various poker games at a gambling hall in his home town. He eventually becomes a type of house dealer and shill when the owner takes him under his wing and starts tutoring him.
There are some pretty interesting stories that are told here about the people of his hometown who would come to play and the out-of-towners who would try to fleece them, or get fleeced.
The second part of the book takes place much later in the author's life when he's living in China as a codebreaker before Japan drags the US into WWII. He describes the looser games at the ex-pat hotels in China and the other people he meets at the tables there under the setting of imminent war.
This was really his guide to playing poker so there are a lot of pages devoted to card play that won't interest the average reader. And the dated language could possibly offend some readers when he's talking about the Chinese people he interacts with. I like a lot of his guidance, even if it's tedious to read. I did find it a bit more interesting to read about the house rules back in Indiana. Card game lovers will be glad to know that a lot of the unlimited and IOU betting that's described here went out of style in the mid-40s to 50s and are only in the movies now.
The first part is as a youth in Indiana who learned to play various poker games at a gambling hall in his home town. He eventually becomes a type of house dealer and shill when the owner takes him under his wing and starts tutoring him.
There are some pretty interesting stories that are told here about the people of his hometown who would come to play and the out-of-towners who would try to fleece them, or get fleeced.
The second part of the book takes place much later in the author's life when he's living in China as a codebreaker before Japan drags the US into WWII. He describes the looser games at the ex-pat hotels in China and the other people he meets at the tables there under the setting of imminent war.
This was really his guide to playing poker so there are a lot of pages devoted to card play that won't interest the average reader. And the dated language could possibly offend some readers when he's talking about the Chinese people he interacts with. I like a lot of his guidance, even if it's tedious to read. I did find it a bit more interesting to read about the house rules back in Indiana. Card game lovers will be glad to know that a lot of the unlimited and IOU betting that's described here went out of style in the mid-40s to 50s and are only in the movies now.
April 10, 2008
I have no idea how or where I got this book but it's been in the bookcase for several years now. So far the technical language is too far beyond my rudimentary knowledge of the game for me to enjoy the book. I may or may not finish it before I pass it on to a poker-playing friend.
****
So after a little research I learned what the poker terms meant which helped rather a lot. The book is largely divided into chapters based on different games (draw, stud, hi-lo, etc) and gives tips on which hands to fold on, etc through the device of example hands which is very informative but makes about half of the reading feel like a statistics textbook. Each chapter also has Yardley's anecdotes about learning the game from Monty, the guy in his hometown who ran the poker den (Yardley paid for his college education on his poker winnings), and from the time that he spent in China working on breaking the Japanese codes. The most accessible part of the book is Yardley's stories about teaching Ling, his guide/minder/translator how to be a better player.
Yardley was born shortly before the turn of the 20th century so the most popular version of poker played these days - Texas Hold'em - isn't covered. (Wikipedia tells me that Hold'em dates back to the 20s but didn't become popular until about the 80s.) Yardley's casual racism is another reminder of how old the book is - my copy was published in 1957.
I'm glad that I read the book but I'm not keeping it.
****
So after a little research I learned what the poker terms meant which helped rather a lot. The book is largely divided into chapters based on different games (draw, stud, hi-lo, etc) and gives tips on which hands to fold on, etc through the device of example hands which is very informative but makes about half of the reading feel like a statistics textbook. Each chapter also has Yardley's anecdotes about learning the game from Monty, the guy in his hometown who ran the poker den (Yardley paid for his college education on his poker winnings), and from the time that he spent in China working on breaking the Japanese codes. The most accessible part of the book is Yardley's stories about teaching Ling, his guide/minder/translator how to be a better player.
Yardley was born shortly before the turn of the 20th century so the most popular version of poker played these days - Texas Hold'em - isn't covered. (Wikipedia tells me that Hold'em dates back to the 20s but didn't become popular until about the 80s.) Yardley's casual racism is another reminder of how old the book is - my copy was published in 1957.
I'm glad that I read the book but I'm not keeping it.
May 5, 2008
I first became interested in poker in high school. My father gave me this book to read illustrating how to play hands, when to hold em, when to fold em. When I played in high school, I often brought 50% of my net worth to the table, say about 30 dollars. I continued playing in law school and have played off and on for the past twenty years. I still bring about 30-40 dollars to a game.
Yardley got his education when he started playing in a town in Indiana when his parents died when he was age 17. The owner of a saloon took him under his wing and taught him how to play. Yardley has tales to tell.
Yardley got his education when he started playing in a town in Indiana when his parents died when he was age 17. The owner of a saloon took him under his wing and taught him how to play. Yardley has tales to tell.
April 14, 2012
Fun, serious, evokes a former time. Yardley mixes stories of learning to play poker as a kid with serious advice on how to play, and adds colorful reminicenses of play during his career as an international codebreaking U.S. spy in the 1920s and 30s.
April 7, 2013
Excellent mix of poker strategy and anecdote of learning the game in early twentieth century Indiana from the local master, and teaching and playing while working as a code breaker in China.
November 8, 2016
Read it in no time - good fun.
Bit of an odd format but compelling - unfortunately completely overtaken by history, especially Internet gambling. But nice that he had such good stories to tell.
A novelty, now, rather than a contribution.
Bit of an odd format but compelling - unfortunately completely overtaken by history, especially Internet gambling. But nice that he had such good stories to tell.
A novelty, now, rather than a contribution.
July 11, 2012
The first ever poker read........its serious old school buts its a classic.
September 17, 2014
I enjoyed it more for the told-over-poker stories than for the actual poker advice, which mainly relates to games there are seldom played anymore.
July 26, 2015
Poker strategies and stories from an American spy who grew up playing cards in Midwest saloons in the early 1900s and mainland China on the precipice of WWII.
January 8, 2009
Good advice but poor layout hurts the information.
June 6, 2012
Not current thinking on the topic, but a good read.
April 2, 2017
Enjoyable on his stories on life in China as a code breaker before Japan entered the war and fascinating on risk management. The poker detail went straight over my head, which is hardly a surprise. I enjoyed the introduction by A.Alvarez too.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews