If you are interested in poker you know the name of Roy Cooke. He writes a regular column for the Card Player magazine for many years. This book is a collection of his articles he wrote in the first five years. Of course the quality of the articles varies but usually everything Roy writes is well worth reading. Roy’s column in the Card Player magazine has always been one of my favorite. Nearly every time you find something valuable in it. The only thing that bothers me about this book are the countless repetitions. About thirty times you will read “Volume time net edge equals expectation” or a similar formulation and are given an explanation what that means. Obviously Roy Cooke is proud of this formula and no doubt it is an important concept, but if you read the same stuff time after time, it starts to get on your nerves. In a regular column that appears every fourteen days this is not a problem, but in a book where you read several chapters one after the other it gets annoying. I think an attentive editor in chief should have eliminated some of the repetitious material.

Because Roy Cooke is mainly a hold’em player most of his articles focus on that game. And he is an expert in this field. Most of his analysis and conclusions are convincing, even if it is counter-intuitive at first sight. Here is an example: “A very loose woman player – a Vegas local who has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years – raised the pot up front in our $20 - $40 hold’em game. The field mucked to me, two to the right of the button. I peeked at my cards and saw two 10s.” From playing before with the lady Roy knew she would only raise in this spot with a big pair (jacks or higher) and A-K. What’s also important is that the lady plays in a very predictable way: she will bet all the way when she has a big pair, she will not bet the turn if she has A-K and no ace or king shows up, but she will call with A-K no matter what. And the last important point: the lady will never bluff (by the way, I know the lady Roy talks about. I have played with her a lot. Though she still is a bad player, she no longer plays that way). Because the turn would define the lady’s hand, Roy called with the pocket tens. As the hand played out the lady had A-K and failed to improve her hand, so Roy won the pot with the pocket tens. Here is his conclusion: “While I was lucky that she did in fact hold the A-K and also that she did not make a pair, the pot laid me 170-60 that this event would happen. While this by itself does not make the play correct, if you add up the richness of the scenarios where I sucked out on her when I was beat before the flop, then the combination of all possible outcomes tilted the scales into a bet where I had the best of it.” There is no question that if you have a predictable opponent or a player over whom you have good control then your starting hand can be a little worse and you still have the best of it because you play better after the flop. But the question in the above scenario is: how inferior can your starting hand be so you still show a profit? When I read that article for the first time in the Card Player magazine my feeling was that Roy had the worst of it. There are 24 combination that gives the lady an overpair and only 16 combinations for A-K. It's obvious that Roy is either a big dog or a small favorite, a situation you usually want to avoid. Rereading the column in his book I decided to take a closer look at the problem. A hot and cold simulation shows that two tens win about one third of the time under the given circumstances. That means Roy is about a 3 to 1 underdog. If they play the hand three times, Roy will lose on average two times which cost him 60$ each time (40$ preflop and 20$ on the flop, he will fold on the turn). So his total loss is 2 x 60$ = 120$. The question now is, will Roy win more than 120$ the time he wins? Yes, indeed he will. When he wins, the size of the pot is 170$ (30$ from the small and big blind, 40$ + 20$ + 40$ + 40$ from the lady, not counting his own investment) for a total win of 50 bucks. OK, you might argue the analysis is not complete; Roy can flop or turn a set in which case he would collect more money from the lady. This is correct. But there are on the other hand some bad scenarios for Roy. The lady can suck out on him on the river (with A-K she has six outs) and if it’s set over set Roy always has the worst of it. But all in all this shows in my opinion that calling with the tens is clearly correct. At least for me this was a big surprise. It shows the playing experience and the deep understanding Roy Cooke has.

If you are a frequent reader of Roy’s columns you know that he writes often about “a friend from Florida” who he tries to teach poker but alas with no success. Many people wonder if this friend from Florida is real or a just a fictitious figure. Well, he is real. In this book Roy reveals his name for the first time: it’s John Bond. Having played with John I always found Roy’s characterization of John adequate but sometimes a little bit harsh in his judgment. John is no dummy, he would know how to play poker but he has two problems. First, if he is not involved in a hand he gets easily bored. He constantly chats with his neighbors, bystanders or people at the rail, watches the TV or is craning his neck to get a glimpse of the cocktail waitresses, in short he doesn’t pay any attention to the game. Second, he craves action. If there are some aggressive players in the game John is always ready to jump onto the bandwagon even with hands that don’t warrant it. I remember the following incident. We were playing in a 20 – 40 game at the Mirage. A huge pot developed before the flop. Because much ballyhoo was going on at the table Roy Cooke came over to see what was happening. He was informed that John had capped the pot. Now that got his attention and he was eager to see what John was holding. Because John and Roy are close friends John let him have a look at his hole cards. Roy would probably only cap with aces, maybe given the loose characteristic of the game with kings and A-K suited as well. After Roy had glimpsed at John’s hand you could see his complete amazement. He shook his head; he couldn’t believe what he had seen. Well, to cut a long story short John had A-4 of hearts. He voluntarily put in 100 bucks with this holding (by the way, no happy ending for him, he lost that pot). That’s why people love John. He is a nice guy and he creates action at the table.

Back to Roy’s book. I always found his columns interesting, instructive and sometimes entertaining. So his collection of articles is a welcomed addition to any poker library. But keep in mind that there is a second book by Roy Cooke (“Real Poker II”) that contains much duplicated material from the first book. If you are mainly interested in those articles that deal with the play of hands, you are better served with the second book.

(Tristan Steiger)