Seven-Card Studs

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn poker. Come July, some 6,600 players are expected to enter the main event of the World Series of Poker, generating a $60 million-plus prize pool that dwarfs the purses of the Masters, Kentucky Derby, Super Bowl and baseball's World Series.

Meanwhile, the Army deploys desert-camouflage decks to identify its most-wanted targets. The recent capture of the six of diamonds in Syria reminds us that after the spade ace stonewalled weapons inspectors, our president implied he would call France's bluff in a United Nations vote on whether to respond with military force. ''It's time,'' he said, ''for people to show their cards.''

Poker, after all, has gone hand in hand with pivotal aspects of our history for almost two centuries now. The ways we've used English, done battle and business and explored our vast continent have echoed, and been echoed by, its demand for risk-loving acumen, though our Puritan strain remains nervous about it. Presidents play and billions are wagered online, yet in several states you can still be prosecuted if the stakes exceed pennies or matchsticks. You are breaking the law if you play Texas Hold'em, or any other form of poker, for money in Texas.

In 1979, after winning back-to-back World Series championships in 1976 and 1977, Doyle Brunson self-published ''Super/System.'' He and five fellow pros shared lucrative secrets of how to beat the most popular forms, with Brunson himself covering no-limit Hold'em. His lesson? Attack! After that, attack some more. Bludgeon opponents with big pocket pairs, with suited connectors, with nothing. Eyes opened, jaws dropped and hundreds of millions of dollars changed hands as it turned out that poker advice translated remarkably well from the page to the table. Why else would a $100 primer fly out of stores if not for its cutthroat utility?

Updating this classic, ''Doyle Brunson's Super System 2'' has the same forceful tone (and the same laid-back grammar and proofreading) as the original. The higher you want to play, the more valuable this book will become. Today's toughest poker games involve a dizzying variety of forms designed to neutralize the edge of, say, an Omaha specialist. The game these authors play requires you to adjust every 15 minutes to radically different hand values and betting rhythms, and to put about $100,000 in action. Bobby Baldwin, the 1978 World Series champion, who originally covered limit Hold'em, here covers Omaha high-low. Limit Hold'em is handled by Jennifer Harman, the world's top female player; stud high-low, by Brunson's son, Todd, who recently won more than $20 million in a head-to-head match; pot-limit Omaha, by Lyle Berman, a member of the Poker Hall of Fame; and triple draw, by Daniel Negreanu, the 2004 player of the year.

Brunson pere notes a couple of reasons that Internet poker is a poor substitute for live action (no tells, can't spend winnings immediately) but also lists 22 advantages of playing online. (No. 12: no tipping.) His chapter on no-limit Hold'em reprises the original, with six new pages of tournament tips. (The gist: be conservative early, let it rip later on.) More general wisdom is provided by Steve Zolotow, Johnny Chan and Mike Caro, while Crandell Addington covers the history of no-limit Hold'em and Steven Lipscomb the World Poker Tour. It was Berman and Lipscomb who brought hole-card cameras and grade-A production values to the Travel Channel in March 2003. When ESPN and other networks followed suit, participation in tournaments mushroomed, octupling prize pools and minting up to four new millionaires a month.

The game these tiny cameras bring to light was introduced to Las Vegas in the early 1960's. In 1971, Benny Binion chose it for the main event of his World Series, deeming it the stiffest test of poker skill. Combining two face-down hole cards with five community cards, Hold'em players share five-sevenths of their hand with opponents, so the difference between the best and the second-best hand -- all the difference in the world, you might say -- is subtler than in seven-card stud. Stud is also played with fixed bet sizes, while Hold'em, with four betting rounds instead of five, lends itself to a no-limit format, giving experts more leverage to ''steal'' pots without the best hand. Dominated by Texans at first, the World Series has lately crowned champions from all over America, as well as from China, Vietnam, Ireland, Spain and two from Iran.

Dan Harrington won in 1995, but this chess and backgammon wizard was just getting started. He played through enormous fields to the final table in both 2003 and 2004, and with ''Harrington on Hold'em,'' he has written the most advanced no-limit Hold'em handbook. Strategically flexible, he recommends trying on loose, tight and superaggressive styles for size, and explains why you'll win the biggest pots when playing in your least favorite mode. A typical section offers funny but telling examples of how novices think about hands, then annotates a long list of questions the pros ask. Where do you sit in relation to the aggressive and passive players? How does your chip stack compare with theirs? How close are you to the money? What are the pot odds? What are your cards? These are only a few of the things to consider before entering a pot, and after the community cards hit the table, things get exponentially trickier. Feeling overwhelmed? ''If this were a short list,'' he writes, ''the game would be much easier, more people would do it well, and fewer players would make any real money. . . . Be glad that it's a tough, rather than an easy thing to do.'' Got that, slackers?

THE grain of Harrington's counsel is finer than that of most pokeraticians'. Writing in the tradition of David Sklansky's definitive ''Theory of Poker,'' he deftly unpacks the math and logic of tournament decisions. Success at other games gives him unexpected tactical insights; it also helps that his co-author, Bill Robertie, another chess and backgammon title holder, has written several first-rate primers. Their teacherly approach devotes about half the pages to homework-style problems. At the end of each chapter, the reader is wedged into tight Hold'em corners and forced to think his way out before checking his moves against Harrington's recommendations.

If you want to excel in a variety of poker forms and get a taste of the game's recent history, ''Super System 2'' lives up to its nickname: the New Testament. Players concentrating on no-limit Hold'em tournaments should read both books, if only because the competition will. You'll never get your bat on a major-league fastball by perusing how-to books, but once these experts clue you in on how to play a cheap draw late on Day 3 of the Big One, you'll be capable of spiking a straight or a flush and taking down a huge pot from Action Dan Harrington or Texas Dolly Brunson himself, or from anyone.

By JAMES MCMANUS

News Added: 04 April, 2005

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