Online Poker by Doyle Brunson - Review
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Title: Online Poker
Author: Doyle Brunson
Publisher: Cardoza Publishing
Length: 192 pages
Date: August 2005
Rating: 
Intended audience: Beginning and novice players who haven't played online.
Available at: Amazon.com ($9.72 w/Free Shipping available)
TightPoker Promotion: $50 Free Amazon Gift Certificate
Reviewed by: Blatman25
Dated Reviewed: 4/17/2006
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Unless you've been living under a rock, you certainly know the name Doyle Brunson.
Few men have given so much to the game of poker. Brunson blew the lid off the poker world with his
book "Super System" which was the first book to cover poker comprehensively and share the secrets that
poker pros had been using for years. With such a landmark career, you would expect nothing but the best
from anything with Doyle's name on it. So, when you pick up a copy of "Online Poker" by Doyle Brunson,
you would assume that Doyle has finally gotten around to writing the definitive book on online poker.
Unfortunately, you would be totally wrong.
Don't get the wrong impression, however. "Online Poker" is not entirely bad. Veteran poker players
who are new to online poker, or new poker players who have learned the basics, will find some useful
information here, just not enough to justify the price.
Downfall: Blatant Advertising for Online Room
The main problem is that this book is totally misleading. The title would lead you to believe that
Doyle is going to share all his online strategies that have made him millions. This is not true.
There is very little strategy in the book at all. The blurb on the back of the book says,
"Everything you need to be successful playing online poker is included." I suppose that would
depend on your definition of "success". In reality, the book tells very little about how to
make money at poker, and a lot about how to get started playing online. This book is also a
walking advertisement for www.doylesroom.com, Doyle's own online poker room. The references to it
are numerous.
So what DOES the book contain? Well, it starts with an introduction by Doyle of more misleading
information. He says, "This book provides my most profitable advice of how you should approach the
game of poker on the internet." If this is Doyle's most profitable advice, then I'm surprised he
is a winning player. Besides, later in the book, on page 129, Doyle says, "This isn't a book
about poker strategy. It's a book intended to get you familiar with the idea of playing poker
online". Of course, if you want to learn poker strategy, he has a suggestion for you. Buy his
other two books, Super System and
Super System 2. Of course, you may not have realized that this book wasn't going to give you any
strategy until you get to page 129. Thanks, Doyle.
The next chapter is a brief history of online poker. Doyle tells a little about how internet poker
began and how quickly it has grown. And then, we have our first advertisement for Doylesroom.com.
Doyle tells us how great the site is, and that he hopes we'll play there too. I bet you do, Doyle.
The next chapter is "Where to Play, Learn, & Discuss Poker Online". This is one of the better chapters
in the book, as it will be a good reference for newer players of the best poker sites on the net.
But his views of the best sites are a bit biased. First, he gives us sites where we can play poker
online. Guess which one is first. That's right, Doylesroom.com. He writes a paragraph about his
site, and then lists a few others, with a short, one sentence description of the others. We move on
to places to learn poker, and are met with Doylesroom.net as the first entry. To be fair, he does
list some of the best sites out there, such as twoplustwo.com and cardplayer.com, but we never get
away from the constant advertisements for Doyle and Mike Caro's sites and products.
Now, we learn how to start playing poker online, so we will learn how to download, sign up, and play.
Guess which site we use as an example. I don't think I have to tell you. At least he does an adequate
job of helping players get started here, but I don't imagine many people have trouble getting started
at any poker site. Every site greets the visitor with a large "Download Now" button, and walks them
all the way through the process.
Some Silver Lining in the Book
The middle of the book contains a chapter on basic poker, and this will probably be the most useful
chapter for beginners. He does an adequate job of introducing players to poker, covering mostly
hold'em, mentioning a few other variations such as Omaha and 5-card Draw. This chapter should
probably be a much larger part of the book, but I'm sure it had to be edited down to make room
for all the Doylesroom.com references. It's worth mentioning that for beginner strategy,
players would do much better with a book like "Internet Poker for Dummies" or "Poker for Dummies"
which would give much more information with less advertising.
Next are a few interesting chapters, the first is "Four Reasons Online Poker Is Worse", followed by
"Twenty-Four Reasons Online Poker Is Better". This is the kind of information I was hoping for in this
book. That is, Doyle's opinion on online poker, and why it is better or worse than live poker.
They are good, and give some interesting insights, but are far too short. The next few chapters
deal with some general poker tips, and then some tips specific to online poker. As I said, these
last few chapters are what the book should really be about. There are certainly some useful tips
here, but they seem like throwaway chapters, put in as an afterthought, rather than the meat of the
book. In fact, out of 192 pages, I would estimate that only about 50 of those pages contain any
content worth reading.
Overall Thoughts on "Online Poker"
Overall, this book is a disappointment. The idea of a poker legend writing a book about the online
poker movement is a good one. The implementation is terrible. This book is so bogged down with
advertisements for Doyle's poker site and other useless material, that I would really only recommend
skimming it. In fact, my true recommendation is to skip it entirely. New players might find some
useful information, but they will do much better with a book like "Internet Poker for Dummies"
which will have a more complete strategy and a less biased opinion on which sites to visit for
learning or playing. It saddens me to see such good idea go to waste, but with the ever-growing
library of poker books, we will likely see more and more duds like this one.
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