CasinoGaming.com


	Sundays: Inside Gaming Tuesdays: Video Poker Wednesdays: Off the Shelf Fridays: Richard Eng, Player's Edge Saturdays: Pocket Aces

POCKET ACES

Columns

• Back to Maryann's index

• Back to columnists' index

Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

April 17, 2004

Sharing the Knowledge

"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true." - Bertrand Russell (who could have been talking a bout poker, right?)

Not surprisingly, the majority of the instructional poker sites available to Web users exist for a dual purpose -- to impart knowledge and to generate income.

Players who make a living in live-action ring games, tournaments and now online don't have qualms about sharing their wisdom with the entire world. They realize that not everybody will be able to assimilate the lessons they impart, thus those readers will lose money, and they understand that as much as they can give they can never paint the entire picture. That's the nature of poker. Every hand in every game is different. After years and years of practical experience, players still find new approaches, new ideas and new methods to eke out a buck.

In addition to writing books for profit, these practiced competitors now can bring home the bacon via Web sites -- not by selling the goods for 10 cents a word but by becoming an online poker room affiliate. As such, every time a cyber surfer deposits money in the affiliated poker page (first time only), that writer/theorist/player receives a fee, usually a percentage based on the amount of the deposit.

So it is that numerous individuals -- some noted, others unknown -- are now distributing free information that's actually worth money to the giver and the receiver.

Steve Badger (www.playwinningpoker.com/) is one of this writer's favorites. His introduction page says it all: "Always keep in mind this site's principal lesson: if you want to be a winning poker player, you need to think for yourself. Read what is here, but decide for yourself." With that out of the way, Steve offers three year's worth of his expertise, archived by year, with titles and subtitles that help you decide what you want to read first. Nice job!

Lou Kreiger (www.loukrieger.com/articles.htm) is a polished author. He has been one of my favorite writers -- from the first time I read his as-yet-unpublished articles years ago -- because he understands how to put complex ideas into solid sentence with good paragraph structure. Because of this, readers don't have to reread a sentence to understand it. In the far reaches of the future, as long as English is still a language, people will not be confused by incorrect grammatical structure that doesn't exist. His opening page quote of the Irish proverb, "There is no luck except where there is discipline," sums up his philosophy.

Tom McEvoy (www.pokerprofessor.com/) finally has an archive of his articles. Some of you might know McEvoy as being the first player ever to win the World Series of Poker as a result of a satellite win. (I believe that win occurred at the old Bingo Palace.) Tom's a player first, particularly a tournament player. In fact, he's the author of what most people consider the definitive book on the subject. Much of his work is done in concert with Dana Smith, his publisher and a successful ring-game player, which makes this site and these articles doubly good.

Bill Burton (http://casinogambling.about.com/) was one of the early contributors to the Mining Co., an ambitious Web project that built a solid reputation for producing informational subsites with a coordinated search engine and eventually mutated into about.com. An avid casino games aficionado, Burton began concentrating on poker, particularly hold'em. As he took his trip into this new area of gaming, he invited his readers along for the ride. While his Web site covers all aspects of gambling, there's plenty of poker advice that comes directly from his personal learning experience.

Roy Cooke (www.texasholdem.net/advice/columns.asp) is a professional in many areas, notably as a realtor and poker player. He has been writing about the game for a number of years, getting better and better all the time. Almost all the advice he imparts comes from personal experience, and his articles often read like short stories. What puts Roy's work over the top is the way he draws the readers into the story until they can almost picture themselves in his seat. This subtle lesson-imparting method gently forces readers to draw conclusions as they read and before they get to his final bits of advice.

Each of the sites cited here contain some kind of advertising, if not in the form of links, affiliates, books, software, videos or what have you, then in what the film and TV people call placement marketing -- information used as part of the text. Never mind that, though. If you like what the author has to say and it works for you, that's what counts.

These, by the way, are not the only experts giving advice on the Web. But they are a few of my personal favorites. Granted, on one or two of the sites you'll have to wade through a swamp of ads and links but that's a no-brainer and a small price to pay for the return. Enjoy.