Gaming Book Reviews
by Nick Christenson

Get the Edge at Blackjack
by John May
Published by Bonus Books, 2001; ISBN 1-56625-151-6; 167 pages; $13.95.

In his new book, John May discusses techniques that can be used to get an edge against the house. The first chapter covers basic strategy and card counting. May also compares several popular counting systems. He moves on to discuss other ways to gain an advantage, including card sequencing, dealer hole card play, and exploiting dealer errors. Here May covers the new automatic shuffling machines and explains Kelly betting several chapters after it is first introduced, which might be confusing.

The author covers additional topics, including spooking, playing Blackjack on Internet casinos, and a new method May calls “The Stacker.” However, none are covered in significant detail. The book functions largely as a survey course to advantage techniques in Blackjack. Get the Edge at Blackjack refers to a large number of excellent books and articles that cover these topics in more depth, but in my opinion most of these sources should already be part of every serious Blackjack player’s library. This book would be useful to someone new to advantage Blackjack play who is looking for overview and advice on how to proceed; or to someone who is looking to update their knowledge. However, there are only a few topics here that aren’t covered in more detail elsewhere. Despite the higher price, serious Blackjack players would probably be better served by James Grossjean’s book Beyond Counting.

Serious Poker
by Dan Kimberg
Published by Dan Kimberg Books, 2000; ISBN 0-9703789-0-4; 318 pages; $12.95.

The beginning of Serious Poker is aimed at relative novices. Kimberg addresses the rules to common Poker games, and provides a general guide to getting around a public card room. Navigating a Poker room for the first time can be a daunting experience, and I’m glad to see any advice that might help beginners alleviate that. He then moves on to basic strategy advice. The information he presents is usually sound but really too limited to be useful as a general-purpose strategy guide. Poker card room novices may find this information useful, but a more thorough strategy guide, such as Harroch and Krieger’s Poker for Dummies or Lee Jones’ Winning Low Limit Hold’em, will likely serve them better.

Kimberg talks about “taking poker seriously”—discussing issues of luck, variance, game selection, self-reflection, and how to study the game. This is his best section. Some of these ideas are very important, and while most of this information has been discussed elsewhere in Poker literature, little has been aimed at beginning players.

The next section covers miscellaneous topics, tournaments, cheating, angle shooting, tells, and more. However, these topics are all covered rather superficially. For example, Kimberg laments that while at least one good book and many articles talk about detecting tells in others, there’s very little in print about how to limit tells in one’s own play. He provides five suggestions on this topic, but there’s little discussion on techniques for practicing the methods. I’m not so sure that the information in these pages is likely to really assist anyone.

Toward the end of the book, the author provides detailed mathematics, including an explan-ation of Poker simulations, introduction to combinatorics, and bankroll calculations. For those who don’t understand basic probability, statistics terminology, and methods used in advanced Poker books, this is a pretty good introduction.


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