By John Vorhaus

The first poker book I read was George Percy’s estimable Seven-card Stud: The Waiting Game. It taught me something I had never before known, or even contemplated: that it’s possible to extract profit from poker simply by not playing hands. The second poker book I read was John Fox’s equally estimable Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon, which, while dwelling on the even-then-outdated mechanics of draw poker, nevertheless introduced me to the timeless ideas of image, image analysis and image management.

Recently, I had occasion to revisit both of these old friends. What I found astounded me: The books had changed. They had changed so much! I couldn’t believe it. Fox’s book especially had become subtle, nuanced and deep in detail. How could I have overlooked such riches the first time through? I had to double check to make sure that the very titles of the books hadn’t changed, for these seemed in no way to resemble the books I remembered reading in my poker salad days.

Of course the books hadn’t changed. I had changed. I had grown in my understanding of poker, as we all do if we stay with the game for any length of time. With this realization came a new understanding of the old expression, “You can’t enter the same river twice,” a highfalutin way of saying that our perception of everything changes because we ourselves, inevitably, change. What you see, in other words, depends on where you stand, and the player who stands at the beginning of his poker progress stands in a much different place from that same player many months or years down the line.

With this in mind, I invite you to wipe the dust off some of the older tomes in your poker library and revisit them now. You may be surprised by what you find.

You may discover, for example, that certain fundamental pieces of poker wisdom which once struck you with the force of revelation have subsequently become mere background noise to your poker thinking. This might not be the best thing in the world for your game. After all, didn’t those books once teach you to be selective in your starting requirements? Didn’t you do a better job of staying tight when that news was new?

You may also find that information which once confused you is much more accessible to you now. The information hasn’t gotten clearer; you’ve just grown in the game. If that’s true, then there’s certainly benefit in taking another crack at old texts, if only to reap a fuller harvest of what’s there.

Then again, you may have the satisfaction of discovering just how much you’ve figured out about the game, how many of its deeper mysteries have, in fact, yielded up their treasures to you. But remember that the point of reviewing old sources of poker information is not to prove how smart you’ve become. Rather, it’s to take advantage of the same wisdom again, in a new and different way. More than anything it’s an exercise in remembering that poker learning never stops - or anyway should never stop, not if you intend to continue to improve and excel. And if your exploration does nothing more confirm that, yep, I had it right all along, well, what’s so wrong with that?

Caro’s Book of Poker Tells? Haven’t looked at it in years. Sklansky’s Theory of Poker? I know it’s around here somewhere. Doyle’s Super/System? Propping up a table leg. But all that’s going to change. Hell, I might even take a look at some of my own old writings and see if they still hold water. What have I got to lose? A little time. What have I got to gain? New information; yet another sense of how this wacky game should be played.

Scientists tell us that certain psychotropic substances have the effect of changing the sorting system of the brain. It seems to me that the mere passage of time achieves the same end. We start out with a very simple understanding of poker, and learn and absorb to the limit of that understanding. Inevitably, the act of learning and absorbing extends the limit of our understanding. If we then to go back and study the same sources of information, we must necessarily get more out of them, merely as a function of already having been through them once.

Interestingly, though, having used certain sources of information to achieve this end, we then leave that information behind. “Been there, done that,” we tell ourselves, never pausing to contemplate that the person who “went there, did that,” had a much simpler sorting system than the one we could now employ.

Really, you’ve got to ask yourself what’s the point of having a poker library if you’re only going to read the words one time? I’m not talking about getting your money’s worth out of the pulp and print. I’m talking about getting your money’s worth out of your poker game where, as has long been acknowledged, “If you’re not slowly getting better, you’re slowly getting worse.” So do the dust-off thing, even if you’re skeptical.

You might think there’s nothing new in those books, and you know what? You might be right.

But you can’t tell me there’s nothing new in you.

John Vorhaus is the author of POKER NIGHT and the KILLER POKER series. Excerpts and ordering information are available at his website, www.vorza.com.

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