Poker Forum - Caro’s Fundamental Secrets of Winning Poker

"I AM A LUCKY PLAYER. A POWERFUL WINNING FORCE SURROUNDS ME." With those words Mike Caro ends his book Caro’s Fundamental Secrets of Winning Poker and it says a lot about what this book is about. In many ways it is a motivational book for poker players and in that light his closing words make a lot of sense.

Let's backtrack a bit. Who is Mike Caro? Mike Caro is the self-professed "Mad Genius of Poker", the man behind The Mike Caro University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy, often called "one of the finest draw poker players alive", former editor of Poker Player and Gambling Times magazines, consultant, one-time-researcher, and generally well-known poker personality. He is also the proud wearer of one of the worst haircuts in the business. Ok, sure, but who is Mike Caro?

Mike Caro may be many things but I personally doubt that he is either "mad" or a "genius" but he is a very experienced poker player. He's also one of the few who can actually write a book on poker that entertains, opens your eyes _and_ makes you a better player. I think the primary reason for this is that Mike isn't stuck "in the box". He writes as much about poker players as he does about poker strategy and as such he gives the reader a much broader, and therefore more meaningful, view of the game than so many other authors do.

When you pick up Fundamental Secrets you might at first think that you've mistakenly got someone's handout from a seminar. The book is stuffed with these big white-on-black placard-type things that look like the slides someone shows at a seminar. Well, that's exactly what they are. Mike has taken his own seminar slides and written a book around them. Not surprisingly you get seminar-sounding subject titles like "Why You Really Can Beat Poker!" and "General Winning Advice" and so forth. This is mostly the feel-good, gotta-get-my-money's-worth stuff of any of a thousand seminars that happen every day. And it's unfortunate in a way because Mike's book is really better than that.

Liberally distributed throughout this book is a lot of great knowledge and advice, especially for the novice and good-but-not-great poker player. Stuff like "In poker your get paid to make quality decisions, not to win pots" and "Do what your opponents expect" can be the beginning of a real education in the game. Mike intends these things to have a little bit of shock value and they do, they break you out of the routine of the poker truisms and "common knowledge" that can hurt as much as they help.

I think what Mike really offers the reader is a healthy amount of solid "people management" skills that you don't often see. For instance he talks about how to deal with opponents who, for whatever reason, have resolved to play better: "Pass medium-strong hands ... Bluff more often ... Expect them to have stronger hands ... don't expect them to call with weak hands." Or his advice on maximizing profit against a full table: "the two types of hands that usually make more profit ... are (1) Speculative hand and (2) Powerhouse hands." Or "hands with small edges are losers when the house rakes the pot." These kinds of insights are invaluable for the right audience and go a long way to making this book well worth the price of admission.
That said I also have to say that I think Mike plays a little too hard to his seminar audience sometimes. Statements like "It's okay to play your best game all the time" or "A powerful winning force surrounds me" isn't about poker nearly as much as it is about Mike satisfying his paying customers by firing them up before he sends them home. Smart seminar management to be sure but what has that stuff got to do with a good book on improving your poker game. I suppose it works for some folks but I ain't one of them.

Small critiques aside though Mike does cover a lot of ground in this one and manages to touch base on most of the popular poker variations including Hold'Em. Nothing to in-depth mind you but certainly enough to give pretty much everyone something to think about.

So all in all I'd have to say that if you consider yourself to be a beginner, an experienced beginner looking to improve, or a frustrated advanced player I think this book will be worth reading. And it is easy to read. Perhaps that alone is something to justify Mike's self-appointed "Genius" title.