Top 10 books every poker player should read: Fooling Houdini

Poker is a game of continuing education, and if you are not continually learning as a poker player the game is going to pass you by. One of the best, and most commonly used, ways of improving your game is to read. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be reading poker strategy books (which at a certain point become very repetitious and lack any real insight that you don’t already know) as there are plenty of books on poker theory to choose from, and plenty of non-poker books that fit in perfectly with the game.

This article series will rundown my list of the 10 books every poker player should read, giving a brief overview of the content and why it’s must-reading for poker players.  Lacking from this list will be any mention of specific poker strategy books, but I would recommend that all new or struggling poker players pick up a volume on whichever game they are playing: be it tournaments (Jonathan Little’s Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker would be a great read) or PLO cash-games (in this case you can read any of the books written by Rolf Slotboom or Robert Hwang).

Each article in this series will focus on a specific book from the following list:

• The Expert at the Card Table by  S.W. Erdnase
• Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone
• Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker by James McManus
• Blink/Tipping Point/Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
• How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler
• Treat Your Poker Like a Business by Dusty Schmidt
• Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
• The Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone

This book was not quite what I expected when I purchased it after reading the first chapter for free on Kindle (greatest thing ever btw), but fortunately I was pleasantly surprised by what it turned out to be.

Fooling Houdini is basically the story of an ok Magician becoming a good Magician, and since his grand finale trick is based entirely on card manipulation and math it relates to poker in two separate ways.

First, Fooling Houdini explains card manipulation (in practical terms) better than anything I have ever read. There are detailed accounts of card mechanics and how and who employs them; there is an inside look at a 3-Card-Monte pack and the origins of the con; and how mechanics use misdirection to fool you even when you are looking right at them. After reading this book I learned two things:

#1 – I don’t pay attention enough when I’m playing cards

#2 – If the person is talented enough it doesn’t matter how much attention I pay them

The second way Fooling Houdini applies to poker is in Alex Stone’s journey from struggling trickster to professional magician. It mirrors so many tales of poker players where he thinks himself far better than he is, comes crashing down, and then rebuilds seeking out a mentor and basically breathing magic.

While the tricks aren’t laid out in this book, Stone does dish some inside stuff, and basically blows up spots for mentalists and magicians alike. So if you are like me and don’t buy any of this s**t to begin with, this book gives you the reasons why you shouldn’t by any of this stuff.