Books for the Poker Geek

From time to time I like to recommend books that I think might interest poker players, not because they're about poker, but because I think they're liable to interest the same kinds of people who take a serious interest in the game. This time I've decided to focus on books that might appeal to "poker geeks," a term I'm using to mean poker players with an interest in the technical end of the game (I could have said "techie," but I thought "geek" was more catchy). That's not to say that you need a Ph.D. in computer science to pick one of these up. With one exception, all of the books listed below should be interesting and accessible to a general audience.

As computers continue to become more a part of our everyday lives, computer security has become a hot topic in the news. From courtroom trials over code used to decode DVDs to critical vulnerabilities in widely used operating systems, stories that used to appeal solely to technically inclined readers have become increasingly interesting and relevant to a broader spectrum of computer users. At the heart of many of these stories is the field of cryptography, which is concerned with the encoding and transmission of secret information. Anyone who plays online poker is at some level familiar with the need for quality encryption in software, as the integrity of online poker depends crucially on secure communications between central servers and the thousands of players who may be online at a given time. Cryptography has also become an extremely hot topic up and down the community of the technically inclined, including programmers, mathematicians, and engineers. It's a rich and intrinsically fascinating subject that seems to bring out the inner geek (in anyone who has one).

There are a few worthwhile books that cover cryptography at a big-picture level that would be appropriate for someone new to the subject. The most popular of these is probably Simon Singh's The Code Book. Singh, who has written popular books on a number of technical topics, covers the history of cryptography from early royal intrigues to present-day techniques and software. Although the book does provide some technical detail, Singh's writing is more evocative than technically incisive. He does a reasonable job of touching on all of the aspects of cryptography that people find fascinating, from history to technical challenges, but necessarily covers each at a fairly superficial level. At the more technical end of the spectrum, there are many choices. Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography is rightly credited with making the techniques more accessible to technical readers. Although it's hardly the kind of book anyone would want to read straight through (after a few hundred pages of well-written exposition, many of the remaining chapters are intended as reference on particular ciphers), it's a treasure trove of fascinating reading for anyone who wants to develop a deeper understanding of how information is protected. I'm probably crazy for recommending such a technical book, but it's hard to argue with the success of this book, which has been surprisingly broad. Schneier's lucid writing hit home for a whole generation of geeks waiting for concrete information on how cryptographic systems work. Remarkably, he makes the details available while requiring little if any technical background. The book seems only daunting until you start reading.

Two other books for technically oriented poker players describe teams of players with big plans to beat house games. Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House, the story of an MIT-based card-counting team, has been in the news often since its release in 2002. The book is lively and engaging, the more so the less you know about how blackjack teams work. Its weakness from a techie standpoint (but a strength from just about any other standpoint) is the lack of technical detail. Although the book tries to build up the team to be an elite group of math geniuses applying their esoteric skills to beat the casinos, Mezrich can't really escape the fact that the subjects of his book are little more than rote practitioners of some well-known blackjack techniques, and those techniques are described only in passing in his book. From a story standpoint, the book is great. From a techie standpoint, it's just a tantalizing view from the outside.

What kind of book would better satisfy the techie reader? There are certainly more detailed books on blackjack, but for a book with a similar yet more technical flavor, I'll go in a different direction. In the mid-'80s, Thomas A. Bass wrote a book called The Eudaemonic Pie, a look inside a team assembled to beat roulette. Although the book is now somewhat dated, it's a fascinating look inside the team as they develop the hardware and software to attack the roulette wheels. Unlike Mezrich, Bass takes the reader on a first-person tour of the development of the roulette system, including everything from assembling a team with the needed expertise and shopping for spare parts to design issues, dry runs, and ultimately applications in real casinos. At its heart, it's a story about engineering, a great illustration of the problem-solving process applied by demonstrably capable people to a difficult real-world problem. But it's much more than a recounting of the engineering process – it's an intriguing story with a subversive flavor, and of course in an area familiar to many poker players. Although it's been hard to find for a few years, it's now available in a reprint edition, and certainly deserves a new generation of readers. It may be worth reading just to find out what the title means.

That's all for now. Happy reading!

Daniel Kimberg is the author of Serious Poker and maintains a website for serious poker players at www.seriouspoker.com.