Poker Authors Analyzed

Editor's note: Former Card Player Europe Bureau Chief Rolf Slotboom has read just about every poker book available, and in this series of columns, he analyzes one poker strategist at a time. He looks at the strengths and weaknesses of both the person and his products - whether it's books, DVDs, or just articles. Extensive reviews and ratings of individual books and DVDs can be found on Rolf's site, www.rolfslotboom.com.

When I started playing poker for a living in early 1998, Mike Caro was one of the top strategists. The "Mad Genius" had built his name by writing a chapter in the book that changed everything, Doyle Brunson's Super/System, and from there, built an excellent reputation.

Having always been the authority on draw poker (a game that used to be huge in the days before I started my career), he released a book that had a huge impact on the poker world: Caro's Book of Poker Tells, later renamed The Body Language of Poker. In this book, he analyzed the behavior of people at the poker table, and made an important distinction between tells that one can't control and tells that one deliberately tries to portray in order to mislead the opposition (the "Tells From Actors," as he calls it, usually through the famous "Strong Means Weak, Weak Means Strong" concept that he introduced).

According to the book, huge sums of money could be won through the proper analysis of these tells, and on more than one occasion, Mike would say things like: "Your opponent might as well play his cards faceup!" as a result of detecting these tells. All in all, because of his advice, his humorous writing, and the introduction of concepts with fancy names like "Threshold of Misery," Mike Caro was on top of his fame at that time.

Slowly but surely, though, the importance and relevance of Mike Caro's advice started to become questioned somewhat. The game in which he was an expert, draw poker, had more and more started declining in popularity. It got replaced by hold'em - more specifically, by limit hold'em - and Caro never excelled in that game to the same degree that he did in draw. What's more, as tells were not nearly as important in this game as in draw, what had always seemed to be the definitive book on tells started losing a lot of significance. Suddenly, the pictures in the book looked very dated, and the claims in the book of how much every tell was worth seemed rather outrageous. As more and more people like David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth started advocating a mathematically oriented and tight-aggressive approach in hold'em, which went directly against the "wild image" that Caro had always recommended, the Mad Genius started receiving criticism on a more and more structural basis.

And it needs to be said that in the past couple of years, Mike Caro has not written anything new or given any new advice that will truly help players lift their game. His chapter in Super System 2 was one of the worst in the entire book, as it was nothing more than just a rehash of all of his old poker mantras. Couple that with the fact that he hasn't been in the spotlight anymore because of actual good poker results, that the recent books from his Mike Caro University were mediocre at best, and that the excellent Read 'em and Reap book by Joe Navarro has taken over as the leading book on tells, and Mike Caro is generally not considered one of the top strategists anymore.

Of course, his columns are still a pleasure to read. And one should never forget that it is exactly all of the pioneering from innovative people like Mike Caro that has helped bring poker analysis to its current level. Analytical tools like Caro's Poker Probe helped mathematical analysis significantly, and his analysis of body language and player behavior brought an entire new dimension to the game. So, without a doubt, the poker world has a lot to thank this Mad Genius for - even though his advice and recommendations have lost some of their significance.

Next issue: Lou Krieger

Rolf has been a professional cash-game player since 1998. He is the author of the successful Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha, and the co-author of Hold'em on the Come. He is the creator and presenter of the hold'em four-DVD set Rolf Slotboom's Winning Plays. He is the first-ever Dutch Champion, and maintains his own site at www.rolfslotboom.com.