The Bottom Line
This is not a book about playing poker, but a book that claims to teach you how to cheat your friends at poker, drawing on the years of card-cheating experience of "Dickie Richard," as told to the magician Penn Jillette. Written in what could at best be called "colorful" language, Dickie explains how to find and cheat in home games through a variety of underhanded techniques, and when to ditch a game and skip town.
Pros
- At times very funny
- Does give advice on avoiding cheaters
- If you want to learn to cheat, it does teach some methods
Cons
- Too much swearing and off-color metaphors, sometimes offensive
- Not gay or woman friendly
- Doesn't teach how to be a card mechanic
Description
- Includes advice on making home games cheat-proof...and how a cheat will circumvent your efforts.
- Explains slang and lingo associated with poker and cheating, specifically.
- Contains a lot of interesting tales from the poker table.
Guide Review - How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker by Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn
If you really, really want to cheat at cards, this book of stories "as told to" Penn Jillette might have some advice for you. Dickie Richards details how to locate home games, gets invited, and then start taking their money. He doesn't tell you how to do card tricks but suggests many ways to use being a card mechanic to your advantage, as well as how to cheat the bank. He also tells you when and how to get out of dodge, even when the situation gets sticky.
There's good tips if that's your bag buried within an avalanche of curses, vaguely racist and misogynistic metaphors, and other manly-man talk. It's not that I'm not a girl that swears or uses off-color language (ask anyone), but I don't know what the point of for instance, the last chapter's extended metaphor on Julia Roberts still being "a whore" in Pretty Woman. His point is that you are what you are, prostitute or cheat, so just accept it, but the last line "...Julia Roberts can suck my c*ck." just makes me wince, not laugh. That said, there were a lot of laugh-out-loud moments and some points on the ethics of lying and cheating that I enjoyed.
There's good tips if that's your bag buried within an avalanche of curses, vaguely racist and misogynistic metaphors, and other manly-man talk. It's not that I'm not a girl that swears or uses off-color language (ask anyone), but I don't know what the point of for instance, the last chapter's extended metaphor on Julia Roberts still being "a whore" in Pretty Woman. His point is that you are what you are, prostitute or cheat, so just accept it, but the last line "...Julia Roberts can suck my c*ck." just makes me wince, not laugh. That said, there were a lot of laugh-out-loud moments and some points on the ethics of lying and cheating that I enjoyed.
