The Raiser’s Edge

I was in college in Chicago in the 70s.  When not in class I would spend my time at a bridge, and backgammon club called The North Club.  The club was filled with bridge bums, backgammon sharks, gin rummy kibitzers, and in the afternoons we would get an influx of options traders.  At that time the Black–Scholes formula was new, and the smart guys, the guys who understood the math, were vacuuming up the money. Huge edges were to be had because these guys were playing the game at an entirely different level.

That was what I kept thinking about as I read, The Raiser’s Edge: Tournament-Poker Strategies for Today’s Aggressive Game.  Because of the internet where players can play 10 or 20 tables at a time at double the speed of a live table, and tracking software that has databases of millions of hands, and quants applying game theory to poker, the game has taken a giant leap forward.  This book is not for beginners.  It is dense, has many charts, and will need to be read many times to be fully understood.  But this is the future of poker.  10 years ago you never would have seen a chapter like, “Equilibrium solutions for 3 and 4-betting.”  I believe you will start to see more and more chapters like that.  Just as computers are now the best chess players, and backgammon players, within 10 years I believe computers will be the best poker players.

The authors in this book talk about how fast the game is evolving.  Things that were working and profitable a year ago no longer are.  If you want to try to ride this wave, to get on the curve since no one can be ahead of it anymore, then you need to read this book, and the avalanche of books like it that are sure to come.