Book review: "Ken Warren Teaches 7-Card Stud"

Having just read and reviewed Mitchell Cogert's introduction to razz poker, I thought it would be interesting to jump right to another new book on the market (released in February) on the same subject, Ken Warren Teaches 7-Card Stud.

The razz section--which is the only part I've read so far, and the only part this review will discuss--is the shortest in the book, a mere 32 pages. Worse, several of those pages are taken up with sketches. The card graphics are so bulky that it takes a full page to show six players' up cards on 3rd street. It's a ridiculously inefficient use of space.

Despite the fact that this book came from a major gaming-related publisher (Cardoza), it is almost as riddled with dumb errors as I griped about Mitchell's book being. Three times in the first few pages Warren uses "it's" instead of "its." Uh, Mr. Warren, you might need to go back to, oh, about 5th grade, where you were supposed to learn that stuff.

On p. 119, he says, "When you see that you have a three-card 9, your fist reaction is that you have a bad hand." Wow. I guess Mr. Warren is an unusually violent man, if seeing that he was dealt a bad hand causes him to make a fist!

The worst grammatical error, though, requires a bit of explanation. There's an American linguistic phenomenon that I started noticing seven or eight years ago, and it has grown exponentially in frequency since then, spreading like a virus. It's the use of a bizarrely redundant "is." For example, "My point is is that we should be...," or "The bottom line is is that we...," or "The important thing is is that one can't...," or "What I wanted to say is is that I think...," or "The reason is is because...." When George W. Bush took office, he wasn't saying things like that, but a few years ago he caught the virus, and now does it all the time. Eight years ago, radio talk show hosts didn't do it, but now at least Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity both routinely say such things.

So far, though, this has been limited to speech. I had never seen this weird usage in print--until now. There it is, on p. 138 of Mr. Warren's book: "You should call. The reason is, is that he should be afraid of your draw." What the hell is going on with that??? What is the point of inserting that idiotic extra "is" and comma there? The sentence could and should simply be, "The reason is that he should be afraid of your draw." Mr. Warren, please explain the grammatical purpose of duplicating the verb in that sentence. You went out of your way to type it twice. Why?

And who hired the editors that let that sort of crap go through. "Yeah, looks OK to me, boss." Really? Then you deserve to be fired as a copy editor.

Drives me crazy. (In case you hadn't noticed.)

OK, on to more substantive matters.

Warren's book is ultra-simplified and basic. It took me less than an hour to read, and I'm a pretty slow reader, especially when I'm taking notes and thinking carefully about the material, as I was here (because I knew I'd be writing up my impressions). Maybe there's a niche for a book this rudimentary, but really, I don't know. I think that I had figured out essentially all of the strategy he covers on my own after maybe six or eight hours of online play.

Throughout the razz section, Warren denotes hands as, e.g., 4-5-6-7-8, or A-2-3-4-9. This is backwards from the standard notation format, which starts with the highest card and moves down, e.g., 8-7-6-5-4, or 9-4-3-2-A. The standard system makes a lot more sense, because the cards are listed in the same order that is used to gauge the hand's strength. I have no idea why Warren goes the opposite way, but it's confusing and counterproductive, and will, I think, cause the beginning reader confusion if he gets used to seeing things this way, and then reads virtually anything else written about razz (or any other form of lowball poker, for that matter), and finds the opposite notation used. Frankly, it makes me suspect that Warren just hasn't read very much on the subject, or he would know better.

One of the things I was looking for (and one of the reasons I decided to move immediately to this book after finishing Mitchell's) was contrasting advice between the two authors. I didn't have to read very far to find some. Mitchell emphasizes stealing the antes and bring-in bet to the point that he advises, "Look to steal when you are to the right of the bring-in bettor. If everyone folds to you, raise with your lower exposed card. Example: If you have a 9 showing and everyone folds to you, you must raise the bring-in bettor who shows a Q, even if you have pocket 9's as your hole cards." (p. 16) Further, "You have (K-Q) 4 and your opponent has a (10-7) 8. Everyone folds to you, so you raise as a steal with two high cards in the hole." (p. 17) On the latter page, he also advises trying to steal with an ace showing (though not every time), even with two bad down cards.

Contrast this with the extremely conservative advice from Ken Warren: "Never try to steal with only one low card, even if it looks like you won't be called.... Never try to steal when you hold a hand like [(J K) 2]. Your two bad cards coupled with the chance that you might be called by even one player makes it a very unprofitable play." (p. 116)

Honestly, I think they're both wrong, and the truth (or at least what works for me) lies about halfway in between. It's rare that I attempt stealing with two face cards in the hole, even in otherwise optimal circumstances (on the right of the bring-in, with a low card showing, and everybody folding to me). Maybe I should, though.

The problem, as both authors acknowledge, is that the bring-in bettor, unless he's a complete dolt, will recognize an obvious steal attempt as such and will be inclined to play back at you with a wide range of hands. So you can choose not to bother, leaving that money on the table, but not risking anything more, or you can take your shot at it and hope it works, ready to abandon ship if you meet resistance. I don't know that one approach is unambiguously more correct than the other, but if I had to rule in favor of one of these two opposing published points of view, I think Mitchell's is smarter and probably more profitable, though clearly riskier.

P. 116: Warren gives what I think is confusing advice: "Don't try to steal the antes with your very good hands. Steal with A-2-9, but not with A-2-5. [Note: the accompanying illustration makes clear that he means (A-9)-2 and (A-5)-2, not (A-2)-9 and (A-2)-5. The text is misleading--another editing oversight.] Why? It's because you'll win a lot more money with the A-2-5 if you let players in to play against you all the way to the last card. You can win either the antes right now or a big pot in a minute or two. Your choice."

Well, since an attempt to steal the antes is simply a raise, and in limit poker a raise is a raise is a raise, Warren here apparently means that you should just call the bring-in with your strongest starting hands, and let several mediocre starting hands come along.

I think this is bordering on insane. It's what many people have called playing "backwards" poker--raising with your medium hands and limping with your best hands. Opponents will catch on to this pattern quickly, and Warren says nothing about randomizing or mixing up this play with the more obvious raise. Worse, this inverse approach keeps the pot small when you're strongest, and bloats the pot when you're less likely to end up winning it. It makes no sense to me.

If your steals look just like the raise you put in when you have three great starting cards, your opponents will have to guess whether you're on a steal or you have the goods. Their confusion is exactly what you want, because it will make them inclined to make mistakes. If you actually followed Warren's advice here, pretty soon opponents would be saying, "Oh, look--he's limping again, and the last 25 times that he did that, he had three wheel cards. Better fold my 9 here." Then you end up with squat, which is allegedly the outcome that Warren says he's trying to help you avoid.

P. 126: "Keep the pot small if you have a decent, but vulnerable hand." (That comma shouldn't be there, Mr. Editor.) Um, well, OK, but you also told us to keep the pot small by not raising with our best hands, back on p. 116. So I guess we have to conclude that Warren believes either that there should never be aggressive raising on 3rd street, or that it should be done only with the really atrocious hands.

Really, though, again I don't get this advice. If a hand is "vulnerable," then the usual recourse is to try to protect it. How does one do that? The only way is by betting and raising. Warren's argument is that you don't want to do that because it swells the pot, thus giving proper pot odds for weaker hands to chase. There is some truth to that, but it's just an inevitable fact of life in limit poker of any form. You could make the same argument about pocket aces in limit hold'em: don't raise because you'll make the pot bigger and therefore more attractive to speculative hands to try to get lucky. But if you don't raise and make chasing as costly as you can, you'll encourage people to come along for another card because it's cheap or free. If Warren really believes that raising with a "decent but vulnerable hand" changes erroneous pot odds to correct ones for opponents with weaker hands, he should at least show us the math that he uses to arrive at this conclusion. I'm not buying it.

P. 126 (again): In the very next paragraph, Warren's advice becomes even more confusing: "Remember, this advice applies when you have a decent, [sic] but vulnerable hand. If you have an awesome three-card starting hand, go ahead and build that pot, because it's wrong for them to try to run you down."

Apparently he has forgotten what he wrote ten pages earlier--that one should not raise with one's best hands, because one does not want to shoo away the weaker hands. These two pieces of advice are not only inconsistent, they are incoherent. I'm not sure Warren actually knows what he wants to convey.

P. 126 (yet again): The bedlam of incoherence continues. Warren writes, "It's wrong for a player to chase you down when he holds [(5 9) 7] when the pot or small [sic; I think it's supposed to say "pot is small"] or contains only the antes, but it's correct for him to play this hand when the pot is big."

Let's think about this. How would a pot get big on 3rd street? By there being many players involved. So Warren is saying, apparently, that it is "correct" to play 5-9-7 against multiple opponents because of the favorable pot odds.

But back on p. 117, Warren told us, "You can beat one player with a mediocre low hand but you need a great starting low to beat two or three more players.... [Y]ou need a smooth 8 or [better] to play against three more players."

I don't know of any way to resolve the apparent conflict between these two sets of statements. First he says that you need a smooth 8 or better against three or more opponents, then tells us that it's "correct" to play 5-9-7 if the pot is large, which presumably means that a lot of players are involved in the hand.

Speaking of hands, it seems that Mr. Warren's right hand does not know what his left hand is doing, so to speak. It's hard to imagine how he managed to cram so many contradictory bits of advice into fewer than 40 pages.


Well, as with the last book review, I'm running long here, and I need to get to bed. (I tried sleeping but had a bout of insomnia, so got up to write for a while--hence the strange hour of posting here.) I'll finish up the rest of my comments later.

Note: Part 2 of this review is now posted here.