PRO POKER SCHOOL Learn Before You Earn

Poker Review

Review by Jon Eaton

Michael Craig recently released The Professor, The Banker, and The Suicide King, detailing the inner workings of the biggest cash game in poker history. Craig gives us intimate details about the multi-million dollar group of professionals who took on a rich banker from Texas named Andy Beal. If you've ever been interested in how the biggest cash games in the world operate, it's a very interesting look into the game and the players in that game, where money most people would consider lifetime savings are won and lost in a single pot.

Craig takes the reader from the first line on a journey that will keep you turning pages. The story starts off following Ted Forrest, who was in Los Angeles looking to head to Vegas for the night. Ted was a regular at the time in the $2,000-4,000 and up games, and phoned the Bellagio on his ride out to the desert.

When Ted finds out there's a $10,000-20,000 game going, he takes his entire bankroll and sits down with just enough to play. He curiously finds only two players playing-Todd Brunson, son of legendary Doyle, and a man he's never seen before. Ted managed to lose most of his stack immediately, but wound up a winner of over $1 million.

He later found out about the group of players the mystery man (later he found he was named Andy Beal) had challenged. The group, known to most poker players as 'The Corporation,' had scraped together their bankrolls to play Beal that night. Ted was later included, and no hard feelings were had for the money he had taken from the game that night.

From here, Craig details Beal's almost obsession that overcomes him, as he attempts over and over to 'beat the pros.' His goal is to take the stakes so high that the pros are out of their comfort zone-and by the end of the book, the stakes escalate so high that they're playing $100,000-200,000 poker!

I don't want to give away all the interesting tales that Beal conjures up in this book. I will note that the book does tend to drag on a few times, but once Beal heads to Vegas in the subsequent chapters, the story picks right back up. I can't think of anything more interesting to read about than people shuffling $25,000 chip stacks.

In all, I was taken off guard by this book, since I didn't think the two sides could ever fully agree on a story. Thankfully they both gave enough input and the stories were straightened out enough for this amazing tale to come out. I highly recommend checking this book out if you are looking for a good poker story.