Title	Bobby Baldwin's Winning Poker Secrets
Author	Mike Caro
Year	1979 (republished in 2004)
Skill Level	Any (stories)/Beginner (strategy)
Pros	Very entertaining stories alternating with very concise advice on how to play several poker variants.
Cons	Advice is a good starting point for beginners only.
Rating	3.5 (stories)/2.0 (strategy)

Bobby Baldwin was at the height of his fame, having recently won the 1978 World Series of Poker Main Event, when Mike Caro interviewed him for a combination biography and strategy book called Bobby Baldwin's Winning Poker Secrets. Like most of the great poker players of his era, Baldwin's life story would make a great movie. As hazardous as poker could be to your bankroll, it was much more dangerous to your physical well-being. Baldwin went to jail at least twice, once for playing pool before he turned 16 and once for dealing an illegal poker game. But those incidents paled in comparison to the time two criminals intent on kidnapping him for ransom instead robbed everyone in the casino, fatally shooting one customer who had perhaps not-so-cleverly given them a fake wallet with only five dollars in it.

The mob controlled Las Vegas before Del Webb began transforming it into a "Wall Street town" by buying the Sahara Hotel in 1961,¹ but he had always been less likely to get robbed in a casino than in a home game, which is where Baldwin had played most of his poker. He knew he could be "hijacked" by criminals who broke into the house, cheated by the people running the game, or stiffed by the losing players. But being a kidnapping target just wasn't something he expected.

The good news is that the police shot both of the crooks when then tried to get away. The bad news is that Baldwin quickly lost all the money he'd won anyway.

The book has a chapter called "Your Bankroll" that you can safely skip. Baldwin "got broke" several times, at one point being $70,000 in the red on sports bets. The chapter doesn't bother to warn you against sports wagers, where the vig will get you, or table games like craps, where you can't overcome the house's edge in the long run. In fact, the rest of the book holds more lessons in what not to do than this chapter does on what to do.

The stories, which are by far the best part of the book, also cover his low-key courtship of his second wife, Shirley. That thread is probably more educational than the bankroll chapter.

Intermingled with the story chapters are strategy chapters, each covering the basics of a poker variant he's playing. He concisely lists the four to twelve most "Common Mistakes" players make and follows with a somewhat overlapping "Final Formula" for playing the game well. These chapters are exactly what you'd want to read if you had only five minutes to learn a game you were about to play for the first time, as they're each only a few pages long. The games begin with Five-Card Stud, which was the first poker variation Baldwin played, losing his entire fortune of $6.35 at a friend's house, and go on to Ace-to-Five Lowball, Seven-Stud, Seven-Stud Lowball, Five-Card Draw, Hold 'Em, Deuce-to-Seven Draw, and High-Low Split.

Some of his best advice is tucked away at the very end of the book in the "Unsorted Secrets" chapter. For example, "You should try to specialize in one or two kinds of poker. But it pays -- it pays heavily -- to be an all-round card master."²

He also talks about mixing up your style with quick shifts, handling unknown players, dealing with very loose players, and knowing the various times when it's good or bad to bluff.

Overall, this was a quick and easy read that has aged well. The romantic era where poker was a very dangerous occupation will never be repeated, so all we can do is sit back and enjoy the show. As for the strategy parts of the book, I suspect Caro and Baldwin went out of their way not to step on Doyle Brunson's toes, since they had both just contributed to his Super System.