Poker & Pop Culture: Strategy Books Telling How to Play, But Warning Not To

When it comes to books about poker strategy, we tend to think of them being written for a particular audience — namely, poker players enthusiastic about the game and eager to learn how to win more often.

We also tend to think of the authors of such books as being primarily interested in teaching readers how to play the game more skillfully. Indeed, that may be the only purpose we would typically attribute to poker strategy writers — to provide instruction to help readers play better poker.

That said, when looking back through some of the earliest poker strategy texts, we discover many authors not simply satisfied with telling readers how to play poker. They’re also in various ways telling them not to play poker at all, or at least to enter into the game armed with a great deal of wariness and trepidation.

In other words, the appearance of these initial poker primers not only attests to the growing popularity of the game in the latter decades of the 19th century, but also communicates something significant about poker’s uncertain place in the culture.

Several of the authors of some of the first books covering poker rules and strategy were consistently reluctant to be identified with works promoting what they themselves viewed to be a potentially harmful game.

A couple of weeks ago we discussed former United States Congressman Robert C. Schenck’s early draw poker primer, originally published without his knowledge in 1872. For a later reprinting, Schenck added an “Author’s Apology” in which he confessed being known as the book’s author had “unwittingly brought down on me the wrath and reprehension of so many good people in America.”

Then last week when discussing the 1875 title The Game of Draw Poker, Mathematically Illustrated by Henry T. Winterblossom — a pseudonym used to hide the author’s true identity — we again saw the author making several disclaimers about the dangers of gambling, assuring his readers that not playing poker at all was a perfectly fine option, and that “their position in society will not be imperilled” should they give the game a pass.

Similarly did the author of a 1882 book titled Poker; How to Play It choose not to be identified by name. While sharing rules of the game, a bit of strategy advice, and some “amusing incidents” in the form of poker anecdotes, the author signed the work in a way that emphasized the harm the game could cause, calling himself “ONE OF ITS VICTIMS.”

Here, briefly, are three other early poker books covering strategy that likewise teach both how to play the game and how readers might well be better off not playing at all.

John Blackbridge’s The Complete Poker-Player (1875)

New York attorney John Blackbridge did sign his name to his 1875 book, The Complete Poker-Player: A Practical Guide Book to the American National Game. Blackbridge’s book includes rules of the game (borrowed and adapted from “The American Hoyle”) as well as some technical advice and discussion of odds, including a section breaking down “Probabilities at Draw-Poker.”

Blackbridge, “The Complete Poker-Player” (1875)

Blackbridge also spends time defending poker against those who would object to it on moral grounds, comparing the honest and skillful poker player to those employed in more honorable professions such as banking or insurance.

That said, he delivers a stern warning regarding the preponderance …

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