Looking for "Real Poker: The Cooke Collection"

I've been trying to find this book for over a month. Does anyone know where a copy could be obtained?

Caro's ad in the magazines says that it is out of print. You might try ConJelCo or Gambler's Book Club.

I was just at the Gambler's Book Store and they didn't have a copty either. They also said it was out of print. I THINK they said it was going to be re-printed soon, though. I'd call the store to get accurate information.

While the book has good information in it, the writing was simply atrocious. Hopefully they have sent it to a professional editor and are getting the thing cleaned up and that is why it is out of print.

The book is sold out. Cooke's 2nd book will be released very soon. The first was just a collection of his Card Player articles, I don't remember the writing being that bad. I think the 2nd will be a collection of his Playing-the-Hand articles.


If you read Card Player, you won't read anything new in the books.

You can go through the book and probably cross out one-third of the words and it would read much better and say the exact same thing. This is known as tightening up the language and is something that all good professional editors emphasize.


Even though I would be considered an amateur editor at best, I sat down for a short period of time with John Bond before the book came out, took a Roy Cooke article and did exactly this. Since we were working on the 21st Century editions of our Advanced books at the time, I told Bond that I just didn't have the time to take on another book, especially one that I didn't think would sell very well. Anyway, after the book was published, Bond told me that Caro was suppose to have it edited but neglected to do so.


By the way, as long as I'm on the subject, much of the writing in both magazines suffers from this same problem, and mine certainly did when I first started out. But to produce a truly professional work, language needs to be tight and dynamic. We at Two Plus Two strive to achieve this in all of our books, but it's not alway easy.


As long as I'm the subject, here's the first sentence from Championship Hold'em by McEvoy and Cloutier:


"We believe that anyone with some talent for poker can become a winning player at limit hold'em."


Now since the book is about hold 'em poker here is a rewrite of that same sentence in tighter language.


"If you have some talent, you can win."


Do you see the difference? My version says the exact same thing but in a much more dynamic fashion.

Well, I wouldn't call that sentence dynamic. It is better, though.


I forgot to give the Gambler's Book Club's phone number in case Flipper doesn't have it. It's 702-382-7555.

Found the book at ecampus.com for the low price of $115.63. I heard the book was good but it really must be good. I think we'll all fold this time. Thanks for all the replies.

Powells used books. I got a like new copy for $15 about 6 months ago. They might be outta stock now but they always have new stuff coming in.


www.powells.com (http://www.powells.com)