Product Description
The wry poker and espionage memoirs of Herbert O. Yardley, the U.S.l State Department codebreaker who upgraded U.S. intelligence efforts before World War I, broke the Japanese diplomatic code and caught a Nazi spy while playing poker with him in pre-revolutionary China. While Yardley does give instruction in the proper way to play draw, stud and jokers-wild, his book does not focus on numbers and pot odds. Instead, Yardley shows through his stories of learning poker in the back room of an Indiana saloon and at diplomatic gatherings in China how to get inside the other player's head. Yardley shows us the human side of poker. His stories are concerned with the personalities of people who played poker with him, and how that knowledge helped him to beat them at the game consistently. It is also a terrific slice-of-life look at small-town life in Middle World War II. Even the characters not immediately concerned with poker offer keen insights which can be used by the smart poker player. Yardley should be read by anyone who seriously wants to improve his chances at the poker table by sharpening his people-reading skills.
About the Author
Yardley (1889-1958) began his career as a code clerk in the State Department rising to chief of MI-8, the first U.S. peacetime cryptanalytic organization in the 1920's. MI-8 was disbanded in 1929 and Yardley caused a sensation in 1931 with the publication of his memoirs of MI-8, The American Black Chamber. Unsurprisingly the Army were not amused and although Yardley did some cryptologic work for Canada and China during World War II, he was never again given a position of trust in the U.S. government
