The Legend that is Supersystem!

The one and only Doyle Brunson is perhaps the most universally known of all poker players. Even amongst non poker players, the name Doyle Brunson is still known and that speaks volumes about a man that is more than just a poker player, he is also an icon. Brunson is a true living poker legend and that legend began back in 1976 when he captured his first WSOP world title at the famous Binions Horseshoe Casino.

But what established Brunson in the public eye was a combination of two further factors. The first being his second world title success the following year in 1977 when he strangely won the title again while holding the same hand (10-2) and making a full house with it on both final hands in 1976 and 1977. But I think that another hugely contributing factor towards the fame that Brunson enjoys now was the launch in 1978 of the book that went onto achieve legendary status amongst poker books.

That book was called Supersystem or as many people are unaware, How I made over $1,000,000 playing poker which was its original title before it actually became known as Supersystem. This was a hugely adventurous book to attempt to compile at the time, in fact the sheer size of the book to anyone who has ever seen it is still very impressive even now…..a full thirty years later.

But for me, the most distinguishing features of the book was the sheer ground breaking knowledge that was incorporated into Brunson’s section on no limit hold’em and the fact that he had somehow managed to gather five of the top poker minds in the world to help him compile the book.  Non other than the then reigning world champion Bobby Baldwin, David “Chip” Reese who went onto to become arguabley the greatest poker player who ever lived, David Sklansky who is perhaps the foremost poker theorist in the world, Mike Caro and Joey Hawthorne.

Even the legendary Amarillo Slim wrote the preface for the book so Supersystem was literally compiled by the who’s who of the poker world at that time. But it was the sheer power of the information that Brunson packed into his section on no limit hold’em that had the entire poker world talking for years to follow.

Brunson’s associates were also writing excellent sections on Draw Poker, Seven Card Stud, Lowball, High Low Split and Limit Hold’em in the book. However as the years have progressed, much of the information in many of those sections is now out of date. For instance the blind structure in the limit games has changed and the split games now use a qualifier for low and Draw poker is rarely played these days.

But despite that, the quality of the information inside this one poker book has led to various people quoting all sorts of superlatives with regards the book. Words like “great”, “ground breaking”, “legendary”, “unique” and “the poker bible” have been used frequently and in this particular case were well deserved.

Absolute Gold

But without a shadow of a doubt, the overwhelming weight of support for Supersystem has come because of what Doyle wrote about his favourite form of poker….No Limit Texas Hold’em. In fact the term “The Cadillac of Poker” has also gone along way towards the book achieving cult status as this is now perhaps the most famous quote in poker.

When Brunson referred to no limit hold’em as being the Cadillac of Poker then what he actually meant was that it was this form of the game that provided the ultimate test of a players ability. This statement too is a little out of date as games like Pot Limit Omaha were not overly popular then and few players realised at the time just how phenomenally complex and difficult that form of poker is.

But for the very first time, students of poker could now start to envisage just how a really great player approached the game and Brunson is truly a great player even now despite his advancing years. But there are still large parts of Supersytem that are mainly misunderstood even now by many players.

So much so that noted poker theorist Mike Caro actually wrote a guide to the book some years later to try and put into word form more clearly the strategies and thought patterns that lay behind Brusnson’s thinking. It is common knowledge that much of what makes a great poker player is very difficult to teach.

Much of what separates people like Brunson from mere ordinary poker playing mortals is difficult to put into words. Brunson bases many of his plays on what he is actually feeling at the time and he has honed those instincts over many years at the tables.

But it is considered insufficient from the view of the reader to be told that the reason why the author made a certain play was because he felt that it was the right thing to do. I do not necessarily agree with this rationale as in my mind, this clearly indicates what stage one has to reach in order to be playing the game at the highest level possible.

In my mind, anyone who has only read this book once or twice simply cannot properly comprehend just what Doyle is really trying to say. I first purchased this book many years ago and I have read the section on No Limit Hold’em more times than I can care to remember. But yet even now, I still pick certain things up about the potential inner workings of Doyle’s mind at the table that I had not picked up previously.

The number of nuances and subtleties in that book are almost endless and for novice poker players whose games are expanding at a very rapid rate (or at least they should be if they are working hard enough) then it is impossible for anyone at that low level to even come close to being able to fully comprehend what Doyle is really saying in that book.

It personally took me countless readings of Doyle’s no limit section and a whole load of further studying to boot to finally comprehend what he was really saying. Up until then, I had merely thought that I understood and it was only when I went back and read my earlier notes that I realised just how far my understanding of what he had written in that book had really come.

So for anyone who has yet to read this absolute classic of a poker book and does not know what I am referring to then I recommend that you read on. Doyle teaches a strategy for cash game poker in Supersytem. His style of play in that book can only be termed as loose aggressive. He is forever putting pressure on his opponents with bets and raises and most of the time it is with insufficient values.

He constantly strives to place his opponents into situations where they have to make very tough decisions and most of the time this is with marginal hands. So Brunson achieved an awful lot of fold equity with his action. Because he would bet and raise on a very wide range of holdings, players found it very difficult to actually put him on a hand and this made many of them extremely fearful which only served to help his game even more.

But perhaps one of the really thought provoking pieces of material in that section is where Doyle talks about how when big pots arise that he nearly always has the worse hand.

This statement takes some explaining but not when you understand it. You see, Doyle liked to be the aggressor and the one doing the bullying and shoving. His style of play was effective and he tried at all costs to impose that style of play onto his opponents. As he states in that book, he does not want anyone to defeat that style of play by becoming more aggressive than him so he will gladly push back harder and even get all in with a drawing hand just so his opponent cannot shove him around.

This type of play with a draw creates an awful lot of fold equity when either fearful opponents or opponents without sufficient strength to call fold their hands. But if he gets called, he still has a large amount of equity in the hand because of his outs to complete his draw so he is never really out on a limb. He says in that book that his constant aggressive play creates an image in the minds of his opponents and the constant procession of small pots that he wins pay for the times when he gets all in with the worse hand.

So what has changed?

Everything changes with time and it is now almost thirty years since Supersystem first went on sale. While the section on no limit play is still a damn good read, the advice in that section is not as powerful as it was then for Doyle and for reasons that I am about to now go into.

Firstly, it must be pointed out that Brunson readily admits in that book that his style of play would struggle to be successful in games where there was not an awful lot of money on the table. An overall lack of money on the table would mean that his aggressive style of pushing players out of the pot through intimidation of losing very large amounts of money would be greatly negated.

This is certainly the case with online no limit games. Many players do not necessarily buy in for the maximum amount anyway and all of the online poker rooms impose limits on the amounts that players can buy in for and this limit is usually set at one hundred times the big blind. This would equal $400 in a $2-$4 and $2000 in a $10-$20 game etc.

This means that unless someone wins and gets ahead, that it can be quite rare to find a player with 200-300 big blinds on the table.  Players tend to be less fearful when they have less to lose and it is this factor that would blunt many of Brunson’s strategies.

Plus there is another factor that also needs to be considered. Many people have now read Supersytem but even more importantly, the general thesis has been roughly replicated in many other areas of poker literature including books, magazines and websites. This means that most players now see the importance of aggression in poker and can also see when other players are stepping out of line.

What this means in a nutshell is that ultra aggressive poker will simply not be tolerated now like it was when this book was first written. Plus I dare say that it was the sheer presence and reputation of Doyle that enabled him to get away with many things a good percentage of the time simply because many players dared not tangle with him in a pot without a good hand.

It is very difficult to attain this level of intimidation in online poker where your opponents are merely staring at an avatar. In many of the games that I play in, unless you achieve the correct level of aggression then you will find that your opening raises will be getting re-raised frequently. The fact of the matter is that if you raise to $70 in a $10-$20 for example and the player on the button re-raises to say $240, then that $240 will represent a much higher percentage of your opponents stack than it would have done in the games that Brunson would have been playing in.

In some cases it could represent as much as a third of your opponents stack and many players will get pot committed far more easily thus making it more difficult to get them off the hand.

But many of the stratagems and advice still holds good today all these years later. The section where Doyle talks about the small connecting cards and the dangerous trap hands is still highly relevant in today’s online games. It does not matter where you are playing poker or against who, it is still crucial to your overall chances of success to balance your game.

You simply cannot let your opponents know that each time that you raise before the flop that you either have Broadway cards or a premium pocket pair. This would just encourage players to call your raises with mediocre hands and wait for you to miss the flop. So you have to inject some level of uncertainty into the minds of your opponents and uncertainty causes fear and fear causes them to fold.

You need your opponents to be guessing about the strength of your hand and you need them to be unsure whether that innocuous looking flop has hit you or not because you are just as likely to play an 8-7 as you would an A-K.

Brunson’s play creates uncertainty in the minds of his opponents. But even this is seriously negated in today’s modern game. Brunson’s opponents were not using note taking facilities against him and were not using PokerTracker or Poker Office to break his game down.

The environment that is online poker in 2008 is a very tough one and your opponents (or at least some of them) may just know a damn site more about your game than you do yourself.

Being one step ahead of the rest

I have always felt that the real art to reading any poker book is not to blindly believe everything that is in it and to try and think for yourself. Unfortunately to get to this stage requires an awful lot of knowledge and experience. It is next to impossible for a novice player to pick up any book and find fault with it simply because novice players do not have the knowledge base to be able to do so.

But the problem with all poker books is that they are a constant in what is a forever changing poker environment. It is that constantly changing environment that makes much of the material out of date in many poker strategy books. But the real test is to try and distinguish between what material is still relevant in the book from the stuff that isn’t and that as previously stated can be a very tricky process for many people.

In fact most novice and intermediate players would simply not doubt anything what they read at all and many would just blindly follow what they read. This in my mind is a major factor for why many poker players fail to make money in poker, many are simply using strategies that are either out of date or attempting to use them in the wrong situations.

But Supersystem is still a classic poker book and one that I would recommend to anyone to read. It still has numerous pieces of nuggets of information that are still highly relevant today and even in online games. For instance it emphasises the use of aggression to win pots and aggression is vital if you have aspirations of becoming a winning poker player.

It highlights the need to balance your game so that you are not predictable to your opponents and it also highlights the difference in what constitutes a good hand in no limit from a dangerous hand. An A-Q in limit play is a good hand even against a raise and the penalty for being trapped under another player that has A-K is not as critical

When it can only cost you a handful of big bets at the most. But take that same A-Q on a flop like A-7-2 rainbow and you could end up losing your entire stack if you are pinned underneath someone else’s A-K. The penalty for being dominated in no limit play can be very severe and many novice players get themselves into all kinds of trouble when they flop a decent but second best hand.

Brunson discusses the trouble hands pretty well in Supersystem and I would advise anyone who is contemplating playing no limit hold’em either online or in a live card room to study them.

But despite the fact that much of the information that is in Supersystem is either very well known or past its sell by date, it is still beyond any shadow of a doubt…..a great book! It literally set the standard for which many other poker books followed. The old saying about “standing on the shoulders of giants” applies perfectly here. I remember reading an interview from the 2001 World Series of Poker winner Carlos Mortensen some while ago who stated that the first time that the read the book, he could not believe that Doyle Brunson was literally giving away the secret of just how to play no limit hold’em.

Fine praise indeed from one of the most respected players in the world of tournament poker, an ex world champion and World Poker Tour winner to boot. In fact Supersystem was such a popular book that it led to a new updated version being published in 2005 called Supersystem 2. The no limit section was left largely untouched but there was valuable input on a whole host of games from some of the greatest names in the modern game.

People like Johnny Chan, Daniel Negreanu and Doyle’s son Todd who is a world class player himself and regular plays in the big game in Las Vegas. The new version included the very popular Pot Limit Omaha as well as an updated section on limit hold’em written by Jennifer Harman. Supersystem for me is the greatest of all poker books because it broke barriers and introduced to millions of people strategies that had previously been top secret and which were only in the possession of a handful of people world wide. There will never be another book like it that will have the same effect again in my opinion.