Gary Lavon Carson (April 27, 1949 – March 4, 2014) was the author of ''The Complete Book of Hold 'Em Poker'', ''The Complete Book of Casino Poker'', and multiple articles and essays focusing on

poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three el ...

, and

probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an Event (probability theory), event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and ...

. He was a frequent contributor to the

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...

rec.gambling.poker. Several of Carson's unorthodox strategies remain topics of fierce debate years after first being published. Born in

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, Carson held an MS in Quantitative Business Methods from

LSU Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...

, an MS in Industrial Engineering and Management Science from Northwestern and an ABD in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University. He taught in the business schools of LSU, Loyola University (Chicago), University of Illinois (Chicago Circle), and Sam Houston State University. He often took a contrarian view of strategic decision making. His writings emphasized that the loose versus tight conditions of a game are a strong driving force in evaluating a situation. In intermediate betting rounds in loose games, he opined it is often more valuable to play a good draw strongly than to do so with the current best hand, while in tighter games the opposite is often the case. His books and recent gambling related writings have been on poker, although he wrote on horse

handicapping Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning. The word also applies to the various methods by which th ...

in the 1980s. He also wrote on a wide range of non-gambling topics ranging from human resource topics to commercial snail farming. Carson wrote about gambling for ''CardPlayer'', ''Poker Digest'', ''American Turf Monthly'', ''Racing Star Weekly'', and websites Pokerpages.com, Pokermagazine.com, Pokerhands.com, and Gaminglinks.com. He was also a prolific blogger and blogged about poker, mathematics as it relates to poker, and culture and politics. Carson lived in Wichita,

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...

. He died at his home on March 4, 2014 of

vascular The blood vessels are the components of the circulatory system that transport blood throughout the human body. These vessels transport blood cells, nutrients, and oxygen to the tissues of the body. They also take waste and carbon dioxide away f ...

and renal disease.

References

External links

Poker Road Trips, Gary Carson's blogAmerican Tradition, a non-poker blog on culture and politics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carson, Gary 1949 births 2014 deaths American poker players American gambling writers American male non-fiction writers Louisiana State University alumni Writers from Austin, Texas