Roy Cooke is a professional poker player, poker consultant and author living in
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. He was born in
Atlanta, Georgia, on April 12, 1957. He spent his childhood in
Derby (England) and
Bellevue, Washington. Before taking up poker full-time, he attended the University of Washington where he majored in computer science.
Cooke has been a licensed real estate broker in Las Vegas since 1990. He is a member of the
Summerlin chapter of
Toastmasters, of which he was president in 2006. He is married to the former Francine Piano (Misty). They have one daughter, Krystle, born on August 16, 1992.
Poker career
Cooke started playing poker in public cardrooms as a 15-year-old in Washington State in 1972. He took up the game full-time in 1975. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, he was a nomadic player — a "rounder" — traveling from town to town looking for games in Idaho, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Reno, Nevada.
In 1984, Cooke moved to Las Vegas. He has played regularly with many WSOP champions including
Johnny Moss
Johnny Moss (May 14, 1907 – December 16, 1995) was a gambler and professional poker player. He was the first winner of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, at the time a cash game event in which he was awarded the title by the vote of ...
,
Berry Johnston,
Tom McEvoy
Thomas K. McEvoy (born November 14, 1944, in Grand Rapids, Michigan) is a professional poker player, author and member of the Poker Hall of Fame, 2013 inductee. He is best known for winning the 1983 World Series of Poker Main Event.
Early life ...
,
Carlos Mortensen
Juan Carlos Mortensen (born April 13, 1972, in Ambato, Ecuador) is an Ecuadorian professional poker player of Danish descent and the first South American Main Event winner of the World Series of Poker. Mortensen is known for his loose play, blu ...
,
Scotty Nguyen,
Daniel Negreanu and
Phil Hellmuth.
The game Cooke most frequently plays is Limit
Texas Hold’em
Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt face ...
, although he forays somewhat regularly into No-Limit Hold’em. He has played almost 65,000 hours of poker live and online.
Author
Since 1992, Cooke has, with his collaborator and co-author
John Bond, written a poker column, "Real Poker", for ''
Card Player'' magazine, where he is senior columnist. It is reputedly the longest continuously running poker feature in the world.
The forewords to Cooke and Bond's books have been written by major poker figures
David Sklansky,
Mike Caro
Mike A. Caro (born May 16, 1944) is an American professional poker player, pioneer poker theorist, author of poker books, and casino executive.
Author
In 1978 Caro contributed 50 statistical tables to Doyle Brunson's ''Super/System'' and wrote ...
,
Linda Johnson,
Mike Sexton, Daniel Negreanu,
Chris Ferguson
Christopher Philip Ferguson (born April 11, 1963) is an American professional poker player. He has won six World Series of Poker events, including the 2000 WSOP Main Event, and the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Ferguson is a ...
and
Phil Gordon.
Quotes about Roy Cooke
/ref>
Poker consulting
From 1999 to 2005, Cooke was the cardroom manager of the world's first real money Internet poker room, Planet Poker
A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...
founded in 1998 by Randy Blumer of Victoria, British Columbia. Planet Poker turned to Cooke and fellow poker personality Mike Caro (known as The Mad Genius of Poker) to give the poker site credibility. While at Planet Poker, Cooke designed most of the protocols which are the foundation of the industry standard for protection against collusion.
Cooke has been a private consultant to a number of Internet poker sites and a featured speaker on marketing and anti-collusion protocols for poker sites at industry trade shows sponsored by River City Group, including the Global International Gaming Expo in Montreal (2005–2006).
References
External links
''Card Player'' magazine
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooke, Roy
American poker players
American gambling writers
American male non-fiction writers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)