Ole Bjerg, Poker: Parody of Capitalism, Ann Arbour, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011, 274 pp. $35.00 (ISBN 978-0-472-05163-2, pbk.) begins with the issue of the contemporary popularity of poker and makes the case that the game should be treated much like other phenomena, such as art and literature. While the discourse around poker manifested in law, morality, and politics--is it a game of chance or skill?--has contributed to ambivalence, poker deserves to be treated as richly culturally expressive. Following on Roger Caillois' insights into the relationship between games, cultures, and social structures, Bjerg's analysis of poker contributes to the sociology of games. Further, and as the title makes clear, poker is the parody of capitalism. book provides a sophisticated, philosophically informed, and enjoyable analysis of poker, its cultural resonance, and parodic relationship to contemporary, postindustrial capitalism. It draws on a variety of philosophical positions to illuminate the game: from probability theory and game theory to early and late Wittgensteinian arguments about language. Most important, and central to Bjerg's approach, is the work of analyst Slavoj Zizek and the deployment of the Lacanian-derived concepts of the real, symbolic, and imaginary. These concepts are laid out in the first chapter of the book, The Ontology of Poker, where they are applied comparatively to chess, roulette, and rock-paper-scissors. Where chess, for example, is a game that grounds itself in the symbolic order --since there are always optimal moves that can be mapped out (think chess computer Deep Blue), poker is unique among games in that it invokes all three ontological orders, and where awareness of the imaginary dimension separates the good players from weaker ones. book is divided into four parts with two or three chapters in each: Part One explores The Philosophy of Poker. Part Two focuses on The Economy. Part Three develops the typology, Suckers, Grinders, and and Part Four discusses Poker and Capitalism. As the book includes some descriptive analysis of the movement of money in the online poker economy in Part Two, and for the sake of length, the review will focus on Parts One, Three, and Four. In Part One, Anatomy of a Hand, and All you ever wanted to know about Texas Hold 'Em, Bjerg analyzes strategy and illuminates the game with the philosophical sources mentioned. players will appreciate the analysis of a hand by poker professional Gus Hansen in Anatomy ... , while in the latter chapter, Bjerg provides a critique of the application of game theory to poker: it is too caught up in the symbolic to grasp the game's imaginary dimension. In these chapters, Bjerg demonstrates a deep appreciation for, and theoretically sophisticated analysis of the game. parodic relationship with capitalism is developed in the later chapters. In Part Three (after analyzing playing styles in the final chapter of Part Two), Bjerg develops his tripartite typology of poker players/strategies. Each type corresponds with one of the ontological orders. Suckers are luck players who desire action and play loosely. Their orientation to chance and to action sees them as representatives of the real: they orient to the lucky chance of hitting their card--the unpredictable manifestation of the real, but this approach is a losing strategy. Grinders are the mathematically oriented calculators, tight players who do not veer from the optimal mathematical strategy and are guided by long run probabilities. Their probabilistic orientation places them in the realm of the symbolic. final category, Players, are the adepts of the poker imaginary, knowing how to bluff and dissemble and thus superior to the other types. While they too know the mathematical odds and how to value their own and their opponents' hands, they know the importance of reading the other players. …