othmer's stud book

Any opinions? Mason, have you had a chance to review it yet? Thanks, Scott

For a low-limit, recreational stud player such as myself, it's good mostly for the occasional look-up of one hand vs. another heads-up or three-way. Some of his advice and opinions (e.g. correlating an opponent's hand strength with the physiological signs of confidence they display) are interesting, but on the other hand, some of his strategy suggestions are off the mark--I don't have the book in front of me so I don't recall an example. I wouldn't call this book a must-have; although the hand charts are interesting, you could just as well use simulator software like Poker Probe or PokerWiz to do your own research.

He has and so have others myself included. It is a good book but is not that helpful until you have a good understanding of stud already. The revised edition is much better than the first, according to Mason, but I have not read the first edition. I found the matchup information on the strength of flushes and the weakness of straights to be particularly helpful and interesting.


Pat

The Elements of Seven-Card Stud (7) by Konstantin Othmer. This is the second edition of this text and it is much better than the original. Gone is much of the silly and inaccurate

advice, particularly that pertaining to a wild image, and the simulation data is now based more on real hand matchups than some particular hand versus random hands. But the book still has a few problems. The main one being that the author virtually never takes into account the size of the pot and the structure of the betting. Yet, even with this criticism, a pretty good player, who understands how stud hands are played can find some real value here. Just be aware that some of the advice will need a little adjusting.