Barnes, When to Hold 'em When to Fold 'em

Barnes’ “When to Hold ‘Em and When to Fold ‘Em” is not worth getting. Barnes seems to be a semi sharp guy who hangs out with less sharp guys and as a result overestimates his own knowledge and ability considerably. For example he is critical of a common usage in poker of 4-1 being used contextually to either mean 80% or 20% considering this usage “inaccurate”; as if a great deal of any language didn’t depend on context to be understood. He castigates other writers for saying they are “expressing odds in percentages” which is perfectly acceptable (i.e. in casual speech isometric objects are often referred to with terms that in more formal speech should be reserved for objects which are equal).


Anyway, the book consists of a bunch of elementary probability exercises combined with nit picking comments about more talented writers. The probability exercises are done using too limited a set of tools, and thus really aren’t even useful for teaching people how best to calculate probabilities. The nit picking comments are at best worthless and are quite often wrong. There is really not enough in this book content wise to give more than a paragraph or two of review.


Other reviewers have mentioned the hand charts. Barnes seems to favor the 10 players staying in to the river best hand method of calculating starting hands. He puts this together in a graph without including all the background data nor much explanation.


Anyway, you get the picture this book ain’t worth $25, and it ain't worth the time to read.