[Zetack]

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Oh, wait, he says: "A player who calls your bets or raises when he has flopped four to a flush is not making a mistake. However, if you check and let him draw at his flush for free you are giving him infinite odds on his draw...which is far better for him than your charging him a bet for his draw." WLLHE p. 86-87 (italics in original, bold added).

This passage is wrong because it implies that someone who flops a flush draw on the button should check if it is checked to him. That is usually not the case.

If he had said that about a GUTSHOT draw, or BOTTOM PAIR, then I wouldn't argue. But when he says it about a flush draw, he has it wrong.

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Ok.

Look I like his book. It gave me a very good foundation when I was starting out jumping from a computer program to playing for play money. So I both wonder about the criticism of his book and wish people would be explicit about it, because his were the first guidelines I learned, to the extent they're flawed I may have fundamental flaws deep in my basic assumptions abou the game.

In his defense, the section above is about when you hit very strong hand and not about playing the flush draw, and is actually in response to the complaint of some players that betting and raising won't get out the guy on the flush draw.

He does make it clear in the section on playing when you flop a flush draw that you should bet if checked to, and if you have the requisite number of opponents your only concern should be getting the maximum number of bets in the pot. So I personally never picked up on the implication you've found.

I do find his caveat, that if your flush draw isn't to the nuts, though, that you want to be calling bets and raises and not putting them in yourself too weak...although it does fit into his premium hand philosophy of low limit poker.

Geez, now I sound like an apologist for Lee Jones. Maybe its simply because, although I feel like my game has expanded since when I first started and his book was my guidebook, I'm not bright enough to pick out the problems in it for myself so it makes me feel dumb when people criticize it--particularly when they just criticize it in a general way.

--Zetack