[NSchandler]

It certainly seems that people are being way too harsh on this book.

First, the criticism that the book reads much like many 2+2 books may be true, but it should not be considered a knock on Weighing the Odds (WTO). There is of course going to be great overlap of the material between different books, but this should be expected. Unless the author believes for some reason that his readers have all read TOP, SSHE, HFAP, etc. it would be a disservice to his readers to not include many of the same topics. And, as King Yao pointed out above, if SSHE was not even released when WTO was written, then that only furthers the point. Good advice is good advice, and good books are going to read much the same in places.

Incidentally, if there were a group of readers who read SSHE after WTO, they would probably complain that SSHE simply repeats much of what they already learned in Weighing the Odds. But of course on the 2+2 forums, the flip side of this seems to be the norm...

Second, I think there is a great deal to be learned from the book that is covered only tangentially in some other 2+2 books. The many charts and tables that show the math behind the intuition are very helpful. For example, the 2+2 books may talk about the advantage of raising for a free card, and the intuition behind how it can save you bets, etc. However, WTO goes a step further, and shows you specifically the math behind it, how the calculations differ depending on the number of outs you have, and how often your "free card play" needs to work for it to be a profitable maneuver. To say that all of this is just a restatement of what was said in SSHE is simply not true.

As another example, HFAP may speak in general terms about why playing AQ against an EP raiser can lead to trouble, but WTO goes a step further, making certain assumptions regarding the PF raiser's standards, and showing the expected equity of AQ in such a situation. It is one thing to state (correctly) that AQ can lead to trouble because you're going to be up against AA, KK, AK, etc. quite often; it is an altogether different thing to show this mathematically. To show exactly how AQ matches up against other specific hands helps you not only see the intuition that you can play AQ only against loose EP raisers, but it shows you exactly *how* loose they must be, and what range of hands is necessary, for re-raising with AQ to be a profitable move.

Many other issues seem to be fairly fresh. It is probably not immediately obvious, even to many who have read SSHE or HFAP, that T9s is better than AT *heads-up* against an EP pre-flop raiser, given certain assumptions. Even if one can mentally grasp this, seeing the mathematics behind the idea should still be helpful.

The list could go on and on, as examples of this litter the book.

To anybody who is considering this book, I would highly recommend it, as I am finding it (I've got about 100 pages left to go) to be a very valuable complement to many of the 2+2 books. I don't think that most of the posters who have been highly critical of the book have really given it a fair reading.

But that's just my 2 cents...