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Old 09-20-2005, 04:56 PM
Your Mom Your Mom is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 624
Default Re: King Yao \"Weighing the Odds\"

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Ok, here is my "review"!

Disclaimer: I have to remind the reader that english is not my first language, so I cannot any subtle nuances to make my point.

So, here we go...

Chapter 1 - Who this book is for (p. 17)
"This book is for you if you want to think analytically and learn to become a better Limit Hold'em player"

Chapter 1 - The Evolution of the Hold'em Player
Hold'em Habilis
Hold'em Erectus
Hold'em Sapiens
Hold'em Brain

I don't know if this is a joke or not. For me this seems just ridiculous and dragging this book on the Poker for Dummies level. A scientific book should work without such flat cathegories. David Sklansky has written a much better essay on the subject in Sklansky on Poker (p. 33)

Chapter 2 - The Players
It is about different player types, profiling them and drawing conclusions, conclusions like "Against players who are observant and adjust their play based on your play, you can vary your play to keep them off guard." Really? So we should use deception, but how do we do this? Any guidelines any tricks? Game Theory maybe? Of course not!
Overall this chapter is describing the obvious with a little bit of wisdom added from the various Poker Essays by Mason Malmuth and Theory of Poker.

Chapter 3 - EV
Nothing new here. If you have Tournament Poker for Advanced Players or SSHE, you can skip this chapter entirely.

Chapter 4 - Outs
Nothing new here either. If you have Hold'em Poker or SSHE, you can skip this as well.

Chapter 5 - Pot Odds
Nothing new here....am I repeating myself? Theory of Poker and SSHE have this covered, so no need to repeat what is well known already. DIPO is an attempt to provide something unique, but unfortunately others have pointed out already, that it is rather worthless.

Chapter 6 - Position
7 pages about why having position is good in Hold'em. Don't expect anything that makes you say "Wow! I was not aware of that".

Up to that point, we have already covered 100 pages of the book, 100 down - 250 to go.

Chapter 7 - 11 (50 pages)
Another repetition of the concepts that should be familiar to everyone from Theory of Poker, HEFAP and Hold'em Poker.

Something that stuck on me was "How often should you bluff" (p. 128). The author comes to the conclusion that something like 10% may be wrong, especially if you get called all the time. Basically there is zero information except that the author doesn't know it himself. I suggest to read page 166 in Theory of Poker.

Chapter 12 - Starting Hand Selection
It starts off with card combinations and a few all-in odds. I don't know what the purpose of this is because this is about Limit Hold'em and all-in is rather rare in this scenario. Also it is well known that computer simulations can lead to questionable results. At least it ends with the conclusion that starting hands can change in value.

Next follows some sort of playbook. The recommendations differ from the classical Sklansky Hand Groupings, so it is up to reader if he wants to give it a shot or not.

Whenever I read about detailed hand recommendations I get reminded of the quote in Ace on the River: "No need to be precise when you don't even know what you are talking about".

Chapter 13-15
42 pages to cover the play from the flop to the river!

Chapter 16
20 pages on hand reading with a small excerpt from Super System on double gut shot draws.

Chapter 17-18
30 pages on shorthanded play. Lots of general advice and almost nothing on heads-up play. I guess I prefer HEFAP on this subject.

Chapter 19
20 pages on Online Poker which also fall into the cathegory of general advice.

Chapter 20
20 pages on other topics like the "Monty Hall Problem". I switch to Door 3!

Honestly, I don't know what you expect from a book, but I expect more. Maybe I am too much of a 2+2 fanboi and my standards for quality may be too high for the average mortal to meet, I can't tell. All I can say is that if you have read the major 2+2 publications, then you simply don't need this book. If your background consists of stuff like WLLHE, it could be a welcome addition to your library /shrug

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No offense, but your review sucks. Somebody writes a chapter on pot odds and you say skip it, this is covered elsewhere. That's like saying, I went to church and someone said something about God so I left because I've already read the Bible.
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