[Ed Miller]

When Pokerroom.com first offered Chinese Poker, I bought Smolen's book and software to learn the game. It took me about a day of reading the book and practicing on the software until I was pretty good. I then proceeded to rip through the Pokerroom games until all the suckers had lost interest about a week later.

Smolen's approach to valuing a hand setting is not optimal (nor does he claim that it is), but I'd guess that it will provide you with the best setting a very large majority of the time. And when it gets it wrong, I think it's probably not wrong by too much.

Setting my hands the Smolen way (at least when I didn't screw it up.. hehe) allowed me to tear through the Pokerroom games. Suckers really have no chance in this game. I never came even close to having a losing night.

I don't know in what setting you plan to play Chinese Poker, but the game is just tricky enough that I bet a bunch of people you will play with will screw it up. Even if they are all good, the Smolen way will almost certainly allow you to hold your own while you wait for a different game.

One thing that Smolen doesn't discuss in his book or software is ADJUSTING your setting to take advantage of systematic mistakes your opponents might make. For instance, on Pokerroom, players tended to backload their hand, overloading the back and leaving the front very weak. So a correct adjustment would be sometimes to weaken your front hand a little bit if the weaker hand is still likely to beat whatever your opponents might have up front. Smolen doesn't address this sort of stuff.

I'd say that the software was far more valuable to me than the book. But the book is necessary if you hope to play correctly when you have two pair between the middle and front hands. Learning to do that is extremely tedious, though.

Anyway, AFAIK, Smolen's stuff is the only thing going. If you plan to play the game for any kind of money, it's almost certainly worth $60 (or whatever he charges) and day or two of your time.