Review: The Science of Poker

[grapes]

This book is terrible - total nonsense. Amazon auto-recommended it to me, and I was curious, so I bought it.

Basically, it seems like someone who has never played poker bought Turbo Texas Hold'em, ran a bunch of simulations, and then printed them in a book, complete with terrible advice based on these statistics.

This is In fact exactly what happened, as he says on the first page of the introduction that his results come from simulations run on Wilson software, and then adds that some probabilities come from books like "Super Systems by Doyle Brunson." He also claims to have taken stats from " 'Formula Won' by Michael J Barry" which doesn't exist as far as I can tell.

For example, he says that if you have QTs and someone that you know has AKs raises in front of you, you have to call and at least see the flop. You should probably fold Q7s, but if you are against the AKs and three others then it is profitable. Q7s against AKs and three random hands wins 21% of showdowns according to Turbo TH; therefore you should call because 21% is more than one-fifth, and there's 5 total players. (hmm... is this where the nickname "computer hand" for Q7 came from?)

He refers to Omaha hands as "X-X-X-X(s)" and "X-X-X-X(o)", for suited and unsuited. Apparently, it doesn't matter which cards are suited in "A-9-8-7(s)".

He covers hold'em, omaha, and stud, each in limit and pot-limit. There's no mention of no-limit. Actually, that's probably for the best, that he covers games like pot-limit stud that aren't really played. That way his nonsense can't do any damage.

The author is an Iraqi native, according to the back cover, but you only need to read a few sentences to know this isn't the writing of a native English speaker. It's filled with grammatical mistakes, typos, and awkward phrases - at one point he calls another player's hand his "attainment." The organization isn't any better.

He divides hold'em hands into "pairs" and "non-pairs". The sub-categories under non-pairs are "ace-high hands," king-high, all the way down to 9-high and finally "8 high and lower hands." His insight on each type starts with "you will be dealt an X about 15% of the time", where X is whatever high-card hand he's talking about. Gee, thanks... I didn't notice a pattern forming after the ace, king, queen and jack were all "15% of the time."

The numerous statistics and charts in the book might still be helpful despite the nonsense around it, except that those are often useless, and other times not even fully specified (there's a chart in the stud section giving percentages of how 6c-7c-8c-9c on fourth street does against a pair, two pair, and trips - without saying what ranks those are). I ran simulations to verify four of his charts, and found most of the numbers off by 1-3%.

Returning books on amazon is a hassle, and I usually wouldn't bother for $20, but this one is going back on principle.

Total nonsense. Avoid this book.