Book Review: Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth

[folded_a_monster]

I think if you take the holdem advice he gives and apply it to a 3, 4, 5, or maybe 6 handed game, the advice holds up. I play limit holdem shorthanded online and I play it very aggressively and do quite well. I don't know if these are the types of games Phil is used to, but calling 3 bets from the bb with QJs and capping preflop with 88 is not bad strategy shorthanded if you want to maintain a loose table image (jackal), which will help you get paid off on all your big hands (you will get called down by K high for example). His PLO advice is also very good for the most part, and some concepts are new. I like how he explains the mistakes he made in the past and why they were wrong, such as raising on the flop with a good wrap, which is one of the more common mistakes you see in PLO. Also, counting your outs and knowing how many you need to justify a call at each stage of the hand. And finally, some of the stuff on Omaha 8/b was good, but it's not really a hard game to figure out. The different strategies he describes that he and other pros have experimented with were kind of funny, such as the guy who played every hand and still made money. I would say there's some redeemable advice in the book, but you have to know what to separate from the crap. It seems to me from watching him play and reading the book that Phil is a fairly impatient player who likes the action and plays post-flop better than most, and that type of player can't really "teach" what he does because it's mostly instinctual. I think he might have just phoned it in and collected a paycheck for the most part here, but like I said, it's at least worth a read.