Book Review: Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth

[Mason Malmuth]

Play Poker Like the Pros (1 & 6) by Phil Hellmuth. This text covers most poker games played in major cardrooms. It includes three chapters on limit hold ’em strategy, and one strategy chapter each on no limit and pot limit hold ’em, limit hold ’em tournaments, Omaha eight-or-better, pot limit Omaha, seven-card stud, razz, and seven-card stud eight-or-better.

To accurately review the book, the three limit hold ’em strategy chapters need to be separated from the rest of the text. Simply put, this is some of the most bizarre advice I have ever read. Here we are told to cap the betting with hands like ace-queen and a pair of sevens, but “you might want to back off” if a timid player raises or reraises, to three bet with small pairs, always raise if first in with ace-little suited, and to usually call three bets out of either blind with queen-jack suited or jack-ten suited. The play on the flop and beyond is also incredibly aggressive. And, in my view, I don’t believe anyone can win in full ring games playing like this in the long run. However, on a given night, this maniac aggressive approach could produce a lot of chips if you run extremely lucky.

The rest of the book is actually quite different (and thus the dual rating). Now most of the advice is pretty reasonable, and I even thought the chapter on limit hold ’em tournaments was very good. But there were still some thoughts that I disagreed with. Two examples are to usually start with the best hand in seven-card stud and to call for two bets cold on fourth street in razz when you catch bad and your two opponents both catch good. (That’s because the pot will almost always be capped here. Also, Hellmuth does give some stud exceptions, but there are far more exceptions than he seems to realize.)

There are also two other problems with the book. The first is that virtually nothing is said about how to play in multiway pots. This may have something to do with the fact that large multiway pots, which are common in standard ring games, don’t develop very often in tournament play, and the author is mainly a tournament player. But it is still a major omission.

The second problem has to do with the book itself. Even though it is called Play Poker Like the Pros, almost all the material is at a beginner level. So even though the non-limit hold ’em material is okay, there is a lot more to playing these games than what appears here.

[Jedi Poker]

If you were to rate the no-limit/pot-limit holdem section separately, what would the rating be on the scale of 1 to 10?

[Zeno]

"Even though it is called Play Poker Like the Pros, almost all the material is at a beginner level. So even though the non-limit hold ’em material is okay, there is a lot more to playing these games than what appears here. "

It is possible that "deliberate" omissions were made when writing the book. The possible reasons are, I think, obvious. But, in addition, this raises the specter of duplicity throughout the conception and writing of the book. Is Mr. Hellmuth a boob when it comes to some important poker concepts? Does Phil really play in the style presented in his book; is the book to be taken very seriously and by corollary is Phil to be taken seriously?

I do not really know how much credence should be given to my comments; I state them as a springboard for discussion.

-Zeno

[jim grass]

I definitely agree Mason the book is starter material.
Some of the info is downright ridiculous.
I was really disappointed in this book.

jim

[CreamPuff]

It is possible that "deliberate" omissions were made when writing the book. The possible reasons are, I think, obvious.

I assume you are implying Phil may not want to reveal
trade secrets...I doubt that the case if there is such
a thing..Roy Cooke however, once stated he did leave a few
of his secrets out of his writings.
If there was such a hush-hush, never reveal to the
general public type secret, it would probably be
along the lines of giving applicable demonstrations
of applying Bayes Theorom or maybe even various examples
of pot-odds/implied odds with more cards to come(Would have been nice to have Theory of Poker elaborate more on these 2 topics pertaining to Holdem)
..Which in itself are not real secrets. Just harder to explain..But I suppose if entire books were written on
the 2 above subjects games would get even tougher (Throw
in counter-strategies pertaining to specific opponent
types and the competition could become outright scary).

My personal opinion is that all 3 of the above topics
go above Phil's head...(played with him 3-4 times on UB).

Case in point: WPT tournie where he faced off vs. the
magician...Long story short, this guy kept playing
back at Phil...Bluffing..bullying.. and calling him.
Phil never adjusted..Just kept playing his cards,
the same way he would have regardless of who was
on his left.
(God I love to bash Phil..Its true..This is my 3rd post)

As for his limit skills, here is an excerpt from
my post on 9/5/02:

************************************************** *********
Man oh man.... World Class?

Phil and Men were all over the place shorthanded.
Talk about over-playing their hands.......
.3 Betting every opportunity preflop.
Phil was almost as bad.

I don't care how many drinks they had, they just basically
didn't have world class CARD SENSE. They were avg. at best.

************************************************** *********
Now having said that, the guy has a great tournament record.
He must be doing something right....I hear he's got no
shot vs the top ring no-limit players.
It'd be interesting to hear from you Mason on what
you speculate he's doing right...Is he an avg.
no-limit player with great tourn. skills?
Is he one of those players that are great at extracting
money from the dead-money players, yet struggle vs
the world class competition?

[adam74]

I think he gives it a 6.

[adam74]

I assume you are implying Phil may not want to reveal trade secrets...I doubt that the case

If you have the book, read the foreword that Phil wrote to 'Tournament Poker' by Tom McEvoy. It makes for quite amusing reading in this new context.

Choice quotes:

"I begged Tom not to write this book because I knew that once this inside information leaked out to poker-players, it would be a lot tougher to win a tournament."

"...I now know he [Tom] is missing a peg! Why else would someone who is going to win millions of dollars in tournaments in the future write a book that will help the field catch up with him?"

"I don't like this book very much! Why write a boring book about theory? Instead, why not write one about real-life occurrences in poker?"

LOL! [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[Cyrus]

I don't know Hellmuth from Adam, but I have learned to respect results. And Hellmuth has the results. Is he doing something right? Sure he is. He must be doing something exceptionally right!

Does this mean that he's necessarily also a good teacher of the game? A sharp mathematical mind maybe? An error-free player? An all-round good guy perhaps?

No, it doesn't mean any of the above.

[WiredPair]

I'm still a newbie, but have read numerous books at this point and just read Phil's book this weekend. I agree that the material was very basic. His three chapters on limit hold'em went through "basic" "intermediate" and "advanced" strategy. I was very disappointed in that the main differences were simply his starting hand recommendations. In addition, he really only had about one paragraph devoted to position.

Obviously he is doing something right as he is a very successful player. Like any book I read, I try to retain the concepts that make sense to me and incorporate them into my game. If nothing else, it is interesting to see how some of the pros approach the game.

[Georgia Peach]

I'm reading it now and I'm enjoying it. It's probably because I am a beginner and it's a much easier read than TOP, which I read and re-read, but sometimes it's just very heavy stuff.

Anyway, there are flaws in Phil's book to be sure, but I like the attitude he endorses which is to aggressively attack with good starting hands. In my first B&M experience I was very passive and I think my next foray may not be any more profitable, but it will be to act tight-aggressive.

So, for the beginners, I recommend it as a good way to start and then tackle TOP.