Review: The Science of Poker

[grapes]

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The book is by no means perfect, but as I said it does contain some valuable information you can add to your game if you don't rely on it entirely.

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Okay, I will agree with this, that there is some potentially useful information in the book.

There is quite a bit of bad advice too though, and I haven't heard anyone argue this point.

The problem is that the harm done by poor advice very quickly negates the value of the good information. If a book contained 90% good info and 10% bad, most people would be better off not reading it at all.

If a player is experienced enough to be able to recognize and ignore the bad stuff, then it's probably not as harmful, but most people reading a book don't already know the material well enough to do that. But if that's the case, then they're not the intended audience to begin with.

I would contend that if you took a relatively new player working to improve and gave him a justification for cold-calling raises from tight players with hands like QT or Q7, that's just about the worst, most harmful advice you could give - but that's exactly the impression he's likely to get from this book.

Malmuth has written about this idea, that even a little incorrect information or bad advice can easily make a poker book worthless or harmful to a reader. I think it was published in one of the Poker Essays volumes, but I couldn't find it after a quick check...

[bygmesterf]

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

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It's not the first book you should read, but I think it has excellent coverage of the topic of flop analysis.

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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.

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Sort of, Mahmood is a regular in london poker scene. He's good friends with Stewart Reuben of PL/NL Fame.

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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.

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Well, SOP is book that pretty much doesn't talk about playing tactics at all(except for PL betting). It's strictly a book about making +EV decisions without considering playing tactics. It's not at all comperable to an 2+2 book.

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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.

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If and only if there are three or more people in the pot. Go read pages 113-14 again. With Q7s he points out that the hand is worthless if less than 4 people are in the pot, and not at all good even if 4 people are in. And the general message is that such hands really aren't worth playing.

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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)".

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It's implied that the ace is suited. If you like to play 9 high flushes at PLO, then this book can't help you.

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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.

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In europe PL poker is far far more common than NL of any sort. PL Stud is/used to be quite popular in England and much of the rest of Europe. The section on PL Hold'em is IMHO excellent and really compliments Ciaffone's/Reubens "PL/NL Poker".

The stud section is basicly like Othmer's 7stud book, and again gives you alot of the math that is missing fron 7CSFAP.

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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.

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He's writing in standard BBC English, and uses some british poker slang as well (Middle pin straight etc). The guy is british, and writing for a british audience. You can see some of the same stuff in stewart reubens sections of PL/NL poker.

Your typical educated englishman uses a somewhat larger vocabulary and more formal words than a typical american of equal education.

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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).

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It's not very relavent what the exact holdings are. If you play alot of seven stud, it's ofen important to know what "class" somone hand is vs it's exact composition.

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Total nonsense. Avoid this book.

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Oh well, I think this is one of the few books in my poker library that has paid for itself many times over.

[bygmesterf]

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Although I do not consider it a complete exposition on the various games discussed, I still believe it to be a valuable contribution. And I am giving opinions based upon actually having read the book.

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Shhhhhh, don't let actually having read the book get in the way of groupthink.

[grapes]

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It's not the first book you should read <snip>

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Or the second, or third, or 47th...

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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.

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Sort of, Mahmood is a regular in london poker scene. He's good friends with Stewart Reuben of PL/NL Fame.

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That's surprising to me, and interesting. I've heard that a few times in response to my original review.

It honestly seemed to me from reading it that he was an academic-type with no understanding of poker, but maybe he just conveys his ideas poorly in writing.

Or, maybe he really does have no understanding of the game. I've seen two mentions now that he's a regular, but none that he actually wins.

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.

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Well, SOP is book that pretty much doesn't talk about playing tactics at all(except for PL betting). It's strictly a book about making +EV decisions without considering playing tactics. It's not at all comperable to an 2+2 book.

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Huh? This is the major problem with the book. Poker is not blackjack. "Making +EV decisions" cannot be done in a vacuum, disregarding the other players at the table yet to act, whether there might be a reraise, how passive or aggressive the others are, your position, how future betting rounds might play out, and all the other factors that make poker, well, poker. You can't even begin to guess at EV without considering all these other factors, which Mahmood blissfully ignores.

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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.

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If and only if there are three or more people in the pot. Go read pages 113-14 again. With Q7s he points out that the hand is worthless if less than 4 people are in the pot, and not at all good even if 4 people are in. And the general message is that such hands really aren't worth playing.

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Again, you can't just disregard who the other players are and how they play. What if they are all tight and aggressive, with a decent chance that you'll get reraised? According to yours and Mahmood's logic, it doesn't seem to matter if it's capped, you can still call with the same Q7s, because a showdown simulator says it will win more than 1/5 against random hands - which totally ignores that there are betting rounds after the flop, and that not everyone always calls every bet all the way to the end.

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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)".

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It's implied that the ace is suited. If you like to play 9 high flushes at PLO, then this book can't help you.

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It's "implied." Hmm... every other book I've ever seen on any Omaha variant didn't think it was so obvious that suits could be ignored. So hands couldn't be double-suited? Having 4 of the same suit is just as good as two?

Also, there are times you do play 9-high flushes at PLO, despite your insult. Say you have As-9d-8d-7s, and the flop comes 5d-6d-2s, or 7d-7c-2d. Or are the extra flush outs automatically worthless here too, enough to ignore how you'd play the hand?

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The stud section is basicly like Othmer's 7stud book, and again gives you alot of the math that is missing fron 7CSFAP.

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That's a terrible insult to Othmer and his excellent book. He worked hard to give useful and insightful statistics and charts, with fully specified hands, accompanied by worthwhile analysis in the surrounding text.

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He's writing in standard BBC English, and uses some british poker slang as well (Middle pin straight etc). The guy is british, and writing for a british audience.

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Also not true. I've read several of Reuben's books, as well as lots of non-poker books by Brits. Many times I didn't even know until afterward that the writer was non-American. The more formal English style works especially well on the written page and is usually a pleasure to read.

Mahmood's writing is not much better than the average person who's only exposure to the language is a crash course in English as a Second Language.

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It's not very relavent what the exact holdings are. If you play alot of seven stud, it's ofen important to know what "class" somone hand is vs it's exact composition.

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I do play a lot of stud, and I strongly disagree. (44)7 and (44)A are much different starting hands in stud, as is (4A)4. Or, are they all the same, as well as hands like (AA)K? After all, they're all "one-pair" hands, which is as much detail as Mahmood gives.

In the example of 6c-7c-8c-9c against different hands, it makes a huge difference whether it's against (TT)55 or (22)33, and how many of the club outs are in the other hands.

In most stud situations, exactly what the cards are makes a huge difference. Three flushes on third vary a lot in value depending on how big the cards are - (AsKs)4s is a big hand, (7s2s)4s is junk. See Othmer for a good, lengthy discussion of how seemingly slight differences are actually huge - like how, in a multi-way pot, the difference between AA and QQ on third is huge, and about the same as the difference between QQ and 44.

[binions]

Agree - it's worthless. I sold it already.

[CORed]

Showdown equity has to be discounted, because some of the wins in a showdown simulation come from hands that you would fold (unless all-in) in a real poker game. With the QTs example, how strongly are you going to play a Q high or T high flop against a preflop raiser? As another poster has pointed out, you don't know he has AK. He might have AA, KK QQ, AQ or KQs, all hands against which one or both of your top pair hands are in trouble.You might have slightly more than fair share equity in a showdown simulation, but I don't think you have +EV in a real limit poker game.