Product Description: Texas Hold ’em is not an easy game to play well. To become an expert you must balance many concepts, some of which occasionally contradict each other. In 1988, the first edition appeared. Many ideas, which were only known to a small, select group of players, were made available to anyone who was striving to become an expert, and the hold ’em explosion had begun. It is now a new century, and the authors have again moved the state of the art forward by adding over 100 pages of new material, including extensive sections on "loose games," and "short-handed games." Anyone who studies this text, is well disciplined, and gets the proper experience should become a significant winner. Some of the other ideas discussed include play on the first two cards, semi-bluffing, the free card, inducing bluffs, staying with a draw, playing when a pair flops, playing trash hands, desperation bets, playing in wild games, reading hands, and psychology.
Don'y buy this if you're after advice on NO LIMIT HOLDEM Primarily for LIMIT HOLDEM not for no limit (which is my prefernace). This wasn't clear in the descriptive text. Excellent for Limit PLayers, but essentially a very different game than "NO LIMIT". For No LIMIT POKER you can do alot better than this.
Something You Cannot Read Just Once This book is extremely good for gaining a solid foundation of Texas Hold 'em. I read it on and off for around 6 months and realized that while I learned some valuable lessons and picked up important bits of information I need to read it over and over again to truly take in everything that is being said. For me it is like a good movie that you see once and figure you saw it all only to watch it again and pick up something new, then a while later watch it again and see even more that was missed.
I highly recommend this book for students of the game. This is essential reading if you want to compete seriously. Even if you think you know it all and the book makes sense, read it carefully and understand that many serious players have read, re-read and learned significantly from this and the other classics. It will help your game.
read, study, play, reread Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players is simply the best single volume study of Hold 'em as it is played today that I have ever read. It is endlessly informative, rich in detail and illustrations, complex in its treatment of complicated concepts, and insightful in every important way. It omits nothing of any importance to the game.
The book begins with a consideration of general starting hands requirements, adjusted for playing style, position, etc., and follows through on the play of each, as well as general considerations for each type or class of hand, and its relation to the innumerable factors impacting expectation or the play of other. Once this analysis is dealt with, Sklansky deals with a whole series of more individual or isolated cases or concepts and miscellaneous topics. The important details considered are too many to list here; Hold 'em played well is an enormously complex game, and Sklansky addresses it from every angle.
Sklansky's writing style is very dense. He does not blather on about his personal experiences, drop names, or chat; he instructs in the style of a particularily dry math or statistics professor. He is direct, thorough, and exhaustive (sometimes exhausting). You will not read this book in one sitting and become a professional caliber player. You need to play, then return to the book and read much of it again; upon doing so the reader will find, again and again, that now he finally really understands some new concept. It is a work of extremely subtle and complex analysis.
Nobody playing Hold 'em for money today can do without this book.
You'll get a big edge I really am not a fan of the reviews, but I feel that I have the obligation to recommend this book because if you read it, you will understand better the others players' game, and the best of it you'll get a big edge over them.
Excellent
I was constantly breaking even before getting this book on online poker sites. After reading it, I took nearly all of the guesswork out of my playstyle and recently just bought a new guitar entirely with winnings.
I recommend this book to anyone who already considers themselves decent at poker and already has good intuition as to spotting how others play to determine what they have... or don't have. This book will not probably help you with those things. This book is best for those who are already good at poker but either have their game strategy wrong or off a little.
The best part of this book is it makes it much more easy to spot poor play from other people at your table and thus allows you to profit hugely from that.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
