Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: This is a great book if you know a lot about poker. The first time I read this book I was very confused about the concepts within the chapters. However, once I played at the casinos, EVERYTHING made perfect sense. My game has greatly improved because of this book.
One thing to be cautious of: many of these concepts relate to higher stakes tables. Even 5-10 tables may have too many players who are not good enough to use these strategies on. Also, if you like to play poker but do not have much experience at casino tables, you will have difficulty reading this. I read a few of these chapters a couple of times when I first got it because it is truley for ADVANCED players!
Overall, if you are a good player and want to become great, this book will definitely help. It is a great book with MANY different concepts.

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Summary: advanced...
Review: advanced players do not need this book... dont waste your time

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Summary: This book changed my life!
Review: Before I read this book, I was losing regularly in the poker rooms of Las Vegas. Since studying the concepts discussed in the text, I am now WINNING regularly. Now when I bet or raise, not only am I confident that I'm making the correct play, but I know WHY it is the correct play.

Sklansky and Malmuth take a simple, step-by-step approach. They can explain even the most complicated mathematics in easy-to-understand language.

If you want to take poker seriously, read all the Sklansky, Malmuth, and Caro that you can get your hands on. If you play Texas Hold'em, read this book first.

Rating:
Summary: Without a Doubt a GREAT BOOK
Review: Buy it, learn it and play better. This book is perhaps one of the best in poker. It won't teach you to win huge amounts of money but you won't lose any money. You'll win a pot once an hour or so but consistently and you'll be happy doing it as you get better.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: Everytime I go back to this book I alway find holes in my game. This is a must read book especially if you are planing to move up to $10-$20 or higher. While reading the book I've seen how a certain play was used against me. I also recommend Mike Caro's book The bodylanguage of poker. That book alone paid for my last trip to Las Vegas.

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Summary: It's called "Advanced" for a reason - read other books first
Review: For people just surfing a list of poker titles, you will have a hard time understanding this book if you don't have a grounding in basic poker theory and some game-specific reference material already. Most of the terminology used by Sklansky and Malmuth is explained in detail in _The Theory of Poker_. For an easily read and perhaps more clearly written introduction to Texas Hold'em, I recommend _Hold'em Excellence_ by Lou Krieger or _Winning Low-Limit Hold'em_ by Lee Jones.

Both of the basic books came after this book, however, and both pay extensive tribute to its lessons. It makes sense to read the simplified versions first, and then progress to this.

An example of the different level of detail can be found with discussions of how to play a pair of jacks before the flop. Lee Jones tells you to raise with it in early position, and reraise the pot if it gets to you beforehand - which itself is sound advice, because you want to make worse hands pay to catch cards that beat yours. However, Sklansky sees it differently and goes further in explaining himself. "If no one has opened and you are in an early position, it is usually best to raise with JJ in a tight game and to just call with it in a loose game. With two jacks you would prefer either to have no more than one or two opponents in the hope your hand holds up without improvement, or to have as many opponents in the pot as possible when the majority of your profits come from flopping three-of-a-kind. The worst scenario is when exactly three or four opponents see the flop with you. This most likely would occur if you called in a tight game or raised in a loose game." This won't sink in nearly so well until you've built some good fundamental assumptions about playing the game and put in some hours of playing and thinking.

No book will make you a strong player by itself, as Sklansky will point out in the introduction to any book on poker he's ever written. However, if you've read the Krieger and Jones texts a few times and come out a winner after six months of hold'em at the $3-$6/$4-$8 level, you might want to invest in this as your spring training before taking a shot at $10-$20 stakes and higher.

Rating:
Summary: Hold 'Em
Review: Great book. NOT! It was terrible. The dude was talking Chinese.

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Summary: The Best Book Ever Written on Hold'em - BAR NONE
Review: Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players has certainly been one of the most influential poker books ever written, it has literally changed how people have played this game. Moreover, this book has, in large part, set the standard by which other poker books have been judged. Now, a much expanded new edition for the 21st century has been released.

The book starts with several short preliminary sections, including the Forward by expert player Ray Zee, the Introduction, and a section called "Using This Book". The reader is warned immediately that this book should not be read casually. It is intended as a text book on Texas Hold'em and will need to be studied as a text, not read as one would a novel, if the reader is to maximize the benefit of the material within.

Then, the first of eight sections begins, covering the play of the first two cards. This includes the now famous hand ranking table. The authors recommend which sorts of hands to play in various positions but emphasize that it is not sufficient to just play well before the flop to be a winning player. The second section covers various important concepts about which the Hold'em player must be aware, including Semi-Bluffing, Slow Playing, the Check Raise, Inducing Bluffs, and many more. The third section covers a wide variety of topics, including playing when a flush draw flops, playing trash hands, playing against a maniac, etc.. Most of these sections were classics when they were written. They're even better now that they've been updated to more closely reflect the sorts of games that are commonly found in card rooms today.

Sections four through six cover playing in all sorts of non-standard games, and this is the area where the book has been most greatly expanded since its original printing. We learn about playing in loose games, including so-called "No Fold'em" games, playing short handed, and playing in other unusual circumstances. All of this information is very interesting and has been updated to be much more closely aligned to the sorts of games commonly found today. Of course, there is much more that could be said on some of these topics, such as playing in spread limit games, but the authors cover a lot of territory already. I especially like the new sections that cover considerations in playing some especially tricky starting hands, like AQoff.

Part seven includes commentary on other skills the successful Hold'em player will want to possess, such as reading hands and applying psychology. Finally, the last section, Questions and Answers, provides a quiz covering much of the material presented in earlier chapters so the reader can test themselves to see whether they've understood what the authors were trying to communicate. I've always felt that this was one of the strongest sections of this book and other publications by Two Plus Two, and I'm glad to see that it has been greatly expanded in the most recent edition. The book ends with some concluding remarks, an appendix on calculating probabilities, and a glossary.

Of course, Sklansky and Malmuth have never shied away from controversy. There was plenty for Hold'em players to debate in the first edition of this book, and there is certainly much one could fairly argue about in this edition. Although I wouldn't compare my strategic understanding of the game to the authors, there are strategies suggested in this book that I'm not certain are optimal, and I'm sure many people will argue the minutia of these many times over. However, I'm less interested in the specific merit of the play of a single controversial hand than I am in the strategic concepts the authors are trying to teach. While I might quibble about whether that strategic concept is applicable in an example that they provide, I never get the feeling that the strategic concept itself is questionable. One of the great things about Texas Hold'em is that there are so many possible ways to play a given hand, and that great players can disagree on these points. The way one can tell a great player from a mediocre one is whether they can accurately read the situation and take into account the strategic concepts that need to be applied at the moment, much more so than whether they bet, raise, check or fold. One would be well advised, in my opinion, to keep this in mind while reading this book.

Clearly, this book is a classic, and I doubt there are very many successful limit Texas Hold'em players playing today who do not own a copy of one of the earlier editions. Certainly, those that plan to play Hold'em well should own a copy of this work and read it several times. The big question is whether owners of previous revisions of this book should upgrade to the 21st Century Edition. Note that this is the third update of this work, the original was published in 1988, it was updated in 1994, and the current version was released in the summer of 1999. I have only the 1988 and 1999 editions, so I can only speak to those.

By my count, 150 pages have been added to the 182 page 1988 edition. In addition to new sections, there are minor changes to reflect how the game has evolved over the years and to emphasize concepts that caused some conclusion in earlier editions. Overall, given the changes that have been made to the 21st Century Edition from the first edition, I would recommend that those people who are serious about their Hold'em game and have read the 1988 edition upgrade their copies of this book. Although I do not have enough information to make the same claim for the 1994 edition, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was worth upgrading from the second edition as well.

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Good Luck and Play Well,
PokerMan

Rating:
Summary: Horribly Written and About 50% Unhelpful
Review: I am an advanced player, and I can tell you: this book is not very helpful to the great majority of readers. Sklansky and Malmuth certainly seem to know alot about poker. But they just don't know how to communicate their ideas in a useful fashion. (As they acknowledge in the book, they decided to self-publish rather than employ an editor to help put their knowledge into reader-friendly shape.)

Some of their recommendations are obvious (i.e., raising with two aces), but that is okay: how-to books are supposed to do that. But much of their advice is of this type: "In this situation, you should definitely call. However, sometimes a raise is the correct play, and on other occasions you should fold just to mix up your play." This kind of "advice" mixes up only the READER. And the authors neuter some advice by hinging it on the personal characteristics of the remaining players (i.e., whether they are likely to fold, call or raise.) Reading your opponents is an important aspect of poker, but that is something (1) learned only through a great deal of experience and (2) impossible for even experts to do without having played with the other players. Finally, as others (and the authors) have noted, the book is not well-written or organized.

I give the book 2 stars because about 50 of the 300+ pages really does contain useful information. But you have to wade through alot of mishmash to find it.

There are lots of other books out there that present USEFUL information to players from novice to advanced. You should seek them out instead.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing
Review: I consider myself an above average player who was looking to take my game to the next level. I hoped this book would take me there, but I found it too confusing. The normal tip goes something like this: In this certain situation, you may want to consider checking or raising, unless you think the bettor may be bluffing or is tight aggressive, in which case a strong play would be to check-raise. If you're in an early position, definitely think about folding, but the blinds may want to call half the time, however only if the pot odds are right and 4 other conditions are met... Now take 150 similar -sophisticated- plays, and thats the contents of the book.

Would I recommend this to others? Well, certain players may want to consider buying it, while about 1 in 3 may want to think about checking with their friends first to see if they have a copy. A good play might be to consider a used copy, but only if the price is below the normal buy-in of their weekly game. Most should consider folding, however, a small percent of the time you should buy 2 or more copies for your friends to confuse them for the next game.

Note: No limit is not covered.