Straight Flush
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Ballarat, Australia
Posts: 5,842
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Finished this book a few days ago. Time for the review.
Wow, this book rocks. I'm really torn on moving this ahead of NLHE-T&P its that good. Very comprehensive, very detailed, and the information seems really solid.
Starts off with a "Poker Basics" section, which is fairly light. Runs through what you need to know (to be honest I skipped most of it), but it obviously wants to be a book for people who already have some idea of how to play without isolating newbies altogether. It probably covers everything a newer player needs to know though.
Then we get into the meat of things. A really good overview of things you need to know about poker. This is really nice. By no means is this a "starting hands chart" book, its intended to actually teach you poker. Covers things like stack sizes, pot sizes, pot commitment, hand reading, meta-game, stuff like that. A lot of the issues covered in PNL but not as comprehensively.
The rest of the book is directed at teaching Tight Aggressive play preflop and postflop, with the postflop play split into HU and multiway pots. He uses the randomisation approach similar to HOH books, with a lot more examples. Its really nice, he'll go through an example where you raise PF with an example hand, then run through multiple types of flops, and multiple scenarios for each type of flop, with his suggestions.
He does set things out in a "This is what I'd do" kind of way, but mostly thats balancing his actions (eg: 70% call, 20% fold, 10% raise), but I dont think he really expects you to play exactly his way, just get an idea of situations where you'd mostly do one thing and how you'd mix things up a bit. Gives you an idea of how to think about spots and the things you should take into consideration.
After all the example scenarios he then does the Problems anyone whos read HOH would be familiar with. Sets up a situation, reads on relevant players, gives you a starting hand then walks through actions PF and Postflop (Both what he'd recommend and what actually happened in that example).
Finishes abruptly so its obvious that it really is one book split into two. Havnt even read the blurb on vol 2 so not sure what the split is, but looking foward to reading it.
On the whole I think this was a really comprehensive coverage of poker in general and TAG play in particular. Lots of useful concepts that can be applied in your game readily. I'm not sure there were any real "Wow!" eye opening bits in there for me, but there were lots of little nuggets that could all improve my game, and the advice was well explained.
I think this could be a first book for someone. Makes it hard when I already know so many concepts to picture how someone new to the game would go with it, but I think theres enough stuff in there to walk them through it. Definitely good for someone with a couple months experience looking to improve their game. I'm not entirely sure if I'd recommend this over NLHE-T&P but its pretty close. I suspect if you just want to buy one book get NLHE-T&P, but if you're prepared to buy two then get both volumes of HoC. I'll probably comment on this when I review (after reading) volume 2.
I really think you'd want to read this book again and again. You'd want your own copy rather than just borrowing someone elses.
On a sidenote, I heard someone say they've read reviews saying that the book recommends (too?) tight play preflop and postflop. I'd disagree. For advice aimed at FR (by the looks of it), his play/advice seems closer to 6-max ranges to me. If anything he encourages you to not give up too easily postflop (while still being aware of pot commitment and other issues when you may be behind).
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