Posts Tagged ‘book review’

I was inundated with requests for reviews over the holidays, so I asked a friend if he’d be interested in taking one of them. Thus, the review for Nathan Williams’ Crushing the Micro-Stakes can be found on Gareth Chantler’s blog. If you read the comments here on Thinking Poker, you know that Gareth’s got a great poker mind and expresses himself well, so I think you’ll enjoy his review, and I assure you that you can trust his opinion.

While you’re there, check out some of Gareth’s other posts as well. Like mine, his blog is a nice mix of strategy content and anecdotes from his travels. Gareth, originally from Canada, is currently backpacking through South America while playing a mix of live and online poker. He’s got some fascinating and funny stories that are well worth the read.

Just posted a review of No Limits: The Fundamentals of No-Limit Holdem by Chris “Fox” Wallace and Adam Stemple. Here’s the gist of it:

As a book for small stakes cash game players, it’s not bad, but not bad isn’t good enough when it’s covering ground already tread by great authors like Ed Miller and Dan Harrington. This was my second and more significant disappointment with No Limits: the authors write as though they are the first people to address the subject, when in fact several very good books covering the same concepts have already been written. There’s never any engagement with these other authors, never any attempt to compliment, criticize, or build on those who have gone before.

If you’re interested in reading more, check out the full review.

Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?

Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns ought to be required reading for all Americans, black or otherwise. It tells a story that most of us know tangentially but whose true scale and historical importance are appreciated by few. I should say that I haven’t quite finished it yet (it’s a thick one), but today being Martin Luther King Day, it seemed an appropriate time to post a review.

In the early to mid- twentieth century, millions of African-Americans departed the deep South, where many still worked as sharecroppers on the same plantations on which their ancestors slaved, to seek a better life in the metropolises of the North. The resulting demographic shifts were seismic: the black population in states like Mississippi and South Carolina decreased by more than a third, while that of Northern cities like Chicago and Detroit increased ten-fold in the space of a few decades. They sought better wages, equitable treatment, and the freedom to live and work where they pleased. What they found was a new set of hardships that, cold as their reception was, usually represented an improvement over the lynchings and Jim Crow culture of the South.

None of this is ground-breaking stuff, but it was always something that I vaguely knew without ever thinking much about. “The Great Migration” was never on the curriculum of any US history class I ever took… Read the full review.

I’ve just finished reading and reviewing Harrington on Online Cash Games, certainly one of the most anticipated poker books of the year. Here’s the two-minute version:

HOCG is the single best resource I’ve seen for anyone just starting out online or still learning to beat the microstakes games (i.e. stakes smaller than $.25/$.50). Though still good, the section on moving up to small stakes games ($.25/$.50 through $1/$2 blinds) is a lot less thorough and somewhat more hit-or-miss than the majority of the book, which is aimed at microstakes players. I’d recommend the book without qualification for anyone still aspiring to beat the microstakes. Others will need to approach the small stakes advice more critically, but there’s still a lot of good material to be found there.

Check out the full review!

My Two Minute Recommendation: Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time scores a 9/10. Three top players discuss nearly 200 real hands and address dozens of common mistakes that even experienced no-limit hold ‘em tournament players make. Read Harrington on Hold ‘Em first for a theoretical foundation, but read this book next to see the ideas in action.

I am one of those cash game players who likes to deride tournament specialists as uncreative “tourney donks” whose poker skill is limited to an encyclopedic knowledge of pre-flop shoving ranges. I half-expected that that would be my reaction to Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time by Jon “Pearljammer” Turner, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet.

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised.

These guys are among the best in the world at beating online tournaments full of weak players. There’s a temptation to look down my nose and say they don’t understand concepts like 3rd-level thinking or balancing, but honestly those just aren’t particularly important skills in these events. I wouldn’t stake these guys in a high rollers’ event or hire them to teach me cash game poker, but they beat the snot out of large-field poker tournaments, and in this book they teach you how to do the same in remarkably clear fashion.  Read the complete post...

My One Minute Recommendation- The Poker Blueprint gets an 8.5/10 for content but a 5/10 for presentation. It contains plenty of great material for players who need help beating smaller stakes online short-handed games, but I fear the often terse, jargon-laden explanations will be too confusing or overwhelming for many players who would otherwise benefit greatly from reading it.

Had Tri Nguyen and Aaron Davis published their e-book The Poker Blueprint several years ago, I would have recommended it in the strongest possible terms. It’s reminiscent of the Cardrunners videos of that era: an opportunity to peer into the mind of a great player but with no real effort at teaching rather than simply reciting information. The information is valuable, no doubt, but processing and making use of it will require a lot of work on the part of the reader. In this day and age, the same material is available in more user-friendly books and videos, so while the content of The Poker Blueprint is easily good enough to warrant the $47 price tag, I can’t offer a whole-hearted endorsement.  Read the complete post...

When I first heard that James McManus was working on a book about the history of poker, I was surprised that such a book had not yet been written and glad that McManus was the one writing it. His first poker book, Positively Fifth Street, is a personal favorite of mine, in no small part because he so compellingly presents the culture and lore of the World Series of Poker alongside the excitement of actually playing in the event. I expected that he would bring the game’s history to life in the same way while making insightful observations about its continued influence on American culture and politics.

While the grist for Cowboys Full is plenty interesting and contains more than a few entertaining stories. McManus’ specific treatment thereof is hit-or-miss. The historical chapters are mostly well-researched and -written, but the more contemporary ones feel rushed (on the author’s part) and laborious (for the reader). The former sections I enjoyed as a sort of anthology of obscure poker lore, particularly those focusing on the presidents and military leaders who loved the game. I found McManus’ treatment of present-day subjects such as the UIGEA, the WSOP, and the Ultimate Bet cheating scandal, however, to be long on trivialities and short on research and nuance.  Read the complete post...

I can’t say that I expected great things from the memoirs of a man who divided his life between the ranch, the pool table, and the poker table, and while it can’t be called great, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People is a surprisingly enjoyable diversion.

From his early days as a pool hustler and USO performer to his days on the road with Doyle Brunson and Sailor Roberts and his eventual victory in the World Series of Poker, Amarillo Slim surely led a memoir-worthy life. With the help of co-author Greg Dinkin, he shares his tales of daring hustles, outrageous proposition bets, and near-death experiences with both humor and humility.

Even accounting for Dinkin’s likely contributions, there’s no doubt that Slim is a great storyteller and an all-around smart guy. As one would expect from a professional hustler, he’s particularly sharp when it comes to human psychology. The book is full of advice about gambling and astute observations about human behavior, usually in the form of a moral to one of Slim’s countless gambling stories. As he puts it, “Gambling is a reflection of life. A man’s true character comes out when he’s sitting at the poker table- his strengths and weaknesses, his good traits and his faults. Whenever money is involved, you see the worst in people.” Slim even makes a few apt references to Freud, whom he calls “Ol’ Siggy.”  Read the complete post...