Mason Book Reviews...Jacobs/Brier vs. HoH I + II

[tipperdog]

In his review of How Good Is Your Limit HE, Mason wrote:

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Third, I found the layout of the book to be awkward. Having the answers on separate pages that follow the problems made it necessary to frequently go back and forth between pages which in turn made the information somewhat difficult to read and retain. A better layout in my opinion is to have each answer immediately follow each question.


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Forgive me, but I must be somewhat of a jerk and note that the exact same criticism applies to HoH I & II.

I constantly found myself flipping between pages: "Who was player B again? Was the he the aggressive guy or the passive one? What was his chipstack?"

I thought the "table maps" in HoH were terrific, but I would suggest reprinting the maps in miniature form on subsquent pages when the problems require a page turn, as was usually the case later in the books.

[Beavis68]

in HOH the answer was always at the end of the proble, the problem may have covered a few pages, but what mason is talking about it a different issue.

[MicroBob]

HGIYLH is also confusing with the different hypotheticals in there.

I like how he is trying to convey how the decision will change with just a couple of different little factors mixed-up in there. But I think there could be a better way of doing this.

Not exactly sure how though because he's trying to look at how different situations would play out on each street. So it wouldn't really be appropriate to just throw all the different hypotheticals in there after the hand is over.

But I do think that with a little experimentation there HAS to be a better way.


And while we're tangentially on the topic of the HOH table-view diagram thingees.
I think it might be helpful if more poker-books had these (and they don't have to be quite so large as they are in HOH if space or page-count is a concern).


I'm thinking specifically of GSIH where I believe it might be difficult for some newbs to figure out the previous action just based on text (since they aren't used to visualizing such text).


but I think this could have proven especially helpful for Jacobs book (and would have made it look bigger too!)

[ddubois]

I'm reading HGIYLH now, and I think it's excellent. The scoring system really drives me to keep reading it, because I'm a hardcore gamer, and getting the best score always provokes my motivation for any activity. (I'm actually quite agitated due to the number of questions I've gotten 'wrong'! I'm getting far too many scores in the 80s for my ego to handle.)

I agree the hypotheticals detract from the flow. I think had they been formatted better it might have helped. For instance, they could have been indented, and/or perhaps, placed into a separating box with a shaded background, to pull them out of the flow of the actual hand.

But I love the format, and would buy a sequel.

[dragon14]

I strongly prefer having the answers apart from the questions. I don't want to have to use a notecard or piece of paper to hide the answers. I don't understand why anyone would make a quiz book where the answer is visible immediately below.

[ptmusic]

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I strongly prefer having the answers apart from the questions. I don't want to have to use a notecard or piece of paper to hide the answers. I don't understand why anyone would make a quiz book where the answer is visible immediately below.

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Agreed! I think nearly every poker book I've read has this problem. You don't see many university textbooks use this format.

[Iron Tigran]

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I strongly prefer having the answers apart from the questions. I don't want to have to use a notecard or piece of paper to hide the answers. I don't understand why anyone would make a quiz book where the answer is visible immediately below.

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[trojanrabbit]

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I strongly prefer having the answers apart from the questions. I don't want to have to use a notecard or piece of paper to hide the answers. I don't understand why anyone would make a quiz book where the answer is visible immediately below.

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[MCS]

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I strongly prefer having the answers apart from the questions. I don't want to have to use a notecard or piece of paper to hide the answers. I don't understand why anyone would make a quiz book where the answer is visible immediately below.

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(I really do agree. I'm not just copying the others.)

[SamG]

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I strongly prefer having the answers apart from the questions. I don't want to have to use a notecard or piece of paper to hide the answers. I don't understand why anyone would make a quiz book where the answer is visible immediately below.

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(I really do agree. I'm not just copying the others.)

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