Comment on Greenstein Rating

[benfranklin]

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Inside the Poker Mind covers a lot of these non-strategic topics in more depth.

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OTOH, John Feeney doesn't play 4/8k, does he?

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Neither does anyone here.

[MaxPower]

I there is a lot of value in the book in both the strategy and non-strategy sections but you have to find it yourself. Some of the play examples really have me thinking. I am having trouble understanding a few of them which is a good thing.

I think the main problem with the book is that it doesn't really know who its audience is. Is it the general reader? high-stakes players? beginning players? recreational players?

If the audience is high-stakes players then why include very basic information about who to tip in the casino and the definition of a railbird? If it is beginning players, why include hand examples where you are playing against someone who is capable of folding jacks-up to a raise on the river?

What makes SSH and HPFAP such usefull books is they they know who their audience is. I know that Barry Greenstein had family members involved in the editing of the book, but I think it would have come out better if another editor was involved.

[benfranklin]

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Mason's correct in that the book was marketed as an advanced strategy guide, but turned out to primarily be a meta-meta-game guide.

I was disappointed.

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Mason did not say that the book was marketed as a strategy guide. What he said was:

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the problem has to do with exactly what you, the reader, were expecting from this book as opposed to what this book is.

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In fact, the book had very little marketing, which may have added to the confusion. The only hard information on the book, prepublication, was the table of contents posted on Barry's site. It was fairly obvious from that TOC that the book was not a strategy text.

Mason also says that the subtitle can be misleading. I agree, but that is as a result of what people infer from it, as opposed to what Barry implies by it. The subtitle is "An Advanced Poker Guide". Too many people read that as "An Advanced Poker Strategy Guide".

I haven't read the book yet, but I intend to. I am not discouraged by all the negative reviews in the many different threads here, because most of them say essentially the same thing: the book is not what I wanted it to be.

[Shandrax]

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Inside the Poker Mind covers a lot of these non-strategic topics in more depth.

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OTOH, John Feeney doesn't play 4/8k, does he?

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Neither does anyone here.

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What I don't get is this: If the book was written for the high stakes pro then it is actually kinda funny. Imagine you would be such a player with a bankroll of a couple of million dollars and then you can buy vital cruical important advice to improve your game for just 25 bucks. Must be either a bargain or some sarcastic joke.

[Rudbaeck]

It wasn't written for the other extreme high stakes players. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[olliejen]

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What I don't get is this: If the book was written for the high stakes pro...

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i think rather than thinking about it this way, think of it as, it's written "from the perspective of a high stakes player, about what that world is like"

the audience then, is people interested in that subculture. Some will be complete novices, others hobbyists, and still others aspiring pros.

[bobdibble]

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i think rather than thinking about it this way, think of it as, it's written "from the perspective of a high stakes player, about what that world is like"

the audience then, is people interested in that subculture. Some will be complete novices, others hobbyists, and still others aspiring pros.

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I share this view of the book, and is the reason that I like it.

For theory, read TOP.

For applications of TOP to holdem, read SSHE for loose players and HFAP for tight players (at mid limits mix the strategy in the 2 books depending upon the players in a given hand). Also read King Yao's book which bridges SSHE and HFAP with EV calculuations.

For psychology, read ITPM.

For the perspective of a high stakes player on poker, gambling, and society, read Ace on The River. I really enjoyed this aspect of AOTR.

[Sand]

When I first got and read through the book, I came to appreciate what Barry was doing here. The closest thing I have to this book in my library is a 25 year old museum guide to the King Tut Exhibit when it came to the US.

Both books explain exhibits with beautiful pictures. The Tut book explains actual ancient objects, most works of art. Barry covers esoteric nuances of professional poker play. Both quite captivating in their own way.

Barry's book was nothing like I expected, and that is a good thing. Who says that a poker book can't be crafted as a work of art in and of itself?

Nicely done Barry.

[maurile]

Although it's gotten mixed reviews here, I consider Ace on the River to be one of the best poker books I've read.

The first part of the book you will enjoy if you liked Aces and Kings or similar books. It's the story of Barry's poker career, which -- while interesting -- will not make you a better poker player.

Then there are several sections that do not concern poker strategy or tactics, but should make you a better poker player if you take them seriously. Barry describes certain characteristics that are helpful for a poker player -- stuff like not pounding your fists or yelling while watching a sporting event, not getting mad when someone cuts you off in traffic (treating it instead like an obstacle in a video game), not appreciating the value of a dollar, not being responsible enough to show up to a poker game on time when you're tired (go ahead and sleep in), not wanting to win every argument, etc.

I think this will read like "fluff" to a lot of players -- but I think there are some important gems in there if you take it seriously.

Then we get to the real meat of the book -- the hand analyses. This part is fantastic. He crams a number of important concepts into each hand, so you will want to read and reread them carefully. Moreover, Barry doesn't just tell you how you should play each hand and why, but he gives you a way to do your own analysis of the hands you play. This is the most important part of the book, IMO. There's no starting hand chart or whatever that's going to turn you into a great player. All great players have thought about the game on their own, combining their playing experience with their own hard thinking about the game away from the table. That might be obvious to a lot of people, but I've never thought about hands in exactly the way Barry suggests. For a given hand, given what you know about your opponent's cards, what would have been the perfect play? (Do not base this on which cards were subsequently dealt -- i.e., a flop of 7 2 2 does not make calling an all-in bet with 72o the perfect play against AA. If your opponent has AA, the perfect play is to fold 72o before the flop.) Next, given what you can deduce about your opponent's likely range of hands, what would have been the correct play. The perfect play against AA is to fold KK. But the correct play against {AA-TT, AK-AQ} may be to reraise with KK, even if your opponent happened to have AA that time.

For each hand that you play, go back and determine both the perfect play and the correct play.

I think this, more than anything else, encourages a tight-aggressive style. When you know what your opponent had, the perfect play in hindsight is almost always either to fold or raise. There are exceptions, but they do not come up as often as you'd think based on how frequently many players call. When you think about how you should have played that hand, given what your opponent had, you will often conclude, "I should have raised the turn." (Or whatever.) Then, when you think about the range of hands your opponent was likely to have in that situation, again you will probably think "Against that range, I should have raised the turn." (Or folded, or whatever.) But against a given range, it will normally be correct to raise against some hands in that range and to fold against other hands in that range -- and a lot of people end up calling as a compromise. But compromising is wrong! Do something that has a chance of being correct. As you gain more experience and get better at putting people on a narrower and more accurate range of hands, you will make better decisions more often. But get out of the habit of compromising right now.

Using hindsight to determine the perfect play (against your opponent's actual hand) and then, more importantly, the correct play (against your opponent's likely range of hands) will get you in the habit of trying to make the correct play on future hands -- not the compromise play.

As I said, maybe this is obvious to many people, but I've never thought about it in those terms before, and I find it helpful.

Another thing that Barry emphasizes is that there's often no right or wrong play based on the cards. The right or wrong play is based on situations, and the cards are only a small part of that. Barry lists many factors that should influence your decisions -- too many to go through them all at the table, but he says that with experience you will instinctively know which factors are important in a particular situation and which are not, allowing you to focus on the important ones. (I think this is sort of like chess. The best players don't necessarily consider a wider range of moves on a particular level, but think several levels deeper by knowing which possible moves to focus on at each level. My terminology is off because I'm not a chess player, but hopefully you know what I mean.)

So in summary, the book does not give you a formula or recipe for play. There are no starting hand charts, no list of tactics and when to apply them, etc. There are other books for that. But it does give you direction in how to think about the game on your own.

A $1/$2 player trying to move up to $3/$6 might need a starting hand chart and a description of when to semi-bluff, when to do a free card play, when to check-raise, etc. Barry's book doesn't offer these things.

But a mid- or high-limit player looking to improve his game will want to think about the game more effectively on his own, to make better use of his own playing experience, and to start to think about the game in terms of situations instead of cards. As another player once put it, poker is such a dynamic and complex game, you have to learn how to learn how to learn from your own experiences. Barry's book is the best I've seen so far on that score.

[BluffTHIS!]

I haven't read this book yet but intend to soon, and it will be worth it to me just for a top player's insights on what Maurille has mentioned, namely being a good gambler overall and the thought process by which a top player analyzes a particular situation. Mike Caro said in one of his essays that the order in which you think about things is important. And what I get from Maurille's review is Greenstein gives great insight into what things and what order are appropriate for different situations.