Harrington on Holdem 3: The Workbook REVIEW

[1C5]

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As instruction manuals, they're a bit too error ridden.

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This is so poor for a 2+2 book because remember Sklansky ripping into Jones because of errors in his limit books? He said things like: "printing errors in books is a disgrace, etc" and "2+2 would never print a book with such obvious errors, etc"

Well look what we have here. A 2+2 book ridden with terrible advice.

[curtains]

Yeah, like I said, a lot of the book is good, but the bad parts are too numerous, and I am quite critical when it comes to stuff like that.

[suzzer99]

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As instruction manuals, they're a bit too error ridden.

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This is so poor for a 2+2 book because remember Sklansky ripping into Jones because of errors in his limit books? He said things like: "printing errors in books is a disgrace, etc" and "2+2 would never print a book with such obvious errors, etc"

Well look what we have here. A 2+2 book ridden with terrible advice.

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The other HOHs, at least the versions I had were also rife with typos, math errors and continuity mistakes. It was embarassing.

[ChrisV]

btw does anyone disagree with any of what I said in my post?

[zabt]

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btw does anyone disagree with any of what I said in my post?

[/ QUOTE ]I skipped to problems 46/47, where it's hard to disagree with your opinion...

The problem for us noobs is that we don't know when to admit we disagree with the experts. But, I did think about starting a few threads regarding hands that were in the book because I wondered about the advice. Now that you have, I will go back and see if the problems you cited were ones that I "got wrong".

I think alot of your comments are colored by playing rapidly rising blind SNGs (Party probably). Stars, often bubble and HU play you've got 20x+ the BB.

I also think you need to keep in mind live play vs. online. In the Hellmuth example, the guy that checked AK that hit the K. Well, it's live. A major tourney, against a top notch pro. Alot of players are checking behind a missed hand (AQ/AJ for example), maybe pockets below a K and they don't want to go broke. Yes, online, I agree with your assessment. The conditions in the hand given, I tend to side with Harrington.

The 46/47 "howlers". I've played several SNG's where HU at the end the stacks were relatively deep still. Say, 75/150 where we each had 4000+ chips. I've definitely seen cases where HU was small ball, 2x-2.5x preflop raises, lots of probe bets. An all in preflop push just rarely happened, unless the blinds started to hit 100/200 with antes or 150/300. It's not the norm, but probably 15-20% of my final HU situations are like that.

I think a lot of Harrington's often conservative advice is from the viewpoint of live tournies. Online tournies you'll need to adjust things. He does mention periodically that online you'll need to make much bigger raises, etc, but I think his default advice tends towards live tourney conditions.

[JMills109]

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I think alot of your comments are colored by playing rapidly rising blind SNGs (Party probably). Stars, often bubble and HU play you've got 20x+ the BB.

I also think you need to keep in mind live play vs. online. In the Hellmuth example, the guy that checked AK that hit the K. Well, it's live. A major tourney, against a top notch pro. Alot of players are checking behind a missed hand (AQ/AJ for example), maybe pockets below a K and they don't want to go broke. Yes, online, I agree with your assessment. The conditions in the hand given, I tend to side with Harrington.

The 46/47 "howlers". I've played several SNG's where HU at the end the stacks were relatively deep still. Say, 75/150 where we each had 4000+ chips. I've definitely seen cases where HU was small ball, 2x-2.5x preflop raises, lots of probe bets. An all in preflop push just rarely happened, unless the blinds started to hit 100/200 with antes or 150/300. It's not the norm, but probably 15-20% of my final HU situations are like that.

I think a lot of Harrington's often conservative advice is from the viewpoint of live tournies. Online tournies you'll need to adjust things. He does mention periodically that online you'll need to make much bigger raises, etc, but I think his default advice tends towards live tourney conditions.

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It clearly states in 46/47 that the blinds are 200/400 and stack of 4500, howis that not a shortstacked situation with 11x BB? Furthermore, Stars Turbo SNGs RARELY IF EVER get to HU before at least the 100/200 ante 25 level, and even that happens a smal % of the time. Most often you are about to be at 200/400 or are well past that point.


If you are playing Stars Regulars where you get to heades up during level 5 sometimes, you are right about being more deepstacked, but the situation in these problems clearly presents a shortstacked situation.

[baltostar]

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I can only assume that Harrington has never played a SNG in his life.

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On CardPlayer.com "The Circuit" radio show , Harrington interview Part I , Dan says he plays SnGs regularly and that SnGs are the best thing online poker has to offer (or similar words to that effect). He says that while SnGs are not "real poker", they allow you to filter out all the distractions and mind games and focus on stack size, bet patterns, odds, etc.

[adanthar]

I was gonna make a review of this book and post it but never got around to it. Good to see you beat me to it.

It's better than HoH2, but that's not saying much, honestly.

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It clearly states in 46/47 that the blinds are 200/400 and stack of 4500, howis that not a shortstacked situation with 11x BB?

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It also says they've played quite a few hands at this point, so it's safe to say the blinds only recently put them at 200/400.

If he's been tight, he may not be adjusting to rising blinds. Yes, he *should* be losening his push range. But given how things have gone so far, there's no reason to believe he has.

I never play turbos either. If you're used turbos you're probably used to "do it now or blinds will kill me" scenarios as well. In a non-turbo, you've got more time. If the villian pushes 2x in a row when he wasn't pushing before, I'll assume he's really loosened up. That first push though, I'm giving credit. Which is the case here.

I'm not saying other ways aren't just as good, or perhaps better, but calling Harrington's reasoning a "howler" is way overstating it.