Review of Pot Limit and No Limit Poker by Stewart and Ciaffone

[censored] · #1 05-24-2006, 06:29 PM

I finished pot limit and no limit poker by stewart and Ciaffone. There were a few insightful points about big bet poker but frankly I did not like this book at all. I found the author's over reliance on specific hand examples again and again which concluded with them informing the reader "this is a fold, call,or raise" without much in the way of concrete reasoning which could be applied elsewhere to be confusing and boring. Additionally the tone of the authors in how they viewed limit poker, their opponents at time even the reader to be annoying. The book had sections on various forms of poker which I don't play and I found myself skipping over them. There was a section on game theory concerning bluffing on the end which I thought was interesting and like I said there were some insightful parts which could be of value in river play.

Overall I would only recommend this book to the most avid of poker reader and would consider it inferior to even the free forums. It should also be said that it is much more an PLO book than NLH and I think the title in misleading in what respect.

Pot limit and No Limit Holdem by Reuben and Ciaffone [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

AKQJ10 · #2 05-24-2006, 07:31 PM

I found that it somewhat failed to live up to its reputation. That said, I don't get, "much more an PLO book than NLH," unless you bought it expecting to get 150 pages of NLHE and found much more PLO than you expected (i.e, zero). Trying to cover all those games probably makes it fail to cover any of them particularly well, but I don't see an undue emphasis on PLO versus, say, London Lowball.

Fishy McDonk · #3 05-24-2006, 07:31 PM

I was also dissapointed in this book. I am surprised it was so highly recommeded by many here. I was hoping for more insight into starting hands and play after the flop than "scoot it all into the middle".

I hope Kill Phil and The Little Green Book are better.

benfranklin · #4 05-24-2006, 08:26 PM

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I was also dissapointed in this book. I am surprised it was so highly recommeded by many here. I was hoping for more insight into starting hands and play after the flop than "scoot it all into the middle".

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The book is more about theory and concepts than about basic strategy. It assumes that you are already a good player.

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I hope Kill Phil and The Little Green Book are better.

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Those books are about tournaments. The Reuben and Ciaffone book is about ring games.

SheridanCat · #5 05-24-2006, 09:09 PM

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I hope Kill Phil and The Little Green Book are better.

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The Stewart/Ciaffone book was out 7 years before anything else decent on the topic of big bet poker. Gotta give some props for that. When there was little else other than Super/System, it was gold.

Regards,

T

BluffTHIS! · #6 05-24-2006, 09:44 PM

[censored],

You are way off base here. This is a great book and must reading for big bet players. Mason gave it a very positive review as well in the past. I don't mean to imply it is perfect, and Mason indeed commented that he wished that they has divulged more "secrets". WRT NL in particular, reading the archives here and all that Ray Zee has posted about big bet in the past would reveal a lot of stuff that they either didn't talk about explicitly, or just made a passing reference to. However its strongest points are those dealing with the mathematics of big bet poker and the impact on betting on a current street in regards to the sizes of bets on later streets, stack size adjustments, and what types of hands should be played in what positions and situations. There is a lot of deeper advice that can be missed in just one reading, when you should reread it and think carefully about smaller chunks of it. Also the hand examples you refer to, do in fact give explanations, albeit brief ones, for why you should or should not take a certain action. In fact if you didn't get much from the hand examples, then it is likely you didn't study the texts preceding them thoroughly enough.

As I said it is not perfect in that it is both not a complete course on big bet regarding NL especially, and in that it is densely packed with information that requires serious thought to unlock all the meaning from. But I guarantee that you will never be successful in big bet poker if you can't extract a lot of value from it.

binions · #7 05-24-2006, 09:44 PM

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I hope Kill Phil and The Little Green Book are better.

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The Stewart/Ciaffone book was out 7 years before anything else decent on the topic of big bet poker. Gotta give some props for that. When there was little else other than Super/System, it was gold.

Regards,

T

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+1

Those who come to the Ciaffone/Reuben book after reading HOH1 and Little Green Book and 2+2 forums are spoiled. It was a grounbreaking book at the time, and still is very good IMO.

LordBaldrick · #8 05-24-2006, 10:19 PM

I also thought this book was over rated after my first read through. It is not only lacking in detail but the writing is at times poorly structured. However, I am getting more out of it on the second read through. There are some important/powerful concepts under discussion in the book - they just don't necessarily grab you first time through.

MCS · #9 05-24-2006, 10:57 PM

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I also thought this book was over rated after my first read through. It is not only lacking in detail but the writing is at times poorly structured. However, I am getting more out of it on the second read through. There are some important/powerful concepts under discussion in the book - they just don't necessarily grab you first time through.

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This is exactly how I feel. I still think it's kinda overrated, but I am definitely starting to understand some of the things they are saying. While this is great for me, it's a flaw of the book that it wasn't clear the first time through. A good book shouldn't be such a mystery.

Reuben's writing is much weaker than Ciaffone's.

benfranklin · #10 05-25-2006, 12:30 AM

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However, I am getting more out of it on the second read through. There are some important/powerful concepts under discussion in the book - they just don't necessarily grab you first time through.

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This is exactly how I feel. I still think it's kinda overrated, but I am definitely starting to understand some of the things they are saying. While this is great for me, it's a flaw of the book that it wasn't clear the first time through. A good book shouldn't be such a mystery.

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That may not be the fault of the book. In things like this, you are always going to get more out of a good book after reading it the first time and then getting some playing time under your belt. Some things just can't be explained in a book if you don't have the foundation of knowledge and experience to understand them.