HOH "outdated"

[Paul Levy]

I don't believe it's outdated at all, I think it provides very good advice for low-variance, solid tournament play. However it is true that many players in the high stakes space deride the 'solid play' approach in the first place and bizarrely dismiss the M metric in favor of the number of big blinds.

[KiwiMark]

Personally I don't think that HoH is outdated at all.

I have read all 3 books all the way through 3 times now and I plan on reading them several more times. Does this mean I know everything in the books? I don't think so, but every time I read them I try to understand the concepts that Dan is trying to convey.

Does reading and understanding the books make you a great poker player or at least a winning one? I say no, it does not. I would also say that no book or instructional video does. But if you read and understand HoH as well as various other books by Sklansky and books like Kill Phil and Cloutier's book and a bunch of others then you can not only take in various worthwhile concepts and apply them to your own game, but you can also develop an understanding of the various ways of thinking that your opponents might be using. None of these books will make you a winning poker player, but the knowledge you can gain from them can help. What you really need is a very broad knowledge of the many concepts that are in Hold'em poker and the flexibility to bend your game to the situation on the table that you are playing. You need a lot of experience to understand the situation and to more quickly figure out how to play it.

I think that a flexible and intelligent mind, backed with a good theoretical knowledge and honed by as much experience as possible is the best asset in poker. Reading and understanding HoH is still a valid way to improve your grounding in the theoretical knowledge, but you need more than just that to play poker well.

For me my biggest weakness is my lack of experience, but I am working on that. Every week I play for several hours - gaining valuable experience. Then every few months I re-read HoH and try to fuse that theoretical knowledge with what I have learnt from experience - to better understand what I am doing (and what I should be doing).