The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition

[xPRODIGYx]

I wonder if Lederer is going to provide some new insight or if this will merely be a rehash of his dvd's.

[agoldenbear]

so nick, now that you've perused the manuscript, does this book seem to be geared more toward beginners, or players with a decent understanding of the game? that is, will I, having read and re-read most every other respectable poker book on the market, find this book to build on/complement existing ideas or mostly repeat them? I realize how subjective this question must seem, and I know how much overlap there must necessarily be between different texts, but if you can shed some light whether or not this book will present some new and unique takes on traditionally winning strategy, that would be cool. thanks.

[NickMPK]

[ QUOTE ]
so nick, now that you've perused the manuscript, does this book seem to be geared more toward beginners, or players with a decent understanding of the game? that is, will I, having read and re-read most every other respectable poker book on the market, find this book to build on/complement existing ideas or mostly repeat them? I realize how subjective this question must seem, and I know how much overlap there must necessarily be between different texts, but if you can shed some light whether or not this book will present some new and unique takes on traditionally winning strategy, that would be cool. thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, I've read much of the NLHE parts, and the Razz chapter.

I don't think the book really has any truly new concepts, but it goes more in depth into some ideas than other books I have read. It is certainly not just a book for beginners. But it also doesn't provide the sort of complete, deep, and unified perspective on tournaments that HoH did. Much of this is due to the fact that the book has so many authors: it jumps around from concept to concept, and many authors (deliberately) contradict each other.

A few things that stood out at me:

- The book is consciously aware of other literature that is out there, and sometimes discusses the ways in which its advice differs Harrington's or Sklansky's, and why.

- One of the central concepts of the book is basing your bets on flop texture, rather than your own hand (or even trying to get a specific read on your opponent). The books differentiates between "leveraged flops" (which don't have many draws), and "textured flops" (which have a lot of draw possibilities/were likely to hit your opponent). Lederer and Ferguson in particular advise better more, and betting more often, on textured flops. On leveraged flops, you should be willing to bet smaller amounts, letting your opponent see cards cheaply when he is probably drawing to fewer outs, and letting you get away cheaply on the few occasions where the leveraged flops has solidly hit your opponent.

- The main NLHE section authors advise never limping when first in, and almost never cold-calling a raise preflop. The first piece of advice here is contradicted in the Forrest chapter, and the the second in the Gavin Smith chapter, both of which are designed to present alternate perspectives. Both of these chapters are relatively short and not particularly deep.

- The Bloch pre-flop chapter is the longest chapter in the book, and pretty heavily mathematically. The chapter contains many hand-ranking tables, most of which deal with how often a hand will win against various opponent's hand ranges. The chapter is mostly an expansion of the "gap concept", where Bloch claims the the fundamental decision about whether to play or not should be whether you can beat the median hand in your opponent's hand range (thus, calling with half the hands that your opponent would raise with). Bloch advances his own ideas for hand rankings in the "jam or fold" context, some of which generate pretty strange results, and discusses the difference between his rankings and the Sklansky-Chubukov rankings. The reader will come away from this chapter with a much deeper understanding of the gap concept, but some of the specific advise is strange (for some reason, A5s is a very powerful hand in Bloch's rankings), and the chapter is largely devoid of any discussion of how post-flop skill should influence preflop decisions. The chapter also emphasizes how some preflop holdings make it less likely that your opponents has a certain category of hand, and how it should influence your play. I've seen this concept discussed generally in other books (e.g. the Bayesian analysis in HoH), but not specifically with regard to pre-flop play.

- In general, the book doesn't to deal much with getting reads off your opponents, or even how to observe your opponents for betting patterns. This is something that HoH really stressed the importance of, and it is basically only mentioned in passing here, as though is assumes you will be able to do it without really telling you how or what to looks for.

- The other two very lengthy chapters (post-flop play and limit HE) I haven't been able to read enough of to comment.

- The Razz chapter is fairly short (15 pages), and contains some of the standard info included in Sklansky on Poker (e.g. a draw is a favorite over a made rough 9 on fifth street). The main difference is that the authors emphasize how your play should change as different ante structures develop over the course of a tournament. In particular, many tournament levels have a much higher ante relative to the bet than a typical cash game. Because of this, the authors advocate a more loose-aggressive style than I've seen in other Razz literature. In particular, they are often in favor of 3-betting hands on 3rd street that are not likely to be favored against the initial raiser, due to the potential to isolate and the pot odds generated by high antes. I'm not sure I will ever play in a Razz tournament, so I don't know if these insights will ever be useful.

[BigBuffet]

I heard the online chapter is being 86'd because of the UIGEA.