Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play

You know, I didn't read this book. I studied it. Well that's not true, I read it once, then the second time I read it I studied it. I kept an accompanying notebook and marked each line that I felt gave a specific insight into the game I had never noticed or thought of before, and needless to say, I made a LOT of marks. I wrote roughly 50-70 pages of liner notes for my own personal summary of the text and worked through each example without cheating and reading ahead. I feel like this text was a great "first book" to read that focused particularly on the type of poker I was playing at the time.The only parts of the text I didn't spend quite as much time on was the online poker portions of the book and examples. I'm glad that he included it because it made me realize some things about the online poker realm that differ from live games, but at the same time every online example I came from had that glossy.. I don't know, online feel to it. That may sound silly but anyone whose played online versus playing in person knows playing online has a sort of detached feel. When you hear an example of his poker playing days and Harrington goes into specific names and playing styles and insights into each of the players it makes the example that much more intriguing. But, nevertheless that's not related to the quality of the book and is simply a personal observation, you just have to learn to shift your mind's gear to the proper atmosphere for each example. Don't treat his online examples as live examples and vice-versa.In conclusion, I highly recommend this book. He has a great writing style, a great insight, and quite a sense of humor. If you play poker and you feel that you are having difficulty organizing your thoughts or are unsure what you *should* be thinking about, this is a good book for you. Each player has their own personal flair, and I don't want to make poker play seem like an assembly line, that being said, this book's examples and practice problems eliminated a LOT of my hesitation in live and online play and the algorithms and methods I learned reduce the number of difficult decisions drastically.Buy it.(Typed hastily, apologies for poor punctuation, grammar, and run-ons.)

No limit hold'em, obviously, is a complex game. So complex that there has never been a good comprehensive treatment in a book form; I had thought that this was because it involves more "table feel", experience and intuition that can't be easily taught or expressed in a useful format.Harrington and Robertie have done just that. Harrington is the 1995 world champion, and the only player to make the final table in both 2003 and 2004, overcoming the two biggest fields in World Series history (839 and 2,576 players, respectively). Robertie is a top backgammon player and author of several excellent books on that game.Among the top players, there are drastically different styles of play, from conservative to super-aggressive. One problem I expected was that given Harrington's solid, fairly conservative style, he wouldn't be able to give much useful information on playing at the other end of the end of the spectrum, styles such as those employed by Daniel Negreanu and Gus Hansen.I was wrong. The book does a fine job addressing the relative merits of various styles, playing against each type of opponent, and even choosing one for yourself. This makes sense; no matter his own style, to be successful he has to have spent a lot of time thinking about, observing, and combatting all different types of players. Further, a playing style isn't cast in stone; even the most conservative players have to switch gears and become much more aggressive at times, and vice versa.A few more notes on this idea: first, Harrington's own play as described isn't as conservative and cautious as many think. Second, a fairly conservative approach is demonstrably the more sound one for the student, and anyone without many years of experience. Hyper-aggressive play would be much harder to teach well, and also much harder to pull off successfully. The players who thrive playing these aggressive, gambling styles have exceptional talent as well as lots of experience and a great feel for the game and their opponents, and are faced with difficult decisions under lots of pressure much more often. For those who insist on trying, it probably still makes more sense to learn a fundamentally sounder style first and then proceed from there.The book is laid out well for learning. Each chapter starts with a discussion of the topic, touching on the theory. There are several example situations with the authors' answers and detailed reasoning, as well as the merits of alternative plays. Following each chapter there are problems, mostly from real hands. It provides a diagram of the table, the chip counts for each player, your knowledge of the opponents, etc... all the relevant information. The problems usually provide all this information even when some of it is irrelevant to the problem, which is a strength. A big part of the decision-making process in poker (as well as lots of other things) is recognizing and eliminating extraneous details to make analysis more managable.This is the first in a two volume set. I thought this was odd, as this is first for 2+2 poker books, but the first volume is bigger than most of their others already. The book is self-contained; there are no partial answers or information that tell you to buy the second volume for the details. I don't think there has been an official announcement on when Volume 2 will be released, but I've heard sometime this spring.The book is geared specifically toward tournaments, and especially toward those with well-defined formats, such as major casino/cardroom events and those on the Internet. For cash game players, a solid understanding of tournament and poker theory would be necessary to make the appropriate adjustments to cash play. Most of the book would still apply, but some situations would change drastically in a side game, where simply getting your money in with an advantage, rather than survival, is the main goal.For those newer to poker, to get the most out of this book, I would recommend a few others be read either first or at the same time: "The Theory of Poker" by David Sklansky, "Small Stakes Hold'em" by Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth, and "Winning Low Limit Hold'em" by Lee Jones, especially for the newest players.UPDATE FOR VOLUME II:Many of the same comments apply to Volume II, which is more of a continuation of the first than a separate book (even the chapter numbering picks up where the first left off). It focuses on the endgame; the late stages where everyone left is in the money and the blinds are relatively very large. They use the ideas of zones and inflection points to give effective generalized advice about different situations, evaluating your chip position relative to both the size of the blinds and the other remaining players.The last few sections cover short-handed and heads-up play, where strategy often changes radically. In most tournaments the table only gets heads-up at the very end and doesn't last very long, but the difference between first, second and third place is huge, even millions in the biggest events. Given that one position makes such a big difference, strategies changes dramatically, and most players have little experience heads-up, this material is extremely valuable.A third volume is in the works, in workbook style with problems and examples, which should nicely complement and review the material in the first two.

Easy to read, a lots of examples

Très bon livre, je viens de commander la deuxième partie!

Tutto quello che un principiante dovrebbe sapere,Molto interessanteNn vedo l’ora di leggere il volume 2Buon pokerCiao

Great experience. I phone handy would love to recommend to other people too. Thans kindle for grt experience n all

This book is fantastic. If you are a new player, or a player looking to improve your game and improve your winnings - GET THIS BOOK. It will certainly improve you as a player.My one issue is the presentation. At certain points you are presented with a poker scenario. you are given information about what sort of game you are in, what the other players are like, what position they are in and you are in and what action has taken place in the lead up to your decision. you are then asked, do you raise, call or fold? A fantastic learning device as the next bit tells you what you should do and why. Brilliant.HOWEVER, the answer is right there, immediately after the question. I found myself scrambling to cover the answer with my bookmark, but several times I caught sight of the answer before properly considering the information to come up with my own answer. And sometimes the extremely helpful diagram and other information is on one page and the final part of the information (with the immediate answer) is on the overleaf. keeping the answer covered while referring back is not easy.The only way to make this book better is to have the complete problem, including all information across two viewable pages and then the answer on the overleaf.