original hold'em bible for the tight aggressive player, This is probably the best of the poker books I've read lately, It fits my learning style practical lessons complete with a whole series of hands, played all the way through, at the end of each chapter, explaining thought processes and mistakes along the way.
Dan Harrington I think thinks like I do his style is naturally on the conservative side, which is how I've found I generally play, and he's a very logical player, a former chess and backgammon champion before he became a pro poker player.
That makes this a book for the strategic and tactical game player, as opposed to the one I am reading by David Sklanksy, which is full of valuable theory and algorithms, but extremely mathematicallyoriented.
Harrington on Hold'em Volume I covers strategic play a lot of it is the basics that will be covered in any good poker book, like preflop and postflop betting, reading the table, pot odds, continuation and value bets, bluffs and semibluffs, etc.
But as I said, for me the real meat of the book was the illustrative hands that demonstrated each theory in practice,
Nothing in this book went over my head, It all seems perfectly sensible, even easy to put into practice, If only it were so easy to keep all this stuff in mind when you are actually in a hand!
Keep in mind this book specifically covers NLHE, not any other variety of poker.
And it is mostly focused on tournament play, so I guess you'd probably want a more advanced and specialized book for playing ring and cash games, Since I play in a bar poker league, it is very appropriate for my venues, even though I am unlikely to ever see even a satellite tournament for the WSOP.
I'd say this a strong candidate for being a book I might recommend as the first book a starting poker player might want to read, Maria Konnikova's "The Biggest Bluff" made me want to learn more about poker, She started by reading Harrington, and so did I,
The author succeeds at making the book a good introduction to amateurs, while leaving the impression that you are grappling with serious strategic questions in the problems outlined in the work.
I have played poker a bit before, but not at the level where I calculate pot odds and the probability of a card that I want to see hitting me.
Neither had I thought about table positioning, and strategic ways of how to extract information from other players, In other words, I had not really thought about anything, it seems,
I felt like being in university once again since I haven't learned a new skill for a while, It felt exhilarating going through the stages of learning, First, you do not understand odds or why not to play some hands, Then, it all seems too much the odds, implied probabilities, outs, After a while, you slowly start realizing that many situations resemble each other, some odds and ways of thinking stick, and suddenly you know the answer to the questions posed by the author.
Using this knowledge in real life, under time pressure, with money at play, is a whole different matter, I suppose, This was a great book to learn about Texas Hold 'em, Harrington really goes into the whole strategy of the game position, when to bet/raise/fold, how much to bet/raise in certain circumstances and positions, He gives you a few overview/ workbook examples at the end of each chapter so you can practice what he just talked about, Right after I read this I implemented the stuff he talks about into my game and it has worked very well for me I started to win a lot more than I lost.
It still works for me, and it is so simple to remember, once you read it you can easily implement the basics forever, I'm not an everyday, or even monthly hold 'em player, I just play once in a while with friends, and like I said the stuff discussed in this book really works, and well.
Very well written and thoughtful book, You can't learn basics of poker from it, but once you know the rules, the book is easy to read and provides a lot of valuable knowledge, Every chapter ends with a few reallife exercises, I understood every chapter very well and I've learned a lot, If you're a beginner, I can guarantee that you'll become a better player after each single chapter of this book, After reading it, I can't imagine playing poker without reading a book like this one, I didn't finish the entirety of the book maybe I'll revisit it later but it has taught me a lot about Hold 'em in an entertaining way,
Deducted one star because of the atrocious quality of my electronic copy, several examples contained incorrect images suits which made them impossible to learn from, At its' time the best book on tournament Hold'em, I used to play pokerx a week in a casino, The difference this book made to my game was unreal! I learnt so many new things, It also opened my eyes up to just how indepth the game of nolimit hold'em really is! What amazed me how was how it made an almost instant impact on my results at the table.
At the moment I don't have as much time to play as I once did, but when I get back into poker properly again, I thoroughly look forward to reading this book cover to cover again! A must read
This book breaks down each scenario that could occur in the early stages of a poker tournament.
The authors teach the reader how to calculate pot odds which I never knew before which are how much it costs you to be part of a pot.
This book has inspired me to try a poker tournament at my local casino, I believe anyone can learn to play hold 'em with this book and practice, Five for content, three for layout and ease of use, The problem pages could be much better laid out, in particular, It's an old book but not that old as a classic that people will buy because of the name, it could use a facelift, At the same time, you see why it earned that classic status, He knows what he's talking about, Excellent and thorough covering of the basics as well as in depth explanation of a few different strategies, A must read Oh wait youre saying I SHOULDNT play Aoff out of position O, o I read this book and the other two companion volumes where they came out, It changed the way I played and I credit the read and Terra's of Harrington and immediately qualified to the World Poker Tour Cyprus, Rereading the books meant my biggest live cash in the World Poker Tour to date: WPT Paris, . .th for,.
In Dan's words "it's a game of memory, position, calculation, alertness and patience", The book teaches much of the strategic play fundamentals and my game has improved tremendously during the short course of reading it, Texas Hold 'Em, the chess game of poker,
I played a lot of poker during my six years in the National Guard, It filled up some of the hurryup andwait time,
When I moved to the Lake House, just up the hill from an Indian casino, Doug, one of my new neighbors, suggested we play in aTexas Hold 'Em tournament since the casino was so close.
I didn't make it into the money that night In each tournament onlyout oftoplayers get any return on their investment,
Doug and I went back a number of times over the next few months and I did get into the money now and again, but I decided I'd benefit from a bit of coaching so I bought a book, Dan Harrington's.
It's practical and easy to follow with lots of examples, A good tutor.
The fact that my game hasn't improved is due to my own shortcomings not Dan's, I plan on reading his second volume and soon winning The World Series of Poker, Watch for me on TV, Pokerio klasika vadinama knyga. Nors ir senoka, tačiau joje aprašomos strategijos puikiai tinka ir šių dienų pokerio turnyrams, tiesa, gal skirtos labiau konservatyviems žaidėjams, tačiau kiekvienas gali prisitaikyti pagal savo žaidimo stilių.
Anglų kalba nesudėtinga aišku pilna pokerio terminų, daug vaizdinės medžiagos, konkrečių pavyzdžių, Paprastai duodama situacija ir kalbama kaip galima ją sulošti priklausomai nuo pozicijos, turimų kortų, vietos turnyre ir pan, Mažai kalbama apie
psichologinius dalykus, daugiau remiamasi skaičiavimais, tačiau laikomasi minties, kad padaryti klaidingą ėjimą tinkamu metu nėra pasaulio pabaiga,
Tiks išimtinai turnyrų lošėjams, tiek geriau įvaldant savo pasirinktas taktikas, tiek atpažįstant kokiu stiliumi lošia oponentai, The Standard by which all other poker tournament strategy books must be measured, A classic.
Not only the first volume of the best poker series I have ever read but also one of the best instructional books of any sort that I have ever read.
Wonderfully concise introduction to the key concepts of tournament poker with opportunities to test your wits in real situations, First time reading a poker book and utterly fascinating, I had a lot of fun with this working through the problems and getting almost every one of them wrong, This really helped me appreciate how complex poker is,
Well yes, I'm part of the poker craze, and yes I read up on my addiction, If you think poker is another gambling wasteland, then read this book, You'll learn how academic the game really is, Calculating odds, weighing risk vs, reward, and earning as much as possible are some of the topics, Sounds more like a business class than a poker book, If you do play poker, read it! You'll play better in tourney's immediately,
Mandatory read for the aspiring tournament hold'em player
Nolimit play is different from limit play tournament play is different from ringgame play, In tournaments the blinds come marching irrepressibly around, and they get bigger and bigger, In a ring game, they march around but they stay the same size, What this means is that there is a certain urgency in tournament nolimit that doesn't exist in a ring game,
Harrington, one of the top players in the world, and a deadon scientific and shrewdly psychological player, who is also a master chess player and a world class backgammon player, emphasizes this difference by making this book just volume one of a twovolume set.
The second volume is subsubtitled, "The Endgame" and focuses on the later stages of tournaments,
How valuable is this book For the tournament player I would say that there is only one other book that is even in the same league that's David Sklansky's Tournament Poker for Advanced Players.
But this book is better, Harrington's nearly exhaustive approach outSklanskys Sklansky, Scores of hands are analyzed in minute detail, the analysis typically covering several pages of text, Harrington begins with a diagram of the table, showing "your" position and that of the other players seated, He gives the amounts in each player's stack, the size of the blinds, the stage in the tournament just starting, early, middle and what kind of tournament it is, major, online, etc.
And he identifies conservative and aggressive players,
Next he gives "your" hand and the action to you, For example, you have TdTh on the button and Player A passes, Player B raises x number of dollars, and now it's up to you, What I love about these illustrative hands is that Harrington gives first an analysis of the factors that a professional player would consider at that point, and then he gives his recommendation: fold, call, raise x number of dollars, etc.
and then he tells what "you" actually didwhich is sometimes or even often, the wrong thing, And then he continues the hand to the flop and often all the way to the river, commending on every action,
How much to bet, Harrington says, can be calculated almost exactly in some cases, If you have top pair and you believe your only opponent is on a draw, you need to bet enough to make it unprofitable for him to call.
If it is a turn bet and the pot isand he has a flush draw he has a/,chance of hitting his hand, or about one in five, So you need to bet more than one third of the pot to make it a mistake for him to call, But, as Harrington cautions several times in the book, you do not want to foolishly bet more than is necessary, Going allinan irresistible thrill for some tournament playersis silly when you can get the same result by betting a smaller amount,
Another nice point that Harrington makes is that whenever there is a bet and you are trying to figure out what the bettor has and whether you should call or notalways more of an art than a science, which is one of the great things about pokeryou should put the probability of a bluff at at least ten percent.
What the reader realizes is that nolimit tournament hold'em poker is a very complex game and that there are almost always many things to consider before making any decision.
Sometimes of course the decision is easy, You have the nut flush on an unpaired board at the river and it's bet to you, You raise, of course. But wait a minute! Is there somebody behind you yet to act Maybe you should just call and try to get an overcall, And, by the way, just how much should you raise Even if there is nobody else in the pot but you and the bettor, you need to consider just how big a raise he is likely to call.
If you bet too much he may not call, If you bet too little you may not get as much out of the hand as you might,
You might say, Whoa, not everybody at the top plays this way, Surely Johnny Chan, for example, in his prime did not stop and figure out every angle before proceeding, He acted and reacted with lightning speed, Yes, but that is only because he had already figured out all the angles, had added them up and totaled them, so to speak as he went along and when his opponent acted or he saw the next card, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
Instantly, and perhaps somewhat unconsciously,
The "natural" player as opposed to the "scientific" player considers the same factors before acting, but he or she may put a different emphasis on certain values.
The natural player may value position more than the scientific player or it could be viceversa, but regardless both players take into account the very factors that Harrington delineates before acting.
One thing that really made me sit up and notice is that Harrington's theory about profitable player styles includes not only his fairly conservative style, but the "aggressive" style and the "superaggressive" style.
His main point is that the more aggressive your style, the more alert, intense and sharpwitted you have to be, Wild players CAN win, but they have got to be able to read both the action and the other players extremely well since they are often walking the razor's edge.
Bottom line: Harrington's mastery of the game and his clear instruction make this a mandatory read for the aspiring tournament hold'em player,
Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
,
Dan Harrington I think thinks like I do his style is naturally on the conservative side, which is how I've found I generally play, and he's a very logical player, a former chess and backgammon champion before he became a pro poker player.
That makes this a book for the strategic and tactical game player, as opposed to the one I am reading by David Sklanksy, which is full of valuable theory and algorithms, but extremely mathematicallyoriented.
Harrington on Hold'em Volume I covers strategic play a lot of it is the basics that will be covered in any good poker book, like preflop and postflop betting, reading the table, pot odds, continuation and value bets, bluffs and semibluffs, etc.
But as I said, for me the real meat of the book was the illustrative hands that demonstrated each theory in practice,
Nothing in this book went over my head, It all seems perfectly sensible, even easy to put into practice, If only it were so easy to keep all this stuff in mind when you are actually in a hand!
Keep in mind this book specifically covers NLHE, not any other variety of poker.
And it is mostly focused on tournament play, so I guess you'd probably want a more advanced and specialized book for playing ring and cash games, Since I play in a bar poker league, it is very appropriate for my venues, even though I am unlikely to ever see even a satellite tournament for the WSOP.
I'd say this a strong candidate for being a book I might recommend as the first book a starting poker player might want to read, Maria Konnikova's "The Biggest Bluff" made me want to learn more about poker, She started by reading Harrington, and so did I,
The author succeeds at making the book a good introduction to amateurs, while leaving the impression that you are grappling with serious strategic questions in the problems outlined in the work.
I have played poker a bit before, but not at the level where I calculate pot odds and the probability of a card that I want to see hitting me.
Neither had I thought about table positioning, and strategic ways of how to extract information from other players, In other words, I had not really thought about anything, it seems,
I felt like being in university once again since I haven't learned a new skill for a while, It felt exhilarating going through the stages of learning, First, you do not understand odds or why not to play some hands, Then, it all seems too much the odds, implied probabilities, outs, After a while, you slowly start realizing that many situations resemble each other, some odds and ways of thinking stick, and suddenly you know the answer to the questions posed by the author.
Using this knowledge in real life, under time pressure, with money at play, is a whole different matter, I suppose, This was a great book to learn about Texas Hold 'em, Harrington really goes into the whole strategy of the game position, when to bet/raise/fold, how much to bet/raise in certain circumstances and positions, He gives you a few overview/ workbook examples at the end of each chapter so you can practice what he just talked about, Right after I read this I implemented the stuff he talks about into my game and it has worked very well for me I started to win a lot more than I lost.
It still works for me, and it is so simple to remember, once you read it you can easily implement the basics forever, I'm not an everyday, or even monthly hold 'em player, I just play once in a while with friends, and like I said the stuff discussed in this book really works, and well.
Very well written and thoughtful book, You can't learn basics of poker from it, but once you know the rules, the book is easy to read and provides a lot of valuable knowledge, Every chapter ends with a few reallife exercises, I understood every chapter very well and I've learned a lot, If you're a beginner, I can guarantee that you'll become a better player after each single chapter of this book, After reading it, I can't imagine playing poker without reading a book like this one, I didn't finish the entirety of the book maybe I'll revisit it later but it has taught me a lot about Hold 'em in an entertaining way,
Deducted one star because of the atrocious quality of my electronic copy, several examples contained incorrect images suits which made them impossible to learn from, At its' time the best book on tournament Hold'em, I used to play pokerx a week in a casino, The difference this book made to my game was unreal! I learnt so many new things, It also opened my eyes up to just how indepth the game of nolimit hold'em really is! What amazed me how was how it made an almost instant impact on my results at the table.
At the moment I don't have as much time to play as I once did, but when I get back into poker properly again, I thoroughly look forward to reading this book cover to cover again! A must read
This book breaks down each scenario that could occur in the early stages of a poker tournament.
The authors teach the reader how to calculate pot odds which I never knew before which are how much it costs you to be part of a pot.
This book has inspired me to try a poker tournament at my local casino, I believe anyone can learn to play hold 'em with this book and practice, Five for content, three for layout and ease of use, The problem pages could be much better laid out, in particular, It's an old book but not that old as a classic that people will buy because of the name, it could use a facelift, At the same time, you see why it earned that classic status, He knows what he's talking about, Excellent and thorough covering of the basics as well as in depth explanation of a few different strategies, A must read Oh wait youre saying I SHOULDNT play Aoff out of position O, o I read this book and the other two companion volumes where they came out, It changed the way I played and I credit the read and Terra's of Harrington and immediately qualified to the World Poker Tour Cyprus, Rereading the books meant my biggest live cash in the World Poker Tour to date: WPT Paris, . .th for,.
Poker has taken America by storm, But it s not just any form of poker that has people across the country so excited it s NoLimit Hold Em the main event game, And now thanks to televised tournaments tens of thousands of new players are eager to claim their share of poker glory,
Harrington on Hold Em takes you to the part of the game the cameras ignore the tactics required to get through the hundreds and sometimes thousands of hands you must win to make it to the final table.
Harrington s sophisticated and timetested winning strategies, focusing on what it takes to survive the early and middle stages of a NoLimit Hold Em tournament, are appearing here for the first time in print.
These are techniques that top players use again and again to get to make it to final tables around the globe,
Now, learn from one of the world s most successful NoLimit Hold Em players how to vary your style, optimize your betting patterns, analyze hands, respond to a reraise, play to win the most money possible, react when a bad card hits and much, much more.
Dan Harrington won the gold bracelet and the World Champion title at the,buyin NoLimit Hold Em Championship at theWorld Series of Poker, And he was the only player to make it to the final table infield ofandfield ofconsidered by cognoscenti to be the greatest accomplishment in WSOP history.
In Harrington on Hold Em, Harrington andtime World Backgammon Champion Bill Robertie have written the definitive book on NoLimit Hold Em for players who want to win.
. . and win big.
In Dan's words "it's a game of memory, position, calculation, alertness and patience", The book teaches much of the strategic play fundamentals and my game has improved tremendously during the short course of reading it, Texas Hold 'Em, the chess game of poker,
I played a lot of poker during my six years in the National Guard, It filled up some of the hurryup andwait time,
When I moved to the Lake House, just up the hill from an Indian casino, Doug, one of my new neighbors, suggested we play in aTexas Hold 'Em tournament since the casino was so close.
I didn't make it into the money that night In each tournament onlyout oftoplayers get any return on their investment,
Doug and I went back a number of times over the next few months and I did get into the money now and again, but I decided I'd benefit from a bit of coaching so I bought a book, Dan Harrington's.
It's practical and easy to follow with lots of examples, A good tutor.
The fact that my game hasn't improved is due to my own shortcomings not Dan's, I plan on reading his second volume and soon winning The World Series of Poker, Watch for me on TV, Pokerio klasika vadinama knyga. Nors ir senoka, tačiau joje aprašomos strategijos puikiai tinka ir šių dienų pokerio turnyrams, tiesa, gal skirtos labiau konservatyviems žaidėjams, tačiau kiekvienas gali prisitaikyti pagal savo žaidimo stilių.
Anglų kalba nesudėtinga aišku pilna pokerio terminų, daug vaizdinės medžiagos, konkrečių pavyzdžių, Paprastai duodama situacija ir kalbama kaip galima ją sulošti priklausomai nuo pozicijos, turimų kortų, vietos turnyre ir pan, Mažai kalbama apie
psichologinius dalykus, daugiau remiamasi skaičiavimais, tačiau laikomasi minties, kad padaryti klaidingą ėjimą tinkamu metu nėra pasaulio pabaiga,
Tiks išimtinai turnyrų lošėjams, tiek geriau įvaldant savo pasirinktas taktikas, tiek atpažįstant kokiu stiliumi lošia oponentai, The Standard by which all other poker tournament strategy books must be measured, A classic.
Not only the first volume of the best poker series I have ever read but also one of the best instructional books of any sort that I have ever read.
Wonderfully concise introduction to the key concepts of tournament poker with opportunities to test your wits in real situations, First time reading a poker book and utterly fascinating, I had a lot of fun with this working through the problems and getting almost every one of them wrong, This really helped me appreciate how complex poker is,
Well yes, I'm part of the poker craze, and yes I read up on my addiction, If you think poker is another gambling wasteland, then read this book, You'll learn how academic the game really is, Calculating odds, weighing risk vs, reward, and earning as much as possible are some of the topics, Sounds more like a business class than a poker book, If you do play poker, read it! You'll play better in tourney's immediately,
Mandatory read for the aspiring tournament hold'em player
Nolimit play is different from limit play tournament play is different from ringgame play, In tournaments the blinds come marching irrepressibly around, and they get bigger and bigger, In a ring game, they march around but they stay the same size, What this means is that there is a certain urgency in tournament nolimit that doesn't exist in a ring game,
Harrington, one of the top players in the world, and a deadon scientific and shrewdly psychological player, who is also a master chess player and a world class backgammon player, emphasizes this difference by making this book just volume one of a twovolume set.
The second volume is subsubtitled, "The Endgame" and focuses on the later stages of tournaments,
How valuable is this book For the tournament player I would say that there is only one other book that is even in the same league that's David Sklansky's Tournament Poker for Advanced Players.
But this book is better, Harrington's nearly exhaustive approach outSklanskys Sklansky, Scores of hands are analyzed in minute detail, the analysis typically covering several pages of text, Harrington begins with a diagram of the table, showing "your" position and that of the other players seated, He gives the amounts in each player's stack, the size of the blinds, the stage in the tournament just starting, early, middle and what kind of tournament it is, major, online, etc.
And he identifies conservative and aggressive players,
Next he gives "your" hand and the action to you, For example, you have TdTh on the button and Player A passes, Player B raises x number of dollars, and now it's up to you, What I love about these illustrative hands is that Harrington gives first an analysis of the factors that a professional player would consider at that point, and then he gives his recommendation: fold, call, raise x number of dollars, etc.
and then he tells what "you" actually didwhich is sometimes or even often, the wrong thing, And then he continues the hand to the flop and often all the way to the river, commending on every action,
How much to bet, Harrington says, can be calculated almost exactly in some cases, If you have top pair and you believe your only opponent is on a draw, you need to bet enough to make it unprofitable for him to call.
If it is a turn bet and the pot isand he has a flush draw he has a/,chance of hitting his hand, or about one in five, So you need to bet more than one third of the pot to make it a mistake for him to call, But, as Harrington cautions several times in the book, you do not want to foolishly bet more than is necessary, Going allinan irresistible thrill for some tournament playersis silly when you can get the same result by betting a smaller amount,
Another nice point that Harrington makes is that whenever there is a bet and you are trying to figure out what the bettor has and whether you should call or notalways more of an art than a science, which is one of the great things about pokeryou should put the probability of a bluff at at least ten percent.
What the reader realizes is that nolimit tournament hold'em poker is a very complex game and that there are almost always many things to consider before making any decision.
Sometimes of course the decision is easy, You have the nut flush on an unpaired board at the river and it's bet to you, You raise, of course. But wait a minute! Is there somebody behind you yet to act Maybe you should just call and try to get an overcall, And, by the way, just how much should you raise Even if there is nobody else in the pot but you and the bettor, you need to consider just how big a raise he is likely to call.
If you bet too much he may not call, If you bet too little you may not get as much out of the hand as you might,
You might say, Whoa, not everybody at the top plays this way, Surely Johnny Chan, for example, in his prime did not stop and figure out every angle before proceeding, He acted and reacted with lightning speed, Yes, but that is only because he had already figured out all the angles, had added them up and totaled them, so to speak as he went along and when his opponent acted or he saw the next card, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
Instantly, and perhaps somewhat unconsciously,
The "natural" player as opposed to the "scientific" player considers the same factors before acting, but he or she may put a different emphasis on certain values.
The natural player may value position more than the scientific player or it could be viceversa, but regardless both players take into account the very factors that Harrington delineates before acting.
One thing that really made me sit up and notice is that Harrington's theory about profitable player styles includes not only his fairly conservative style, but the "aggressive" style and the "superaggressive" style.
His main point is that the more aggressive your style, the more alert, intense and sharpwitted you have to be, Wild players CAN win, but they have got to be able to read both the action and the other players extremely well since they are often walking the razor's edge.
Bottom line: Harrington's mastery of the game and his clear instruction make this a mandatory read for the aspiring tournament hold'em player,
Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
,