How is his writing? Does it read easily? That is my main objection to most pokerbooks: they are written like a dictated letter, not fluent. (imho)

I'm only about 40 pages in, but it certainly reads easily. He has a much more jovial style than most poker authors. I don't know that it's 'fluent' in terms of structure, and it's not supposed to be: he discusses his thoughts on individual hands he played during the tourney. Although he did dictate the play of each hand into a voice recorder, it doesn't read like that.

Our shipment was due in Monday but they screwed up and send me one book instead of one case of books. Doh!! They are 2nd day shipping more and I should have them on hand Wednesday 4/30 or Thursday 5/1
Mike
http://www.conjelcostore.com/conjelc...&productID=238

Mine finally got shipped. I hope I get for this weekend. Otherwise my time will be sparse.

I just got my copy of the book. And what first caught my eye were the first words:
"I was up against 746 competitors. It lasted 5 days. It took me 329 hands"
329 hands? Thats just about 65 a day. Wow, live poker sure is slow.

I really don't have any idea how my book order shipped one day before it was released.

But whatever. It's supposed to be in by Friday/Saturday.

He only means that hands that he played. There were about 850 hands total, which is still pretty slow.

Assuming those are hands he chose to enter, if he played 25% of hands dealt, then there would be about 260 hands/day. If they played 10 hrs/day, that would be 26 hands/hr.

Ah, ok. That explains a lot...

From the first glance it looked like literally every hand. That's where my wrong assumption came from.

I just finished this and liked it a lot, particularly Gus' writing style: it's very relaxed, he feels at ease including the occasional quote from pop culture (movies, books, etc) and even drops the occasional f-bomb.

For those that don't know, Every Hand Revealed covers exactly that; every hand Gus played on his way to winning the 2007 Aussie Millions. The amount of text given to each hand seems to correlate pretty closely with how much thought he felt he needed to put into playing the hand (some say, "I raised, everyone folded", some cover a couple of pages).

He spent maybe a page and a half outlining what his approach would be at the beginning of the tournament before jumping straight into hand analysis. There are a few things that jumped out at me from his analyses:

1. They're very honest. He makes no bones about the mistakes he thought he made, where he may have gotten lucky and also where he thinks his opponents may have misplayed hands. He also talks in a couple of places about how he handles tilt.
2. Where needed, they're pretty detailed. He really lays out his thought processes in full.
3. Not surprisingly, how aggressive he is, but how this aggression is used to prevent more costly mistakes.
4. How much he relies on table dynamics and understanding his opponents to make plays, and
5. How there is an underlying math component to a lot of his decisions (e.g. he virtually always defends his BB after a raise due to pot odds).

Each chapter is a day's play (except when it gets to the final table, when there are separate chapters coming down to 4 players and then separate 3-handed and heads-up chapters). At the end of each chapter and before beginning the next, he provides some analysis on the day's events and how he's going to tackle the next step of the tourney.

I really enjoyed the final chapter, Stats and Tips, where he provides some quantitative analysis on the hand categories he was dealt (out of 800-odd hands, he didn't get dealt KK once and only got dealt AA 3 times, one of which was the final hand), he often he won uncontested pots, how often he c-bet, and how little he:

- limped, which is a key to his strategy (no surprise there)
- was all-in with his tourney on the line (4 times, always with the best of it when his chips went in), and
- bluffed. Because of his image he is seen as an outrageous bluffer, but he explains that's not really the case.

This final chapter brings everything together from the hand analysis into an overall strategy that Gus brings to his tourneys.

A couple of final things:

- there are a few typos, a couple of which relate to his position so I had to reread the text to work out what was going on;
- on page 81, he bets 3,300 into an 8K pot against two opponents with 33. I wondered when reading it whether that bet size was some fun on his part to match his hand (3,300 with 33). Seemed like a strange amount otherwise (why not just bet 4K or 3.5K).

While you can see that Gus is well aware of the theory underlying poker and particularly tournaments, the book's not really theory heavy at all.

The book is out, and has been out for some time, so I don't know why Amazon was still showing it as being a pre-order.

I received my Amazon pre-order today and am 25% through it and can't put it down...

A very weird dude & a very young one at that posted that he's very interested in reading it for obvious reasons. I'd be very interested to see what HE thinks about the book considering he played a huge part in that books at least in the heads up section. By the way before anyone thinks otherwise I'm totally joking about the beginning here, but seriously I'm very interested in what Gobboboy has to say about it.

Yeah, that will be interesting. Gus expressly points out in one that Gobboboy played every street wrong (but then admitted he himself had screwed up too). He calls him Gobboboy a lot too!

this book has arrived at chapters/indigo in canada. which would have suggested to me that it was in U.S. bookstores a year ago... but i digress.

anyhow, had detailed look at it. would buy it but i've got some huge time commitments right now so i don't need any more distractions.

gus comes across as a really good guy in the book. i realize it's him about himself, but basically no egomaniac comments that i saw.

one thing that did surprise me is how many AQ, AJ, AT, KJ etc. that he played. call raise and see what happens...... it seems like this whole "these are trap hands" mantra has really taken hold with me.... gus gets involved and then folds with alot of hands. alot more checking behind that i would have thought too.

anyhow, great book on first look!!!

My supply came in this afternoon!

This book is awesome so far. It's exactly the sort of book I had been wishing for.

I'm a bit confused about hand 39. He has Th 9h on a flop of 8h 7h 5c, and one of the reasons that he gives for leading out is "I don't want to give a free card to hands like Ac Qc". What kind of free cards is he worried about giving to Ac Qc? Just the backdoor flush? Pairing the A or Q doesn't really affect the hand unless a T or 9 comes on the river, since he's already behind it.

It does affect if he don't catch up and want to bluff.. If the guy catch a Q on the turn, it will be "a little bit harder" to bluff him out of TPTK after a check on the flop.. and it may be difficult to try to catch on the river 4 cheap.

I have a feeling that this one is going to be one of the "musts" in any poker library.

I just got my copy. I haven't started yet. Interesting the late Chip Reese writes the "About Gus Hansen" bio in the very beginning of the book. I'm shocked at the price of 13 bucks. It is at least as thick as one volume of Harrington's cash games books.

I am about 2/3 thru and I really like this book.

One point that he emphasizes is that the size of the ante in relation to the small blind dictates how much he ramps up his steal aggression.

If you want to understand the sLAG style of play or just gain a different perspective on how to think about play of hands (preflop and post) and metagame this book is easily worth the $15 or so you will spend.

I do have one minor quibble in that except for his first table, which is a nightmare with Ivey and several other well-known players, he seems to get to play against a lot of weak-tight people who let themselves get run over and exploited. Perhaps that's another key lesson to take from a read of this book - when you have a player like this at your table you have to fight back and devise counter strategies. Gaining insight into how players like this play and think will help you do this.

Amazon just shipped my pre-ordered copy this morning, only $10.85.

I'm really looking forward to this one, especially with the glowing reviews it's been getting here.

If you preordered, you got 5% off.

I preordered as well. Total including shipping came out to $14 & change. VERY good price. I've been tracking it so I believe I should get it today. Reading for the weekend!!

You'll need some Sunday reading Pancho: not that it's a short read, you just won't want to put it down!