saw this book at chapters in canada today.......... looked very very interesting at the very least in terms of presentation and original thinking at some level. anyway, charts look interesting, although some look very simplistic and somewhat repetitive.

Sounds interesting enough to take a look, I'll sneak out from work and visit chapters at lunch today.

I skimmed through it today at my local bookstore.
This book is clearly geared towards limit with no limit content towards the end of the book. Author believes that hold'em is a progression where you need to master limit before mastering the other forms of poker: no limit cash and no limit tournaments.

He actually states somewhere in the book that one must play at least 250,000 limit hands before they can competently master limit (or something to that affect).

There is an even an interesting page where he outlines the pyramid of hold'em progression where the bottom of the pyramid is low limit, limit followed by higher limits, nl cash and then to tournament play.

I am not sure if I agree with him on this.

The contents look interesting and I think it is a worthwhile book to check out.

p.s.
another interesting note is that in the intro, author clearly states that the contents of his book is not guaranteed to make you money and if you do not accept those terms, you can return the book directly to him and get a full money back. I have never seen that printed in any other poker or gambling literature before....

had a further look today and this book totally fascinates me. i wish there were more books like this............... i guess my problem though is that i have no interest in limit poker right now........ but the way the author goes about things and presents them is simply amazing IMO

Is this book geared towards full-ring or short-handed?

both i believe......... FWIW, book seems like outstanding value. many pages and they are very large.

Can you elaborate? This would seem to be a new conceptual way of teaching the game, and I wonder what it is. (I have no interest in limit either at the moment, although my interests seem to change suddenly and drastically from time to time.)

I got the book a week or so ago.
I would say the most eye opening thing about this book
apart from let's say HOH are the graphs.
Particularly the graphs regarding suited cards
(Kx s for ex) , 3 gappers and 2 gappers.

Also, the Ax grapsh were quite revealing.

If anything, I would get the book for these.
Just pure science here, and if anyone in the future
talks about justifying their Ax , I will just picture the graph
and think to myself, "what a effn donkey!"

It reads exactly like a college text book.
The guy is a teacher by nature and has taught in over
7 different associated fields. So I think he knows a
very solid approach for instructing people.

As with any other game, foundational play (stemming from Limit) is definitely the way to go about teaching people.

I think I got it too as a result of Daniel N. 's kudos to this guy.

I would rate this right below Kill Everyone and HOH.

Not necessarily in the market for it, but came across it yesterday at Chapters. It seems to duplicate most of what is contained in his area on PokerVT. Price seemed reasonable, $29.95 or so for a "workbook sized" book.

I'm curious about anyone that has picked it up, might be a good fit for people I'd like to recommend Chen's Mathematics of Poker to but that would find Chen's book too "high level".

Impressions?

I have viewed his matireal on Poker VT which is gr8. If it is all the same info
I would highly recommend it.

I understand ur concern alot of his advice is not to be taken. From VT he reccomends playing 1,000,000 hands on a simulator like poker academy before u play ur first live hand. This book is for 1 purpose people math. This is a great poker math source that's it. IMO that's good enough to purchase it.

I watched all his videos on Poket VT and did not think there was anything really new or useful. In fact, one time he was describing a results he thought was surprising and required "more research". I thought the reason was fairly obvious. However, I have read about about 30 books on poker so YMMV.

I have read both" Mathematics of Poker" and "Advanced Degree". If someone wanted to take a systematic approach to learning holdem I think Advanced Degree would be a way to go.

I think Chen's book is much better suited for someone with a high math background and analytical ability plus a competent understanding of game theory.

Advanced Degree is a much better book for the poker masses, Mathematics is clearly a niche book for the high-end player or someone with extensive math and game theory background.

That said any poker player can benefit from the bullet list at the end of each chapter in Mathematics. Those lists make the investment in the book worthwhile.

I know Chen is a friend of the pokercast this in no way minimizes the quality of the work, but to indicate that this is a poker book for everyone to me is wrong.

My background: I've been playing poker for several years, and am now a profitable NL player. I have read at least 10 excellent books on poker, by harrington, negreanu et al, brunson et al, navarro, caro, etc. I have a bachelor in mathematics, and have developed my own unique probability-based winning strategies.

I bought this book a few days ago. In the bookstore, I was excited by the focus on math, charts, and comprehensive mathematica analysis.

I've now read half the book, skimmed the rest, and I have to say it is a piece of garbage. I want my money back.

This book will confuse beginners, and lead them astray. Intermediates will gain nothing. Professionals will be bewildered that this guy got a book deal.

Where the book addresses topics covered by other books, it does a very poor job. The book tries to teach you poker through memorizing what different behaviours in your opponents mean, rather than by getting inside the opponent's heads and understanding why they behave the way that they do.

Where the book attempts to explore new concepts, it's logic is fraught with mathematical error. It is clear that the author is seriously lacking in some basic mathematical aptitude. With simpler concepts, the book provides some of the calculations involved, and there are often glaring errors. With more complicated concepts, the calculations are not given, but one must assume they are equally riddled with error, which explains why the conclusions are often so out-of-line with the existing body of poker knowledge. The conclusions cannot be trusted.

The most prominent error I see in the authors grand "winning factor" analysis, is that he doesn't take implied pot odds into account. This is why many proven strategies cannot be exmplained using his analysis.

I do sympathize with the author, because I can see what he was trying to accomplish. I myself have spent months creating my own system using similar methods. But for Swayne, I think the small errors combined with some fundamental flaws in his model, and snowballed into results that are nonsense.

examples:

pg 100
- look at the table at the bottom of the page. The top row essentially gives the probability of at least one opponent holding a pocket pair, given the number of opponents.
The author knows that the probability of being dealt a pocket pair is 6% (5.88% actually) and so he figures the probability of at least one opponent holding a pocket pair must be = (6% x NumberOfOpponents). (way wrong!) He then says "of particular interest is that when you hold AK under the gun, someone else at the table is usually ahead of you before the flop." The correct line for the top row should be
6% 11% 17% 22% 26% 30% 35% 38% 42%
instead of
6% 12% 18% 24% 30% 36% 42% 48% 54%

The more embarrassing part of this table, is that the author probably knew he was wrong, but couldn't explain why. Further down the table, his math would have resulted in probabilites well over 100%. Because he didn't know where his calculations were wrong, he just shaded out all probabilities greater than 50%, and published it.

pg 324, Heads Up Hands:
"Jack-Ten has a slightly higher chance to make a straight than 9-8 because, as you know, a straight must contain a 10 or 5 and with Jack-Ten, one of the Ten cards is used"

pg 92:
Given the misunderstanding demonstrated on page 324, you'll see that every chart on page 92 is fudged slightly, giving higher probabilites for hands containing a ten or a five!

Bizarre conclusions:
pg 199, top left:
at a very aggressive & tight table, you should fold AK offsuit or TT in the dealer position.

If I had the patience to read the entire book, I'm sure this list would be much longer.

Another error: Early in the book, after discussing the difficulty involved in reading the board to determine if and how many possible straights could be out, he gives an example of a board with "four different straights" being possible.