Since the other one got locked, lets start a new one to review the book. We already know that Rizen should ***** over the UB deal etc. so lets leave that out of the discussion please.

Ive read through PearlJammer's section and have just started on Rizen's. I find some concepts to be pretty vague; for instance, PJ will mention that his stack size is too large or too small to take a certain line, but gives no mention of what a proper stack would be for the situation. Sometimes PJ will mention something about his equity in a hand being enough to make a call, but lacks actual numbers. I dont know if thats a big deal since we can just Stove it ourselves, but I think for a novice it would be a good idea to include some figures. Finally, and I hate mentioning this because A) PJ has done more in tournament poker than I ever will and B) Everyone already knows it....But PJ seems to make questionable folds given his stack size, and quite a few questionable raises given the stack sizes behind him.

I do enjoy the format of the book and thinking about the different lines one can take, and if I were to take the time to use this thought process at the tables Id likely put up much better results.

Would love to hear input from other readers, hopefully I can finisht he rest of it tomorrow and finish my review.

wow

Is this a wow at the lack of responses? I think it's because the book hasn't hit bookshelves yet.

I know we don't want another thread derailed by non-book talk, but for those that don't check out other forums, and may have decided not to buy the book on the basis of Rizen's UB relationship:

Rizen's blog

Wow. After all that drama.

FWIW I bought this book but haven't had the time to read it yet. I will post my thoughts when I finish.

Yeah, the wow was the lack of response, figured someone else would have gotten into it. Im about 200 pages in and there has been only one minor typo, just thought Id give credit to whoever proofread/edited the content.

I just ordered it from Amazon. It's $19.79 there, plus free/cheap shipping depending on your membership type etc. Compared to $27.95 + $5.95 shipping on pokerxfactor.com.

Mine came a few days ago and I've already read it all. I think it's amazingly good. Real hands with real-time analysis are the future of poker books. If you enjoy the 2+2 forums format where people post single hands with interesting decisions... you'll like this. Pearljammer and Apestyle's sections were the best I'd say. I found the Apestyle's section the most interesting and rich, although his bubble section went a little too smoothly. I'd rather see how he handled turbulence there and it seemed a little idyllic. He left very little to 'feel' and you could tell he tried to rationalize his thought processes and decisions plainly so nobody would be left in the dark about even simple things.

That being said, the analysis was good and very in depth. Even those who don't understand some of the simple concepts will find them elucidated throughout the different scenarios the hands yield. While the concepts aren't explicitly organized HOH style (which might've been better), each hand covered a multitude of concepts all at once.

It's definitely NOT a beginner's book, although a beginner could reasonably still use this, just with more effort and researched involved in the process I suppose. I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner however.

There's also a section of 20 hands where each author gives his response to the situation, and they do vary a lot. That was interesting although the analysis wasn't as good as in their individual hands.

There's a lot of insight behind this book and if just a bit of it can rub off it'd be worth it. I noticed that this is 'volume 1' in the title so if any more come out I'll pick those up too. This and Hansen's Every Hand Revealed are the titles you should be grabbing, IMO.

4.5/5

Amazon is out of stock already.

What's volume 2 supposed to be about?

Volume 1 covers through the bubble, so I'm guessing volume 2 covers from there to heads up.

We do have it in stock at www.conjelcostore.com

Mine has arrived today, I will review when I've finished. For UK posters, this is available next day from High Stakes Bookstore in London.

I personally love this book even though it's not what I expected (didn't think it was ALL hand histories). I would like a little more structure of theories however. This book is a great book in itself, but also a good companion to a concept heavy book like Kill Everyone.

Finished this today. Basically, very good. If you've seen any of the training videos from these players, it's kind of like an extended video from each player, except in a bit more detail. Apestyles in particular made a couple of points that just made me think "wow", in a light-bulb-over-the-head kind of way.

If I have a reservation, it's that Pearljammer does tend towards the nitty, often in spots where he gives his opponent credit for being a good player, and I'm thinking, if he's that good, don't you think he might be exploiting you ?

It does tail off a little towards the end, while Apestyles bubble section is good, I would have preferred 30 more hands in the same style as the first half of his section, which was great. And the final section where all of them comment on the same hand is repetitive at times because of course they concur quite a lot. Although it's quite amusing when they don't, one hand in particular there are basically three options and they each pick one :-)

All in all very good though, and I'm looking forward to the next volume.

Finished the three player's sections and reading the 20 extra hands now. I like Ape's section the best because he got more in depth with hand ranges, equity, and EV calculations. Thats not to say the other sections werent good, but I like it when the writer gets in depth as to why he made a move. I'll read the book again and then await the second volume. Hopefully the second books has a lot of really sick spots.

BUMPING this for that other guy who started a thread.

lol! TY. Would I be better off ordering this through XFactor to get the free tourney vids?

I'm still in the PJ section, but it brings up a question. Every hand he plays, even when he is wrong, his play was good. Ok. but I wonder about why we never see (or I haven't gotten there yet) a few hands that authors say "I just played this wrong. here's where I blew it badly and why I didn't analyse it correctly. That is a teaching tool also.

Actually, Gus's book has more of that. I give him credit for that, of course, he's listing EVERY hand, not just well played ones.

Rizen does that, just keep reading

On the other hand they handpicked their hands, so i guess it's kinda clear that they want to take hands where they played it "right".

i'm still in the Rizen-section. will review the whole book when i'm finished...

so far, some basic stuff and some very interesting stuff and some extremly nitty PJ play

That's one of the advantages of the Pokerxfactor videos is that PJ, Rizen Apestyles and others take you through full tournaments, analyzing each hand.

I thought PJ's videos were particularly good for a bunch of reasons, but to your point, he does point out in those the times where he thought he screwed up.

One of the other good things about those videos is how they analyze the play of hands that they are not involved in, and what that analysis does for future hands they play with those players...

I don't recall him saying he played it wrong. If he lost, he said he played it right, but didn't have the correct read or got unlucky. Not that he's wrong about his analysis, what I mean is that I'd like to see hands that he donk'ed and said: "this was stupid, I totally missplayed it and here's why".

I don't mean a lot of them, I'd just like to see when they think they donk'ed a hand totally and why. That's what I mean about Hansen's book. He'd lost a bunch of chips and say "I played that stupid. I should have paid attention to this or that". Nice to see HOW they make mistakes too.

He does say exactly this at a couple of points in his videos and it had nothing to do with the result of the hand...

Hi Rod, you're right in that most of the hands in the book are situations where the authors feel they played correctly. But to clarify, you will find that each author does show at least a hand or two where they feel they played poorly. In PearlJammer's case, give Hand 4 another read.

Matthew (the publisher)

Mods, not to be a nit but can you please change the title of this to "Winning Poker Tournaments" and not "Winning Poker Tourneys?" It was difficult to search for the thread on this book when the only result was a locked thread saying there was already a thread about the book.

Good point. Done.