Just saw this book while browsing Amazon. According to the subtitle, it's geared towards low stakes live games, and examples were taken from hands played at the Red Rock Poker Room in Las Vegas. This is also the same author who wrote The Statistics of Poker.

Just wondering if anyone has heard of the book. The release date was June 5th.

Just ran across the book listing myself and was hoping for a review here ... if I take a blind shot at it I'll let you know. Have you read The Statistics of Poker? Any good?

Bought the ebook version and find it is acurate and quite good as coaching; much cheaper too.

Nice review. I like his description of donks as people who don't adjust and make the same mistakes over and over again. I'm probably going to end up buying this pretty soon.

Hoping to read more reviews though.

I like it. Has more in it than I thought. Definitely worth picking up if you play Live $1-2.Glad I bought it. I'm only halfway thru it and like what I have read.

$1/$2 is the main type of stakes I play, so it sounds suited for me. Ordered a copy, should have a review up in no more than a week.

Finished reading this and still consider it a must have book for live 1-2. Made me realize some of the donk moves I still make. Strong, like to hear your review. It was an easy read but must a book that has to be read over and over to get the most out of it.

Just got it in the mail, literally opening it up right now! Will have a review up soon. After reading Maiden's description, I'm very much looking forward to this one.

I have not read his other book. I think it was geared towards online poker and haven't played much online since Black Friday. According to a couple amazon reviews, it seems decent.

There are 538 books in the same category as this book on Amazon, and this is the 12th most expensive book, and it has zero review.

How to define a book's category is a matter of degree. Naturally, if you type the term "poker" on the Amazon's kindle search box there would be 538 books. But the Beat the Donk book can also be classified under more specific categories like "no limit holdem poker", "no limit holdem cash games", "no limit texas holdem" or whatever. Naturally, the more specific category a book is the fewer the books in that more narrow category.

If you search type "cookbooks" on the Amazon Kindle search box then there would be much more in that category than if, say, you typed "Mexican cookbooks" or "Paula Deen cookbooks."

But yeah, it is very expensive, and although the subject is something that interests me, I would prefer to wait for reviews or for the price to go on sale to under 10 bucks which is what Dynamic Ring Game costs.

Just thought I'd post an update on my initial impressions with Beat the Donks.

I am highly enjoying this book so far. If anyone was worried that this book would only rehash basic information and not bring anything new to the table, you can put those fears to rest. From what I have read so far, and mind you I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, I have never seen such detailed analysis of the donks in low stakes NLHE games in a poker book outside of a couple of Ed Miller's works. It's also easily digestible up to this point. Steve Selbrede REALLY shows why donks make the mistakes that they do, how costly these mistakes really are, and how exploitable these mistakes are. Also, the hand examples that I have seen so far help in driving the concepts home, even though everything has been easy to understand. Finally, there have been only a few spelling and grammatical errors that I have seen so far, but nothing that truly harms the book and what it's trying to teach.

Despite not finishing yet, I'm already leaning towards recommending this to anyone that plays live low stakes NLHE at your local card room or in soft home/private games. I'll post a more detailed review once I finish the book completely, which I am intending to do by the end of the week.

Got my copy the other day and just started reading it today (home sick, yea!). Finished 4 chapters out of 9, so I don't expect my assessment to change much with the rest of the material.

Seems well written so far. I really like the clear distinction between Donks and Fish. What he refers to a Donks many people just refer to as regs, or bad-regs, but his definition is more precise. His experience seems to be mostly in Vegas, and he refers to "Vegas players" or "Vegas games" ... but I'd contend that these observations are just as relevant for games in other markets. In fact, the less touristy and more reg-infested your local game is the more this probably applies.

The author pretty clearly lays out a lot of the same things I see Donks in my game doing, and seems to have a good understanding of *why* they do what they do. The adjustments that he suggests aren't earth shattering revelations about how to crush the game. But they're very clearly described and backed up with charts and math from the author's other work on statistics in online games. (This makes me want to read the other book now too.)


The way that the differences between a typical online game and B&M game are nicely done. Many online players get all bent out of shape when you suggest that live games are different, they just say "if you're a winner online you'll crush $1/2 live". But the reality is that since the opponents' tendencies are different, and their ranges are different, you can/should adjust your ranges in specific ways to take advantage of them. The justifications for *why* you should make a specific adjustment are discussions that I haven't read before in print.


The book is good. I'd recommend it to someone that already has some knowledge of the game and wants to improve their win-rate in a LLSNL game. I suspect that I'll re-read this from time to time for a re-fresher on adjustments that I need to continually keep in mind.



Mechanical notes, the printing quality is good, book binding nice, size matches the other poker books that I have so it'll fit in on the shelf. It has the typical (of newer titles) bad grey color for red suit markings. I assume this is an artifact of it being written with an ebook in mind where these would all be red. The references to figures have boxes around them, a holdover from the way that LaTeX generates links in digital documents, slightly annoying in a dead-tree book. There are a number of small typographical errors that I've seen, extra periods at the end of paragraphs, incorrect figure reference numbers, all minor.

Nice review, Angrist. Based on what I've read so far, I 100% agree with everything you said.

Finished. A few more typos near the end, and one hand history that was incorrect. Don't have it in front of me, think it was in the bit about "payoff wizards", but Hero has an overpair, board runs out a 4-straight, and he claims that the V wins the pot ... but only has top pair. It was obvious what the author was trying to communicate, but the HH didn't match. There were also a few where the same card was in Hero's hand and on the board. Meh.

I'm definitely moving the author's statistics book to the top of my list.

Nice. I'm almost done with it. Assuming you liked it, Angrist?

How does this compare to the best live cash game books like Playing the Player and Angel Largay's "No-Limit Texas Hold'em: A Complete Course?"

Im still reading the book now, but it is nothing like Largay's book, this doesnt touch poker fundamentals/strategy at all, this is mainly a "playing the player" book, but I feel so far, like it is mostly filler material.

So far I would not recommend it, I have to finish reading though. If anything it takes information from other sources and puts them all in one place, to back up what is being discussed, it just has so little info in it overall, being that it is filler, just very well worded concepts that take too much text to get to the actual advice.

Playing the Player was a mess for me to read, my game was worse after trying to read it and apply it immediately after. This book, is so much simpler that if you took the concepts (which there are very few) and put them into practice right away you would not get yourself into trouble.

Largay and Miller would always play a full stack, many of the hand examples in this book our hero is playing a shorter stack, but that is only a minor issue as effective stacks are usually even lower.

Not a bad book at all, but I think most of the people here would be disappointed in the content.

Was strongly recommended to me by a friend and player whose game I respect.

Will have to order the hard copy, as his e version is unlendable. Unless someone read it and prefers to sell it...

Kind of ironic that you're critiquing the author for writing a lot of fillers.

Let's just take this paragraph as an example:

All fillers.

I ordered it earlier this week and am awaiting receipt. Took Amazon's suggestions and snagged catching fish for another $5.00. I have yet to read Playing the Player, but it's on my shelf and in the queue. Ed Miller is friggin proud of his books I know that much. I have a couple of his others on my wish list.

I tossed a red-bird at "Catching Fish" too .... it's not worth it. For someone that hadn't read any poker books it might be pretty useful, but not for an experienced player.

Hmmm... Maybe we're the fish for tossing the red-bird.

Eh. The material wasn't wrong. If a friend that had never played before asked for a book that he could read on a 4 hour flight to prep him for playing it wouldn't be an awful choice. Very much like "Ace High" by Schwiethale.

I'm just a third of the way into this book. I'm enjoying it so far. It is refreshing to know that new poker writing talent continue to emerge. The author of this book joins Puggy Neutron and Doug Hull as three of the most promising authors today, IMO.

I'm looking forward to finishing this book.