Hi thecantonkid,
I think this book can help you even if you're a tournament player. Most books will give you "recipes", when to c-bet, when to steal, when to do this, when to do that, but they don't really tell you why or when they do, it's mostly generic advice:
- You should c-bet because the flop is dry
- you should c-bet because you don't have any showdown value
- You should iso limpers
- you shouldn't slowplay on drawy boards
I'm sure you've read all this before... Add a chapter on the importance of position, another one on pot odds and implied odds and you've got a typical poker book. You read this and you think to yourself: : Well, yeah... that makes sense... And that's pretty much it: common sense.
Common sense is all well and good but sometimes it may not be good enough and sometimes it's just plain wrong. As always, it depends.
This book is different in that it goes beyond these generic one liners. The way poker spots are studied in this book is as follows:
1. First the game conditions are defined (stack sizes and strategies, i.e. the players' ranges for each available option)
2. Once the game has been defined, the author shows you how to solve the game
"Solving" here means maximizing your EV/the value of the game.
The focus is on GTO strategies since the assumption is that both players are trying to maximize their EV. Some people seem to think that exploitative play and unexploitable/GTO play are two completely different things, they're really not: When you play GTO you're still trying to make as much money as possible, you just assume your opponent is doing the same thing.
Anyway, the great thing about this approach is that once you know what the GTO strategy looks like in a given spot/game, you can start to think about how to exploit an apponent who deviates from it. And, since the players' ranges are defined precisely, you get to see exactly what's going on.
It's a theory book so theoretical concepts and tools will be introduced (Nash, decision trees, indifference equations...). These tools are used to solve the games/spots analyzed in the book.
This book is about river play, mostly. The author starts with preflop only games, I don't know whether they will be directly applicable to the games you play, but that's not really the point: they are "simple" games, used to demonstrate the theoretical concepts.
Chapter 7 is about river play and I can see Donovan's point above... Let's just say that this book makes other poker books "look bad" (Still haven't given The Mathematics of Poker a fair try). It's not an easy read (not for me anyway), but then again poker is not really an easy game.
I'm reading it for the 3rd time I think and I'm starting to understand a few things... So, not easy but it's a nice feeling when you feel like you figured something out, even if it's after 2 or 3 reads. I don't know how good you are at poker but you can probably learn a lot from this book.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Donovan
most important book on poker strat in print in my personal opinion.
I agree but this is a matter of opinion. I guess the question is: Is this book worth buying?
"lol" comes to mind... I'll just say: Best $25 I've ever spent.