It seems that roughly half or more of the text is Byron Jacobs's description of his thinking. Will I miss anything substantial if I skip that and read only Chris's analysis?

In Hand 18, Hero in cutoff with AK flatted open-raise from hijack. Heads up to dry 9-high flop; Villain checks. Chris says: The emphasized clauses seem contradictory to me. Comments?

I don't own the book but if villain's range is { 99, A high } then AK is way ahead and is a clear value bet.

not necessarily.

If it's a hand that can only get 2 streets/or one then the latter streets might be better. Especially given that villains hands can turn cards which give them a pair which is 2nd best etc.

Yes, cbet might be +EV but not necessarily the highest EV

You could very well be right. I simply thought that AK has more to gain from value betting the flop on 9xx than it has either value betting or bluff catching a later street, assuming villain will play A high passively.
But I'm assuming a lot and I don't even own the book...

anyone knows a place that sells the book in central london?

Try the High Stakes Bookshop in Gt. Ormond st. just down the road from the children´s hospital.

Thanks, gonna check it out

100 pages in and so far I am really disappointed. It might be fine for beginners or something, but all the hands are played by his friend Byron or something and it's apparent that dude is not good (at least in presented hands). Reading some hands makes me cringe.

Not a word so far on Game Theory or what snowie would do or how to construct 3b/4b ranges at different stack depths, adjusting versus being unexploitable, cev plays versus icm ev plays, etc.

And yeah, I would like to see Moorman's hands, not some dude's hands.

Will post a short review after I am finished.

EDIT: not a word on HUD either. Let's hope he mentions it later in the book.

Foyles on Charing Cross Road should also have copies (if they've not sold out).

Steve, I think this is a good question. I'm just gonna give my opinion:

I don’t think they are contradictory if you take into account the other possibilities that exist for the opponent. He’s saying that checking behind with AK, your action, is best here because if you take into account all of the things that are possible:

Good A-High Hand

Giving up with garbage

Set

Then calling bets on the turn, and reevaluating on the river seem to be the best overall line in this situation.

So, for example, let’s say we do that with those three options above:
Good A-High Hand bets the turn, we call, and likely doesn’t bet the river. Our AK likely wins.

Garbage hand bets the turn, we call, and likely doesn’t bet the river. Our AK likely wins.

Set bets the turn, we call, and likely bets again, more so, on the river. We fold A-high unless of course we hit an A, then we have to reevaluate the bet, pot, etc.

The overall point being taking this line with this hand, opponent, and flop, seems to be best.

Thoughts?

Was considering putting this on my Christmas wish list.. but not so sure now.
Looking forward to your follow-up post after you've finished reading the book.

Snowie and Game Theory? Why would you assume that would feature.

Who says Moorman is an expert in that? Balance etc in MTT's is very rare from what I perceive. Surely there are far more qualified authors.

Moorman is a hugely successful player and in the book he describes how HE would play byron's hands. The ability of the co-author is quite unimportant.

I read half the book and havent learned anything from it. I am being 100% honest and i swear to all of you im not trying to bring Moorman down. I respect his game and applaud his accomplishment but i think his book was a quick money getter. I dont plan on finishing the book and most likely will just put it on ebay. Harrington books are way more better.

Hi Mad1Lee, Sorry you don't like the book. However it seems to me (as indicated by Dansheel350) that you are criticising it for not being a theory book - something it never claimed to be. It is very clearly marketed as a hand analysis book, aimed to help moderate standard players understand what is necessary to move their thinking to a higher level.

Topics such as 3b/4b ranges and ICM are touched upon where they are relevant to the discussion of the hand in question but there is no comprehensive analysis of these topics. That would make it a different book entirely. And you won't find anything on HUD use or Snowie. These topics (especially Snowie) are way too advanced (for large entry MTT play) to be of interest to the target audience for this book.

A number of the hands certainly feature sub-optimal play (many were deliberately chosen for this reason). However, hands where errors occur are often more instructive than perfectly played hands and, anyway, the actual play is irrelevant to the analysis.

Hi Hooozay, I am sorry you haven't learned anything from the book. A couple of points:

1) No highly successful poker player ever wrote a book to make "quick money".

2) The comparison to Harrington is not really valid as this book is entirely different to the Harrington series. Harrington could be more usefully compared to the Jonathan Little series and the Moorman book perhaps to something like Hansen's "Every Hand Revealed".

What is Snowie?

It's the weather in the UK and also this:

http://www.pokersnowie.com/

Hello, mr. Jacobs. Thank you for replying.

I am okay with the book not being up-to-date with the latest poker theory, I am okay with it not being about theory at all.

However, almost through with the book and I've only seen you mentioning HUD once, when you played a hand in 60$ hyper (why you even play them? Clearly -ev for you). And it's despite that a lot of hands from the book will gain a lot of perspective had you mentioned hud stats of the particular opponents.

My main source of disappointment however is not seeing how Moorman himself plays. I played couple of hands with him and he is indeed super solid and consistent winner. I guess everyone wanted a glimpse of his own game, his own approach to range construction, etc., instead we readers learned about your game, which, judging from the book is far from optimal (maybe you are beasting now, I don't really know, since you never mentioned your ps.com alias).

It's a good book for low to mid stakes regs who are struggling with basics, but for players like myself it's nothing new, moreover some hands were tilting to read. Nothing personal tho.

I will post my short review here (not that anyone cares ) after I finish it, got like 30 pages left.

Hi Mad1Lee, Thanks for the response. I explained in the book why I played the $60 hypers: "... they are excellent practice for understanding and learning the ranges for shoving and calling at very short stacks. They are also good practice for heads-up play, since you will often get down to the final two." Yes - they're usually choc-full of regs, so they're tough

I am not convinced that HUD stats would be that useful since the great majority of the hands are from deep MTT play and I wouldn't be likely to have very many hands on any villain. However, I often articulate how I perceive a particular villain to be playing and Chris takes this into consideration in his responses.

I am not sure why it's a problem that the hands aren't actually ones played by Chris, since he is analysing them and saying what he would do in those situations. Of course everyone is much more interested in what Chris thinks than in what I think. And of course a strong regular MTT pro would have no interest in what I think at all. However we have to consider the overall structure of the book and I think that the contrast between the explanations is very instructive for the "average" reader. We had a lot of feedback from casual MTT players that they really liked this structure. The drawback, of course, is that you don't get a "pure Chris" book which very strong players (such as yourself) would doubtless prefer. But we can't please all the people all the time.

Chris isn't going to write a book or do videos outlining his strategy or teaching it.
Why would he?
The format of the book suits most people who are trying to improve.
Also why would poker snowie be mentioned in a tournament HH where in most cases we're mid to swallowed stacked.

Lol

Thank u

Finished the book, here is my short review:

- It's an okay book if you are a low or mid-stakes grinder who got some (like co-author of the book) or a lot of leaks when it comes to basics, for example pre-flop sizing at different stack depths, 3b-sizings, ranging your opponents correctly, recognizing good and bad runouts to barell, following thru on bluffs, game selection

- It does not have any theory or math, it just assumes that you know stuff like pot odds, implied odds, equity calculations, icm, etc.

- It has very little to do with how Moorman's himself plays mtts, it's more about Byron Jacobs tbh, Chris is just chiming in with obvious insight like "raise more pre" or "you can check-raise that turn" or "bet this hand here to be balanced", etc., all hands are played by Byron Jacobs, vast majority of them while shortstacked

- despite most hands being from turbo or hyper-turbo format, there is no mentioning of nash charts or $ev versus cEV plays or anything that is actually important when playing turbos or hypers

- in current mid to high stakes mtt meta, this book is pretty useless

- best book for poker grinders is still Mental Game of Poker

- good thing I ordered couple of fiction books by Amis and McEwan so that Amazon delivery money was not completely wasted

My rating: 2 out 5 if you are decent and winning online already, 3 out 5 if you are struggling to beat low to mid stakes mtts.

Kudos to mr. Jacobs for replying in this thread and defending what looks like little bit of trainwreck collection of poker insights to have "Moorman" brand on it, but I think Moorman himself could not care less what mtt community would think. (I suspect he kinda trolled everyone with that book).

Hi Mad1Lee and Everyone else:

I don't know Chris Moorman or Byron Jacobs, and I know very little about D&B Publishing. But I suspect the error lies with the publisher and not the authors. Sometimes in an effort to sell lots of books, and sometimes in the world of poker publishing the publisher thinks the book is much different than it actually is, a book like this gets an incorrect title, and I suspect that's what happened here.

To be specific, the title of the book is Moorman's Book of Poker and the author credit is by Chris Moorman with Byron Jacobs (and I bolded the word "with"). This clearly implies to me that the emphasis of the book is Chris Moorman and how he plays poker tournaments, and that Jacobs is someone who is doing much of the writing but the book is not about him.

Apparently this is not the case. However, that doesn't mean it's a bad book, and I suspect that some of you may be critical of it because you thought the book would be something different than what it actually is, and that's not really fair to the authors.

So what this thread needs to do is first figure out the target audience of the book, and then evaluate it from that standpoint. This should be most helpful to those who may want to purchase it.

Also, I have not read Moorman's Book of Poker: Improve your poker game with Moorman1, the most successful online poker tournament player in history and have no comment on it.

Best wishes,
Mason

I'm currently reading this book (Kindle version in the UK). Happy enough with it so far - and it's more accessible than many books in that the format makes it easier to dip in and out.

FWIW, I don't have a problem with the content or the title. Byron Jacobs, in the role of pupil, revisits hands he has played and discusses why he played them like that, before Moorman analyses Jacobs' approach. Of course Jacobs' play isn't perfect (nowhere near so) but that's the real value of the book. I've got plenty out of identifying what I would have done differently as I read Jacob's hand histories, and then much more out of reading what would have gone through Moorman's mind instead.

Mason: you've not read the book but have the impression from other posters that the emphasis is not on Moorman's approach to poker. Those other posters are lolwrong. Although the hand histories are those of Jacobs, the book simply uses the hands as a conceit for Moorman's own analysis of various situations. I certainly don't think it's lower on content than it would be if it were just Moorman talking through his own hands (and I think the structure makes it a better educational tool).

No, it's not what you're looking for if you want a 1-2-3 guide to how to play poker. But it's never been billed like that. I don't really understand some of the comments in this thread.

It doesn't (insofar as I've read, and as appears to be supported by Byron above) feature any discussion of HUDs etc. But frankly, there's plenty of material elsewhere on that. Additionally, the hands are drawn from MTTs; certainly in the MTTs I play it's not particularly unusual to have pointlessly small sample sizes in the HUD. The book does, however, discuss ranges and the player's own table image where the authors considered it relevant. This might be a little old-school for people learning poker from whom HEM or PT is an indispensable crutch, but I didn't mind it one bit.