Finally got myself a copy of the classic, and am wondering for those who read/studied this text, what has it done for your P/NLO8?

I have read and studied it. If you're intelligent and interested in poker the author has a nice, easy to read, writing style and covers some very interesting aspects of the game that might not have previously occurred to you.

As I recall, there's not much, if anything, directed at P/NLO8, but indirectly the general poker principles apply.

The author, I believe, won an early WSOP bracelet for Omaha-8.

At any rate, it's an outstanding book, well worth the reading and well worth the price, a must for every serious student of the game.

Buzz

+1

I really need to get a copy. Where do I get one from?

amazon.com or any other bookstore?

It did nothing for me or my game... Just sayin dont get your hopes up

Buzz, how about your limit game, did it help it? In his book, Zee says that you will not get the full value out of his book w/o having 1st read TOP.

I read HLS a few times, and now I quite curious as to what new stuff I will pickup once I read it after having studied TOP...

Yes. I think Sklansky's The Theory of Poker helped all aspects of my game.

You don't have to win a very big pot because of some idea you read in a book to have the book more than pay for itself.

Ray Zee gives good advice.

Buzz

I've you've played and won for a while TOP might not have a LOT of information in it that will surprise you, but in general it's just a good book on how to think about the game, and gambling.

I remember a few things in there that were big lightbulbs to me. For example:

Say on the turn, you are planning to bluff the river. You are planning this, because you expect that your opponent will fold often enough to make it a profitable move. In the river comes and you catch a piece of it (but not the nuts or a huge hand) you can NOT value bet! This is because your previous plan assumes that your opponent is going to fold the bottom part of his range, so, assuming you were right, you're not going to get called by worse.

The reverse of course is, if you had a decent hand, and you were planning to value bet the river, but a scary card comes, you can not take this moment to bluff. This probably has more exceptions than the first rule in big bet poker but it's still relevant, especially to a game like plo8 that has a ton of action killing cards.

+1

Has very little application to PLo8 since it is all about limit poker. Very outdated - not really usefull for today's hyper-aggressive internet games.

Also can't really handle the dry & dusty school book writing style.

Just my opinion but i would buy another book first..

Angri

Fundamental Theory of Poker and Sklansky Bucks apply to PLO8.

While ToP no doubt applies more to limit poker, in that many of the examples are drawn from limit games, the actual concepts that is describes, things like game theory, profitable bluffing situations, psychology, hand reading, are applicable to all areas of all poker games. As long as you understand the core concepts then with a little tweaking you can apply them in many different situations in many different poker games. there is absolutely no way that reading the book will make you a worse player.