Editor's pick

Caro's Latest Has Slow Start But Finishes Strong

Product

Caro's Most Profitable Hold'em Advice by Mike Caro

Hits

  • Spectacular look into the psychology of table image and player manipulation
  • Most accurate and complete listing of starting hand rankings in various situations
  • Strong experience-based advice on how to increase and maintain average winnings

Misses

  • Sections of advice with relevance only to the most novice player
  • Hold'em game-play advice almost exclusively based in Limit Hold'em
  • Tells section almost exclusively reiterates his previous Book of Tells

Review

Mike Caro's latest book on Hold'em is one of the first books not based on teaching someone to win at poker. This book is designed to teach winning players how to increase their average profit.

The first few sections of it were absolutely painful to get through. It took two weeks to read the first third of the book, versus two nights to read the last two.

First off, be forewarned that this book is for live poker. It will do very little to help your online game. Some of the general ideas on raising, bluffing and betting will transfer into online poker, but this is a live-oriented book.

The first six sections - two introductory chapters, Pre-Flop Concepts, Hold'em Starting Hands, Post-Flop Concepts and Bluffing Concepts - are the ones that involved hard labor to get through. Caro conveys a bunch of very good, smart and accurate tips here.

Unfortunately, for a seasoned poker player the vast majority of the information in these opening sections is second nature. Little is new or significant, let alone the fact that it's almost exclusively written for Limit-based Hold'em. If you're an exclusive No-Limit player, these sections will be even less informative for you.

There are a few tidbits thrown into each section to make it worthwhile, but you'll have to wade through pages of hand-ranking charts to get to them. Until Chapter 7 ("Image, Psychology, Manipulation"), the verdict did not look bright for this book.

Mike Caro is known as one of the game's greatest psychologists, and with good reason. This section was spectacular to read for any player who has ever wondered about how their attitude towards the game, and the other players, affects their results.

Caro has nailed it in this section, explaining what table image does and why. He details how to make tables more profitable and how and why people react to what you do. This is the greatest text out there on the role of image in poker.

The next few sections contain analysis and strategy that ranges from the obvious to the priceless. There are many topics in this book that all poker players are aware of, but do not take to heart or follow as a rule. Mike does a fantastic job of explaining why to follow these rules, and why it will hurt you not to.

For every poker player who wants to take poker seriously and make long-term consistent money at the game, chapters such as "Treating Poker as a Business" are invaluable.

Unfortunately, once you get past "Increasing Profits" (Chapter 10) and into "Specific Strategies for Low-Limit Games" (Chapter 11), the pace and tone of the book return to the plodding rhythms of the first third. You'll still find a lot of good information here, but pay attention to the chapter titles, and only bother reading ones whose topics signal something you don't already know.

For example, for anyone who's read the infamous Book of Tells, the section in "Tells" in which Caro discusses the "weak is strong, strong is weak" concept has nothing new in it. In contrast, some of the advice in "Talking Tells" is incisive and worth reading.

All in all, the advice on table image and psychological manipulation make this book well worth the time and price. For that reason, it's highly recommended for every live poker player who wants to increase his or her average profit. That's the purpose of this book - rather than a guide to winning, it's a guide to help currently successful (or break-even) players increase their profits.

Details:

  • $24.95
    Paperback
    Cardoza Publishing
    408 pages