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Making Winners out of Beginners and Advanced Players!
Product
The Illustrated Guide to Texas Hold'em by Dennis Purdy
Hits
- Easy to read and understand
- Clear and informative illustrations
- Strong on odds calculation
- Win rate chart for all 169 possible pocket hands
- Good for beginners
Misses
- Nothing on No-Limit Hold'em
- Nothing on short-handed games
- Nothing on tournament strategy
- Some obvious errors in the practical hand analysis
- No tables containing stats and outs for drawing hands
- Not much for intermediate or advanced players
Review
Retired professional gambler and blackjack expert Dennis Purdy has written this guide to Limit Texas Hold'em. Preceded by a few short opening chapters, the main section of the book, "Practice Situations," begins and continues on for more than 90% of the book.
Every other page in this section graphically presents a concrete Hold'em problem, including table position, pot size, cards held, board cards already out (if any), and plays made by other players prior to your turn to act. Based on the given information, the reader has to decide whether to check, fold, call or raise. When you have come up with a solution to the problem, you can turn to the author's point of view on the following page.
Purdy walks you through his way of thinking and handling the problem and explains, in his opinion, what the correct way of action is and why. He puts the other players on likely holdings and analyzes what effect his preferred action would have in the upcoming betting rounds. In total, there are 150 game situations.
Many aspects of the game are covered in this book: starting hand standards, pot odds, implied odds, position, pot size, and much more. The strategic advice given is generally solid and effective, and the clear and informative illustrations make it an easy-to-understand read.
This book will certainly be of use for inexperienced poker players hoping to take their game to the next level. Even though you might not always agree with the author's view of the problems (occasionally there are some obvious errors in the hand analysis), the book will get you thinking about poker problems and that's always important.
In total, it reads 360 pages.
Details:
- Paperback $16.50
