“How to Beat Players Who Never Fold” by Alex Fitzgerald: A Not So Critical Review 

First Best Aspect of the Book: Philosophy & Language Use

Fitzgerald is a master of words, even if there are so few of them. Unlike me, he’s quite restrained when it comes to what he says but almost all his word choices are precise and to the point. In the book, you won’t find any word salads, empty value judgments or phrases placed there just to fill the page — only clear and precise instructions and reasoning.

Fitzgerald’s also very good at understanding the minds of people who just play poker for fun and entertainment — but he never devalues, condemns or belittles them or their abilities or experiences. His respect for others, including his own students as well amateur players, is a leitmotif of the book. So, if you read this book as an amateur, it’s highly probable that you’ll find Alex’s affection towards recs heart-warming as well as his position on why recs should be valued.

Another aspect of language use where Fitzgerald is spotless is his book titles. The majority of them are formulated to instantly inform you about the primary subject without beating around the bush.

Some phrases in this book are one-liners that are pretty easy to remember, even if they didn’t all originally come from Alex, for example:

• You can’t exploit others without becoming exploitable yourself.
• Humans are rationalizing beings, not rational beings.
• Normal people aren’t seeing reality on reality’s terms.

A good half of the book is actually philosophical and full thought provoking questions. One of my favorite quotes of this nature reads:

With this kind of approach the book motivates you to be attentive to other players but also to focus on self-analysis and how you want to present yourself at the live table. It cover topics like why that’s important, and why you need to work on both your game and your behavior.

Second Best Aspect of the Book: Live Games Strategy

Let’s get this out of the way: I play poker online, only occasionally participating in home games with friends and family. So, while I’m not a live tournament player, on some level I am the target audience for this book. From my point of view, I found the strategic advice incredibly well-written.

Fitzgerald’s book contains very detailed hand examples with tips of how to act from different positions. The best thing is a huge guideline for multiway spots. The book promises to focus on this right away and this isn’t an empty promise — Fitzgerald takes his time helping you learn to act better against multiple different opponents.

All spots have infographics that make understanding much easier and it contrasts nicely with Alex’s previous book that I reviewed. 

“How to Beat Players Who Never Fold” also defines a lot of universal poker terminology in amateur terms and then presents a few new terms to make learning easier. For me one of the most interesting was “Sniper” created by Alex’s student to describe a special kind of chameleon player.  At some point, Fitzgerald also shares an interesting perspective on specific types of players, such as maniacs, seeing them through the prism of using a poker table as a place for role-playing.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any live player who wants to become better not only in playing, but in analyzing poker from different perspectives, learning to ask the right questions and find answers without searching for shortcuts.

A Few Bumps on the Road: Unambiguity & Repetitiveness

While Fitzgerald’s player typology is detailed and well substantiated, some readers won’t agree with his characterizations, especially when it comes to motivation of each player type.

For example, he writes that calling stations “want to see a flop with anything halfway decent because seeing flops is exciting” — you could contradict a statement like this arguing their motivation could also be a hope pf hitting something and making some money.

By the way, “because seeing flops is exciting” is repeated enough times for it to get stuck in your head and pop up during the most unexpected moments of your life. And this wasn’t the only phrase or thought repeated in the book over and over again, which can sometimes feel like a little too much, especially when entire paragraphs are repeated word for word. Of course, this was done purpose: to help you consolidate knowledge — but this educational technique isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

In addition, some advice on communicating with opponents to get tells are too neurotypical in my opinion. When Fitzgerald suggests that you can ask a player something to see how they reacts, he ignores cultural and gender differences as well as neurodivergence.

The simplest example is if a man asks another man at the poker table: “How is your day?” — it may be considered inappropriate mostly if these two don’t know each other that well. But if a man asks a woman the same question in the same situation, a woman can interpret it as an attempt to hit on her that can make her really uncomfortable. So, her tells can show her emotional response to this situation in general and be completely disconnected from her hand and poker in general. The same is accurate for neurodivergent people.

Fitzgerald misses these points in his book. He just teaches players how to manipulate opponents without any deviation from the standard neurotypical man vs. man game.

Finally, while this book is a treasure trove of knowledge, there’s so much information that you’ll need to read it in portions. So, if you have ADD, ADHD or other similar conditions, reading this book could be quite challenging for you.