Customer Reviews

Championship Tournament Poker

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I don't know who this book is supposed to be for. Certainly not someone who wants to learn any of the featured games. It's assumed you already know the games well. Certainly not anyone already playing much tournament poker. Perhaps the delusional player who is just starting to play in tournaments and wants to play in every available event at once. The book is just silly. There are a grand total of 20 pages on no-limit hold 'em for example, and most of those are repetative. In other words, Tom easily could have put 10 pages that say the same thing into the fine book he co-wrote with T.J. Cloutier. The "advice" mostly consists of Tom rephrasing the very problem you probably wanted answered. In the brief section on strategic concepts, for instance, Tom repeats in several different sections the need to stay calm and guard against making errors based on personal dislike of an opponent. He says things like take a deep breath after a bad beat (well, duh!). What he doesn't say, are things like how to adjust your play if you've got a very aggressive player to your immediate left (which is useful to know). He says things like "The champions know when to push a marginal hand and when to back away from it," but makes no attempt to try to quantify how or when they know this. So it isn't very helpful. The chapter on playing poker as a business is probably useful, except it's only useful if you're good in the first place and if you are you aren't reading this book, you're saving your $30 and playin poker with it. There are much better books out there and unless you are going to run right out and enter tournaments in every event, pick up a book that deals with the game in which you want to excel and stick to that. The stuff in here you can find in articles on-line, or figure out playing poker on-line.

More like a diary of some of Tom's successes (and he has had many) but only a few anecdotes. Buy one of TJ Cloutier's books (or Slansky's) for much much more insight.

I was expecting something a bit more detailed and better than Slansky's Tournament poker book. Unfortunately I was let down. There's not much "advice" nor many concrete examples. Instead we're treated to a few anecdotes and a spare "key concept" here and there. I'd spend my money elsewhere.

I've read over 30 poker books in my lifetime and this is by far the worst I've come across. Tom types plenty of words but effectively says close to nothing when it comes to strategy -- you know, the whole reason anyone might make the mistake of purchasing this hunk of waste. What he does say is either obvious, redundant, or both. Tom reiterates to us the need to try to stay calm after a bad beat. Brilliant! You'd think there must be a great deal more depth to this in the actual book, but there's honestly not. He also advises us not to make a play based on personal feelings against a player. How insightful! And therein lies the problem. There's not a single piece of insight to be found in this book. Do yourself a favor and pick up any poker book but this one. It's pretty clear that TJ Cloutier was the brains behind their previous joined effort. This is just Tom trying to cash in on as little effort as possible. I tried to use it as toilet paper, but it didn't do a great job in that regard either. Worthless