Getting Started in Hold 'em [Paperback]

Ed Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2005 | ISBN-10: 1880685345 | ISBN-13: 978-1880685341 | Edition: 1

Recently, countless people have started playing poker, hoping to quit their jobs and strike it rich. Sadly, most of these "professional" players will wind up broke. While many people play, few win consistently.

In Getting Started in Hold 'em, noted poker authority Ed Miller guides you onto the winning path. As someone who made the leap from beginner to professional in less than a year and a half, Ed is uniquely qualified to show new players the quickest route to hold 'em success.

This book presents the critical principles that expert players use: preflop hand valuation, domination, betting for value, protecting your hand, semi-bluffing, pot equity, pot odds, implied odds, free card plays, the importance of stack size, why chips change value in tournaments, and much more.

Whether you want to play limit, no limit, or tournament hold 'em, this book provides you a solid foundation. It's perfect, not just for the would-be pro, but for anyone who wants a serious edge on the competition. Getting Started in Hold 'em teaches you more than just how to play; it teaches you to win.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ed Miller grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. He received an S.B. in Physics and another in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT in 2000. After a year teaching, he moved to Redmond, Washington to work as a software developer for Microsoft.

Looking for a new hobby, he deposited a couple hundred dollars in November 2001 to play $1-$2 and $2-$4 hold 'em online. After losing his initial stake, he sought to improve his game, and he found the books and website of Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. He participated in discussions on the forums at Twoplustwo.com, and after a few months he turned his losses into wins in a $4-$8 game at a local cardroom.

By January 2003, he had moved up to $10-$20 and $20-$40, and in March he left his job to play poker full-time. By then he had swapped roles on the online discussion forums from beginning player seeking advice to expert player giving it. After six more successful months playing in the Seattle area, he moved to Las Vegas, where he currently resides. Also in 2003, Dr. Alan Schoonmaker, the author of The Psychology of Poker, introduced Ed to David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, and a partnership soon was born.

Today Ed usually plays between $10-$20 and $30-$60, but he can occasionally still be found in the $2-$4 to $6-$12 games around Las Vegas.

Product Details

• Paperback: 203 pages
• Publisher: Two Plus Two Pub; 1 edition (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1880685345
• ISBN-13: 978-1880685341
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This book should be titled Getting Started in Limit Holdem, February 13, 2006

By 

sehlooon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting Started in Hold 'em (Paperback)

The short: The limit section is 77 pages, the no-limit (NL) section is 33 pages.

The long: Ed Miller is known as a poker authority, and there's no doubt that he knows his stuff. Along with Sklansky & Malmuth who represent the 2+2 publishing company that Miller writes for, he's known mostly for being a limit holdem player and that part of his book is well done.

However I felt that the NL section was lacking. While he went through his thought process for the section on evaluating his limit holdem hands, which were very well done, his NL section leaves much to be desired. Let me sum up his NL section.

Buy in for cheap so you limit the extent that you'll get exposed by better players. Wait for premium hands such as AA-TT, AQ, AK then raise preflop about four times the big blind, then go all-in on the flop whether or not you hit the flop. This is seriously the bulk of his entire strategy. He does not go into the thought process for the player as he did in his limit sections. He accuses other authors of writing a vague strategy, and giving amusing anecdotes in their books, but Miller does the exact same thing. He gives an anecdote of a 3-hour session, where his strategy made him money versus a player who made a snide remark, as evidence that this strategy works. Any real poker player knows even thousands of hours may not be enough to prove yourself as a winning poker player (Ed knows this and makes a mention of it).

This book deserves 2.5 stars. I have a lot of respect for Ed and wish I could give it a better rating, but I cannot ignore the lack of substance in the NL section. If you are like most new holdem players, then you're probably not interested in learning limit holdem. You may see this book and think "Wow, I want to learn to play the game that's taking over the world. The one that those guys on TV are playing". Well buying this book will start you off learning the wrong game. Limit & NL are a very different animal. Other books out there at least have many examples of no limit hands, so the reader can develop an intuition as to the rhythm that an NL games flows to.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The #1 book I recommend to my friends looking to improve, July 6, 2005

By 

Simba (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting Started in Hold 'em (Paperback)

This book how now supplanted Lee Jones' Winning Low Limit Hold'Em as the first book on hold'em that I recommend to my friends. Despite the title, it's hardly a beginner's book - in fact, I think the author's tone strikes a great balance between not talking down to the reader, and introducing intermediate and advanced strategies that will bridge the gap from novice to experienced player. I've played poker professionally for the past 4 years, and hence have many people coming up to me asking for suggestions to improve their game - I find myself time and again recommending Miller's book. It's actually his second book, and while his first - Small Stakes Hold'Em - is another excellent read, I don't know if it's the best place for novice to intermediate players to start, as it advocates a relatively aggressive strategy that most players find intimidating at first.

Although most of the book is dedicated to limit hold'em, the most fascinating chapter(s) talk about no-limit hold'em, in which Miller discusses an intriguing and effective short-stack strategy for no-limit cash games, which many of my fellow full-time players have been buzzing about. The reason that the strategy has rarely been used until now is that it depends on the ability to stand up and switch tables frequently - of course in casinos this is relatively difficult when there may be only one or two tables at every limit...but online poker is the perfect place to use/abuse this strategy as switching tables is as easy as the click of a mouse. Call me an old-timer, but I had never really gotten into online poker, until my son insisted I "get with the times", and I happily play on 4 or 5 different sites now. Another post here led me to pokercroaker.com which I found had bonus sign-up codes to the various online sites, and reviews of each. I will say that the style of play online is substantially different than what I was used to in live games, but Miller's book is just as applicable. It's written clearly and concisely, and in my humble opinion should be a staple in the library of every poker player, no matter the level of experience.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Introduction to Limit Hold 'Em, June 13, 2006

By 

G. Zawada (Fairfax, Virginia United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting Started in Hold 'em (Paperback)

Professing to address both of the most popular forms of hold 'em (limit and no limit), Ed Miller's first solo effort does a terrific job providing useful approaches for the former. The first 35 pages are spent as a cursory review of hand/board reading and rules/regs, which may be necessary for some. However, from page 35, and through the next 80 pages, the limit hold 'em section is absolutely terrific, as Ed takes you through an in-depth analysis of the play of 9 hands from all manner of positions on the table. The best aspect of these hand examples is the marriage of visual (you see a theoretical hand played from deal to river in most cases) applications of such points as:

- Protecting your hand.
- Saving pots, not extra bets.
- Value betting the later streets.
- Pot equity
- Semi-bluffing
- Pot odds/Implied Odds
- Strategic Advantages (Pre- and Post-flop)

The no limit and tournament sections are weaker, but the fact that the limit section is so well organized and composed more than makes up for their shortcomings as the theories can be applied to NL play. Besides, most of the NL material is more thoroughly addressed in Ed's new effort (NL Hold 'Em: Thoery and Practice).

I've been playing hold 'em (admittedly mostly no limit) for 2.5 years, having been able to advance to $5/$10 levels, and found a re-read of this short and sweet book (especially the 80 pages of limit material) to be a terrific refresher, and so believe it would serve as a great intro to the game.