Customer Reviews

Hold'em Odds Book

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This book does an exceptionally good job of explaining how to understand probabilities and odds in the context of Texas Hold 'Em Poker. Whether you're poor at Algebra or have a Ph.D. in Mathematics, this book will have something of interest for you.

The book opens with an introduction of probabilities, odds, and combinations that is extremely well-written and easy to understand. And then it gets *right* into application - the book effectively teaches the correct way of thinking about Poker probabilities by working through case after case of actual applications from the game. By teaching through example, the book remains educational, interesting, and incredibly valuable.

All the important probabilities you need to know when playing Hold 'Em are covered, and are summed up in several great tables as well.

A must-read for any Hold 'Em player who wants to be less in the dark about how likely that flush is, or how big the pot has to be to justify calling on a gutshot straight draw.

The title of the book, "Hold'em Odds Book", is an excellent description of the content. Petriv indicates that he tackled the task of calculating the odds for his own benefit, and the presentation is consistent with that premise. The reader is literally led through the reasoning process and the calculation process for a wide range of Hold'em situations.

Petriv's book can properly be viewed as a tutorial in how to calculate the odds in Texas Hold'em. He guides the reader carefully through the processes involved in calculating odds for particular situations or hands with primary emphasis being on how to do the calculations without getting trapped in the minefields of sloppy thinking.

In doing the myriad calculations described in the book, Petriv gives most of the specific odds that a player should be familiar with. The reader primarily interested in having the numbers available will likely find whatever he/she needs in one of the tables presented in the book.

More importantly, the reader willing to follow along with Petriv's discussion will learn how to do the calculations for himself/herself. Thus Petriv has managed to a very significant degree to give the reader a fish AND to teach the reader to fish.

The math required is mostly at about the sixth grade level, and Petriv includes a refresher chapter that should get most readers up to speed.

This was my very first poker book which I got at the Gambler's Book Shop in Las Vegas on their recommendation. It helps lay a solid mathematical foundation to anyone's poker game, and I've looked up odds information in it many times over. My copy is the 1996 non-spiralbound first edition.

Not total coverage of odds. I found "Texas Hold'em Odds" by Catalin Barboianu superior on math and better organized.