How To Win The Championship: Hold'em Strategies for The Final Table [Paperback]

T.J. Cloutier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 9, 2006

For players hungry to win hold'em and Omaha tournaments, the world's greatest tournament player gives specific advice on how to get to the final table where the big money is made-and then how to win it all! Players learn how to build up enough chips to make it to the final table and give themselves the best chance of winning the title, the trophy, and the money, using the same strategies that have taken T.J. Cloutier to the championship table of more tournaments than any player in the history of poker. Thirty-five chapters discuss key concepts: stack sizes, antes and blinds, table position, opponents styles, chip count of players, number of tables remaining, and tons of other concepts found nowhere else.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

T.J. Cloutier has won 59 major tournament titles, more than any other player in the world, and includes 39 final table appearances at the World Series of Poker, also more than any other player in the world. Doyle Brunson calls T.J Cloutier "the premier tournament player in the world." Joseph Hachem, 2005 World Champion credits T.J.'s books with his victory.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Cardoza; Original edition (May 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580421660
• ISBN-13: 978-1580421669
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #785,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible., September 21, 2006

By 

A. Schaffer (CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How To Win The Championship: Hold'em Strategies for The Final Table (Paperback)

Don't believe the positive reviews, this book is awful. It's rambling, imprecise, and purely anecdotal, the worst example of the unhelpful "play the player" style of the lesser poker books. Over and over again TJ's grand sum total of advice in all kinds of different situations is to "learn your opponents" so you can "make moves" and "then you can really play poker". And that is it, the entire enumeration of the "strategy". Nothing about how to go about actually -learning- your opponents, nothing about -moves- to make, nothing about his way of -really playing poker-.

The scenarios he sets up are the same thing you have heard a hundred times elsewhere. Anyone who has read other books (or played tournaments) will already have a firm grasp on basic beginner logic like, "if you're seriously short stacked, you've got to gamble". Just compare that to the in-depth examination of M and Q done by Harrington in his series.

Anyone who hasn't read other books (and doesn't have much experience) will not find advice in this book that will improve their game.

There is ONE actual concrete move described in this book, and that's the fact that when there's a preflop raise, TJ likes to reraise to steal the blinds + the original raise, which allows him to keep even for a few orbits. The rest of this book is at the level of advising you to "get your money in with the best hand".

The final insult in the book is to recite the action of ESPN-televised knockout hands from the 2005 WSOP $5000 NL event. Great. But there's barely any _analysis_ of the hands, what was done right and wrong, what Cloutier might do differently or emphasize. Just a flat recitation of what was shown on TV. (I can't say there was _no_ analysis. Cloutier does at one point add the insight that "sometimes you just have to make the decision to go for it.") Again, compare to Harrington's deep analysis of D'Agostino vs Ivey.

Just an awful book from an otherwise great player, a cheap attempt to cash in on the televised NL tournament poker craze, can't hold a candle to Cloutier's earlier (highly regarded) works with Tom McEvoy or the absolutely brilliant new standard for NL tourneys defined by Harrington or the very crisp and insightful ring game advice from Phil Gordon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Write a storybook next time, T. J., June 5, 2007

By 

F. Presson "Freeman" (Birmingham, AL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How To Win The Championship: Hold'em Strategies for The Final Table (Paperback)

I love watching T. J. Cloutier play, so I jumped on this book with anticipation. Basically, it's a long discourse in which he takes every opportunity to tell you to play good hands and do your best to get paid off for them, and never stop studying your opponents.

Although the author uses tournament theory throughout, he never particularly explains it, or ties it in to his exposition, except in the discussion of when to go all in in the big blind.

He breaks down the exposition by number of players left and stack sizes, but his advice for playing the big and medium stacks is almost indistinguishable. He does give some good advice on which players to attack and which to stay away from, but it's slightly spoiled by the
superstitious injunction, repeated two or three times, to stay out of the way of players "on a rush." If you always do that, you'll miss your chances to stop someone's "rush," now, won't you?

There's a chapter where he goes over the critical hands from the 2005 WSOP $5000 No-Limit Hold'em event. This is the high point of the book, but if you compare the commentary here with the kind of analysis Harrington gets into in Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategies for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. III--The Workbook (Harrington on Hold'em), it's pretty airy.

What one does get out of this book is a sense of how much patience one has to apply, and (at least vaguely) what standards to use on one's hands. For some players, this will be a needed tonic.

In many places throughout, the author admits he's just pointing to something he can't teach directly; he can give you an idea just how well-developed a top player's intuition and sense of timing are, but give only a couple of hints on how to get to that point: paraphrasing, they would be "study your opponents" and "remember your mistakes."

The advice in this book is tailored for big tournaments with relatively deep stacks. In the tournaments most of us play, we'll bubble out if we try to follow T.J.'s advice without adjustment, which is exactly the problem the book sets out to solve.

I do wish all my opponents would read this book, though, especially the ones who keep overplaying KJ and drawing out on me.

3.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as I had hoped!, November 28, 2011

By 

Bill - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How To Win The Championship: Hold'em Strategies for The Final Table (Paperback)

I was hoping for some excellent wisdom for playing in the final hands of a holdem tournament, but was really disappointed. I basiclly got "play tight and let the others knock each other out" from the vast majority of this book. I am not arguing with the method or the success, but I was expecting so much more than what I got.