Customer Reviews

More Hold'em Excellence: A Winner for Life

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Author Lou Kreiger has a big time hit with his book More Hold'Em Excellence. this volume takes you from being a occasional winner to being "A Winner For Life" just as the sub title suggests. In 184 fun to read yet highly informative pages Mr. Kreiger lays out a step by step map to making the most out of your poker outings. Set forth in 36 chapters card playing champion and all aroung good guy Lou Kreaiger takes the student from setting a rock solid foundation through the perils of pre-flop play past the maniac and the rock like players and into the line at the cashiers cage. All the while delivering to you his 10 keys to success. I found the chapters on playing your best always and, fighting your emotions highly rewarding and suprizingly insightful. a 63 question apptitude test is a poker like SAT for the aspiring pro level player. It is high time this well kept poker secret be brought into the lime light that it so richly deserves. Moreover, More Hold'em Excellence has been touted by well known players such as Mike " Americas Mad Genius" Caro and WSOP champion Razz player/publisher, Linda Johnson. I as well highly recommend it.

Krieger's first book "Hold'em Excellence" is a much better buy. This follow up seems to primarily rephrase previous thinkings from its former. The latter half of "More Hold'em Excellence" seems to just add length and does not offer too many more insightful tips. In fact, you could probably just read pages 32 to 72 in a book store and have absorbed 90% of the useful information. There is a 12 page section on statistics and probabilities - how to compute/apply them - that's fairly interesting and valuable. Overall, average players should just stick to "Hold'em Excellence" and not look to expand their knowledge too much with this book.

This book is not for the beginner. Any beginning hold'em book will do for beginning players.

This book contains nothing but good advice in the card room. I've only played in card rooms a few times, but I've won consistently. Kreiger's books contains essays on how to deal with maniacs, table image, table selection -- the sorts of things a non-beginner will find valuable.

If you already know the game and know how to play tight and aggressive, this book is for you. It contains lots of anecdotal advice on how to deal with the situations that inevitably come up in card rooms.

I've bought this book approximately half a year ago for a cheap price and only get to it recently. This book is extremely wordy even for a 190 paged including the index. The first two chapters read like a college essay of the American Dream. His first 2 chapter can be reworded into 2 to 3 paragraph at most. Literally, the first two chapters had nothing good or new to say. Stuffs like "remember how they play, monitor your own play, correct problems, aggression, good players beat bad players, and choose the right game (without telling you how)" basically took 14 pages to come up with. These are obvious things that any poker player or sensible person should already know. Over all, this book is far from good and would never be a classic.

I suggest people two learn the basics of betting and positions and pot odds then go for the Gus Hasen, Skalansky's, Harrington books, and may be one of the two version of the Super System book. Skip the nothing-insightful, nothing-new-to-say books such as this one.

Once again, this book is way too wordy, unnecessarily so, inefficiently so. For example: "poker is a lot of fun, but the money makes the magic." "A good, winning player, in a game full of weak player will win much more money than an expert playing at a table comprised of other winning players." Chapter 17, Page 104

In hindsight, I'm mad that this book insult its readers' intelligences by how un-insightful it was written. Most of the materials in here are common sense. And almost all of it have been covered by other bad books just like it.

As of right now, there are 20 new books for $10, and 29 used book for as low as $0.85. That's how valuable this book is.

Yes, the word "wise" might be the best way in which to describe Lou Krieger. He's not only a poker player and a journalist. He's a renaissance man who's spent time studying life in general. His is an extremely unique perspective for a poker writer, and I'm surprised it took me this long to discover him. Before I bought the book, all I knew about him was that he was the face of Royal Vegas poker which is not a compliment as it has to be my least favorite online website ever. Yet here Krieger gives readers a plethora of priceless insight over the course of 36 chapters. They flow together nicely and there's nothing disjointed about the work. I loved his chapter, "American Dreamer," where he makes a compelling case that poker is, in many ways, the essence of America, and he also takes the time to praise free speech and lambaste political correctness-which is extremely needed and one more reason why you should take the time to acquaint yourself with this edition. Another rare element to be found in these pages is the professional poker player quiz in the back. There are 60 some "Yes/No" questions that really put turning pro into perspective. I took it myself and learned quite a few things about my game by scoring it. The only criticism I have is of the hand chart in the back of the book. It's way too LAG (loose-aggressive player) for me. He's got you playing KJ offsuit in any position and that gives me the heebie-jeebies. Maybe if one has Lou's level of skill you can play 8/7 offsuit in late position, but stuff like that would break me. For hand analysis, I would check out Ed Miller's recommendations in Small Stakes Hold `Em if I were you. Although, Krieger has put together one heckuva book and I thank the guy for it.

Lou Krieger is a new name for me this summer of 2009 and I must say that I am quite happy to have found this outstanding author.

The presentation is clear and you get a barn full of insight and just plain good advice. I will now add ALL of Lou's books to my poker library.

The ONLY criticism that I have is that when the title of a book is "Hold'em", then please don't give examples from other poker formats! On page 13, Lou writes: "If you adopt an ""any two cards can win" philosophy in hold'em or play STUD HANDS like 3c,3s,7d" (Stud? what is Stud?)

On page 20 Lou writes: "Suppose you're playing hold'em. You hold As,Kc"

SUPPOSE you're playing hold'em? The Title of the book is Hold'em!
One should not have to "suppose" any such thing!

Should the day arrive that I wish to learn Omaha, then I will buy a book on Omaha, and hope that the writer does not talk about hold'em!


Another error (my opinion of course) that other writers such as Ed Miller or Phil Gordon or Howard Lederer make is to author a book on No Limit Hold'em (NLHE) and the repeatedly make references to how a hand would be played differently in a limit game. Don't do that! If your Title includes the words "No Limit" then please stay focused on the NLHE game. Likewise, if your thesis is about a Cash Game, then please don't discuss how Ace-King is played differently in a Tournament Game.

Anyway, back to Lou's "More Hold'em Excellence".
Yes, as Jim Cramer says on "Mad Money", "Buy! Buy! Buy!"

This book is a great value for the money.
Perfect for the beginner to intermediate Journeyman and a refresher for the advanced player as well.

Unfortunately this book was too advanced for me, so only a bit of it was useful! It is really into the psychology of the game!

This one I also bought on my quest to become a great poker player. All theory no practice so far but as soon as I win my first tournament I am sure all my hard investment will be validated. I just love the naive side of me! 4 Stars.

Excellent Book. Must be read a few times to be fully appreciated. Loaded with great information. Mr. Krieger has a real gift making the concepts understandable. Players of any level will gain something from this book

This is one of the 1st books I read when i started playing poker.It's a must read for any one how wants to become a good player.Some of the consepts were a little hard to undrestand for the biginner but it will put you in a right path of beiing a winner for life.You have to read it go play.and read it and play again till you undrestand every thing he was trying to help you learn. I also have to add that it was very easy to read and even when you are an advance player you enjoy reading it......enjoy.....