Power Hold'em Strategy [Paperback]

Daniel Negreanu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2008

This power-packed book on beating no-limit hold'em is one of the three most influential poker books ever written.  Negreanu headlines a collection of young, great players - Todd Brunson, David Williams, Erick Lindgren, Evelyn Ng and Paul Wasicka - who share their insider professional moves and winning secrets.  You'll learn about short-handed and heads-up play, high-limit cash games, a powerful beginner's strategy to neutralize professional players, how to mix up your play, bluff, and win big pots.  The centerpiece, however, is Negreanu's powerful and revolutionary small ball strategy.  You'll learn how to play hold'em with cards you never would have played before - and with fantastic results.  The preflop, flop, turn and river will never look the same again.  A must-have!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Daniel Negreanu is the greatest young poker player in the world. He is a two-time World Poker Tour champion, winner of four bracelets at the World Series of Poker, and a contributor to Super System 2. Since 1997, he has won more major tournament than any other player in the world. He is currently the second all-time leading money winner on the World Poker Tour Circuit, and in 2004, Negreanu finished in the money in five World Series events, and won the Player of the Year award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Cardoza; First Edition edition (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580422047
• ISBN-13: 978-1580422048
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Poker

More About the Author

Daniel Negreanu (born July 26, 1974, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian professional poker player with four World Series of Poker bracelets and two World Poker Tour Championship titles.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars tough call...even for Negreanu, July 5, 2008

By 

J. Rubino (Simi Valley,Ca USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Power Hold'em Strategy (Paperback)

I received my book about three weeks ago; the invoice showed I had ordered it on March 3, 2006. The publisher has still not updated the description page they created when the book was first being marketed; the original book was to cover limit, pot limit and no limit for tournament and cash games. This book covers only no limit holdem and adds online no limit cash and tournament games. Several of the original authors did not make it into this book. Also, Evelyn Ng is not one of the greatest stars in the game in my opinion although she is somewhat well recognized.

If Daniel Negreanu's contribution had been a stand alone book I might have given it a 5; unfortunately after making many promises and marketing the book so aggressively two years ago I think he was obligated to keep it a multi author book which is partially why I ended up with a three rating overall.

First issue I have with the book is the heavy hand of the publisher- Avery Cardoza. It seems there is an ongoing feud with Cardoza Publishing and 2+2 Publishing and Avery Cardoza is arrogant, audacious and downright rude in the preface which immediately made me question his integrity and the book's integrity. To call this one of the top poker books ever written will be decided by public opinion and by those who know poker not by Avery Cardoza. He should keep his personal issues personal and not taint Negreanu's book with unneccesary garbage.

Evelyn Ng's contribution appears to me to be written mostly by Negreanu; I have read Negreanu's writing for many years and it seems to be his voice. Not a hugely useful chapter and not very original as the main approach is strikingly similar to "The System" put forth in Sklansky's tournament book several years ago and expounded on in "Kill Phil". Primarily a beginner approach to no limit tournaments.

Todd Brunson's contribution is very short in several ways. More advice than strategy and not nearly as thorough as his chapter on high low split in "Super System 2" which I thought was outstanding. It covers high limit cash games which seems to juxtapose the previous "beginner" approach in Ng's chapter. Sequence is important in this type of book and Brunson's chapter seemed out of place as well as my other comments.

Eric Lindgren is also more advice than strategy and covers online no limit holdem. A few ideas to use but again put this into the preface's promises by Cardoza about this being one of the top poker books written.

Paul Wasicka's chapter is short-handed online no limit is short on content also. Only 25 pages and again with its brevity it creates many unanswered question that you will have to search for elsewhere. No limit holdem becomes more complex shorthanded and this brief chapter falls short.

David William's chapter "Mixing it Up" is actually fairly decent but it is an approach and style that lends itself to seriousness variance and is for fearless and skilled players who must still navigate the inevitable traps this approach creates. It is actually complimentary to the small ball approach that Negreanu teaches.

The meat of the book is Negreanu's "Small Ball" which many top winning tournament players have been using with great success. This style is similar to Gus Hansen's style which likes to see many flops, keep the pots small, make good reads and exploit your opponents with hand ranges and position. It's not an easy style to play successfully and requires many intricate and finesse type plays that
might be challenging to learn from a book. I do feel though that it is a thorough and solid treatment of his style. Thinking through a hand in reverse takes some work and focus and implenting plays based on good reads takes hundreds if not thousands of hours of playing. I have always liked Negreanu's writing style and approach to poker and would buy the book for just his chapter. Too bad he didn't write the whole book; it lost points on the other chapters not on his.

69 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally a book about "small ball"..., August 11, 2008

By 

David Olson (Glendora, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Power Hold'em Strategy (Paperback)

I am going to say essentially what everyone else on here has been saying... If you buy this book, know that you can use the chapters not written by Negreanu as toilet paper or kindling for your fireplace. What you are buying this book for is Negreanu's explanation of "small ball" NL tournament poker. I noticed from reading the other reviews that everyone else is similarly interested in small ball, and have found this strategy to be quite effective. I also noticed that one guy on here seems to think Daniel is advocating a "weak, passive" approach to playing poker. This is far, far from the truth. Either he didn't read the book well enough, or is just not intelligent enough to get what Daniel was trying to communicate. Here are some basic ideas behind the small-ball philosophy:

1) Keep the pots small, pre-flop. You don't want to put a lot of your chips at risk before you even see the flop. Your aces may get busted by deuces post-flop, and you'll be pot committed after a few big bets. Not good. Instead, you wait to see the flop, then evaluate the situation based on what your opponent is doing. By keeping the pots small, you will pick up more pots that people don't really care about after the flop and not risk getting drawn out on by some crazy donk.

2) Play lots of hands that have big post-flop potential. That means opening up your starting hand selection by a large amount. This has been a big adjustment for me, but by doing so I have learned a lot about how to play poker in general. I have won a lot of big pots in tournaments and deep-stacked cash games by calling raises with mediocre hands that turn into monsters post-flop. Daniel expounds on which hands to call with under which set of circumstances.

3) Don't let your opponents get a good read on you. By playing your big hands the same as you do your weak hands, it makes it very hard for your opponents to know what you are playing with. It forces players into a guessing game, and if you are fairly decent at reading other people's hands, you can make some really good plays.

4) Playing the texture of the board. A good amount of Daniel's small ball approach deals with making decisions based on the texture of the board. This is something that is key to any poker player's success, I think. You don't always have to have the best hand to end up with the chips.

Those are some main aspects to playing small ball that Negreanu pays a great deal of attention to. What I've noticed for myself and other players is that the people who consistently do well in poker tournaments rely on more than luck and aggression. They rely on skill and discipline. I think this book will help you in both areas, if you aren't a small ball player already.

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as I expected, June 30, 2008

By 

Shawn G. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Power Hold'em Strategy (Paperback)

All things considered, I was a little disappointed with this book. I was hoping it would focus on Negreanu's unique style of poker and that it would present ideas not yet covered by the other great poker books (like the Harrington series of books on tournaments and cash games). But it's a 485 page book and Negreanu doesn't even pen a word of it until the last 200 pages.

There are 5 chapters before Negreanu's, each written by a different pro: Evelyn Ng, Todd Brunson, Erick Lindgren, Paul Wasicka, & David Williams. Ng's chapter presented an interesting strategy for beginners that made a lot of sense to me and that I hadn't heard of before, which was good. But the other 4 chapters by the pros were a waste of time. Brunson, Lindgren, Wasicka, & Williams all wrote about very basic concepts that I'd heard of a million times before.

Brunson's chapter was on cash games, but he didn't even scratch the surface of cash game strategy in the way that Harrington on Cash Games did. He spent an entire chapter talking about re-buying, not bluffing, & trap hands.

Lindgren's chapter was about online play. The major flaw with that chapter was that it was written for players that cut their teeth playing in casinos and are now moving online. In reality, I think most of us start online and work our way towards casinos if we succeed online, so the whole chapter felt "backwards". He provided a little more actual in-game strategy than Brunson, but not much.

Wasicka's chapter was about short-handed tables. Outside of Ng's chapter I found this chapter the most useful. Wasicka presented some ideas which were new to me and even the ones that weren't new were at least logical and presented well.

Williams' chapter could have been written in 1 sentence: "Mix up your play so your opponent can't read what you've got." It's the first rule of poker to not let yourself fall into the trap of being predictable and Williams some how rambled on about this for a whole chapter.

With all that being said, Daniel's chapter was great and I thought it was good enough to stand on its own. About 200 pages in length, he describes in depth his small-ball strategy, the math that makes it work, and how to master it. He guides the reader through starting hand selection and position all the way thru flop, turn, & river play, making lots of easy to understand analogies along the way. Although I think the rest of the poker world as caught on to Daniel's methods since his immense success in 2003 & 2004, this strategy is a useful weapon for any poker player to have in his arsenal. Daniel's strategy, when properly employed, should allow the reader to pick up lots of uncontested pots and should keep pots small unless the reader has a big hand.

Taken on a chapter by chapter basis, I'd give the following ratings:

Ng: 4 stars
Brunson: 1 star
Lindgren: 2 stars
Wasicka: 3 stars
Williams: 1 star
Negreanu: 5 stars

But as a whole, with all the fluff in there, I'd give the whole book just 2 stars.