130 of 134 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Has some useful information, August 16, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Tournament Poker for Advanced Players (Advance Player) (Paperback)
I play a lot of tournament poker-- about a hundred small- to large-buyin live tournaments, and hundreds online, each year.
David's book has excellent, easy-to-understand explanations of key tournament concepts. His description of why the value of a chip changes during a tournament is clear, concise, and spot-on, and what he calls the "gap concept" is something that every solid tournament player understands intuitively.
"Advanced Players" is a misnomer, though. If you've played a few dozen tournaments, you probably know most of what is in this book. I was hoping to see a mathematical analysis of such things as tournament equity, all-in equities, and special considerations for different games and tournament formats, and it wasn't there. I think the book is moderately good, though technically light.
David isn't really a tournament expert, and it shows. He places far too much emphasis on moving up the payscale, and not nearly enough on playing to win. I understand that he gave exactly this sort of performance in the 2002 WSOP main event-- getting into the money, then basically blinding off his stack without playing many hands.
If you're serious about tournament poker you should read this book, but you should do so with a critical eye-- I believe it does contain some misinformation. It's certainly better than the first embarrassing tournament offering from Two Plus Two.
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120 of 125 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very decent book with a confusing name, March 27, 2003
This review is from: Tournament Poker for Advanced Players (Advance Player) (Paperback)
The ambiguity in the name of this book is something that confuses a lot of people, including some reviewers. The target audience of this book is ADVANCED poker players who have NOT played much in tournaments. Experienced tournament players might get something out of it too, or use it as reference, but they are NOT who the author had in mind. So, if you are looking for advanced tournament tips, skip this one, save some money and aggravation, and drop me a "thank you" note. :-)
This said, the book accomplishes what it is set to do rather well. There is a large number of very solid poker players who almost never play in tournaments simply because the price of learning tournament basics through first-hand experience is rather high. On the other hand, explaining tournament basics to an advanced player is easy, or at least Sklansky makes it seem this way. If you are a good player thinking of playing tournaments, read this book -- it has answers to most of your questions.
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83 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't play tournaments without it., August 3, 2002
This review is from: Tournament Poker for Advanced Players (Advance Player) (Paperback)
Tournaments and cash games require different strategies. In fact, many winning cash players avoid tournaments, and many successful tournament players (including a few famous champions) do poorly or even avoid cash games.
Chris Ferguson, winner of the 2000 World Series of Poker, is one of those champions. With his immense talent he could certainly beat most cash games. However, because he has an ideal tournament strategy, he concentrates on them because he has a bigger edge. Chris has called it: "The best poker tournament poker book ever written."
We've all read that tournaments make unusual demands, but they have never been clearly defined, and nobody told us exactly how to adjust to them. I've read nearly all of the tournament books, and they all disappointed me. Their greatest weakness is teaching basic poker strategy. You and I already know that strategy, but what else do we have to do?
This book answers that question. Unlike other tournament books, it does not try to teach us how to play good poker. Sklansky wrote: "This book ... will explain how your play should differ when in a tournament from how you play in a regular game... This book will show you exactly where strategy changes, compared to normal games, are indicated, and why. What this book will not do, however, is teach you how to play good poker. It assumes that you already do that. The changes that you make in a tournament won't help you much if you don't already play well."
The table of contents clearly shows this difference. There are no chapters on types of games (such as Omaha or hold'em), or how to play on third street, or any of the subjects of most poker books.
Instead, the entire focus is on subjects that matter only in tournaments. A few chapter are titled: "Prize Structure Implications," "When Will Your Table Break Up?," "Adjusting Strategy Because the Stakes Rise," "Just Out of the Money," "The Last Table," "Down to Two Players," and "Making Deals."
My favorite chapter was "The Gap Concept" because it affects so many hands. He wrote: "The difference between the hand you need to call an opener with, and that with which you would open yourself, I call the 'Gap.' ... in a tournament, this Gap is often extremely high. In other words, in a tournament it is often right to open raise with hands far inferior to those with which you would need to call someone else who open raised. ..." Dan Negreanu, a world class tournament and cash player, recently praised this chapter in "Cardplayer" magazine, and he also stated that it is: "the first book that clearly explains exactly how and why your strategy changes in poker tournaments."
Since I live in Las Vegas and write about poker, I meet lots of talented players, and everyone praises this book. Parts of this review were taken from my "Poker Digest" series, "Darwin at the poker table." Darwin's central principle is that situational changes create new demands, and only those who adapt to them survive. Poker is a game of information management, and all new, high quality information will make the competition tougher and threaten people who do not adapt to it.
Thousands of good players have already read this book, and thousands more are going to read it. They will gain an edge over those who don't.
You may think that one book cannot have that much impact, but the historical facts are quite clear. His previous books, especially "The Theory of Poker" and "Hold'em Poker For Advanced Players," have revolutionized poker. Virtually every winning player has read his books, and most of them follow his advice. Even his critics concede that you must read his books to understand what other players are doing.
My "Poker Digest" series was based on the Darwinian principle that only those who adapt well to change will prosper or perhaps even survive. New information inevitably makes the competition tougher. If you play tournaments, you can be sure that many of your opponents will read and use this book. If you don't buy and study it, you're asking for trouble.
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