Customer Reviews

Winner's Guide To Texas Hold'em Poker

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

The one thing that most recommends Warren's book on holdem, as opposed to, say, Sklansky's, is it's simplicity. Spelled out, in black and white, is a basic, WINNING, strategy for holdem. Yes, play must be varied game-by-game (as any serious poker player knows, a holdem game with 8 players seeing the flop for a single bet every hand is MUCH different from one where 3 players see the flop for 3 bets apiece), however, most beginning players do not have the sufficient skill or knowledge to do so. So what Warren offers is a cut-and-dried strategy that, if followed, will allow more-or-less rocklike success at a holdem table.

To some, his strategy seems too tight, and for many ram-and-jam games, I agree. However, making up for any strategic errors he might put into print (I'm reluctant to say "did put into print," mainly because his advice is dead-on for certain types of games), is a chapter on statistics that is flawless. Ever want to know the odds that someone's holding a stronger hand than your ace-eight suited? It's in there. How about the probability of flopping an open-ended four-straight-flush with a 2-gapped suited connector? Of course. In fact, the stats chapter alone is worth the cost of the book, in my opinion.

Thus, I give this book 3 stars. It's wonderful for beginners (and experts looking to polish their game), but can get a little simplistic in some parts, and overly technical in others. However, for a cover price, it's hard to beat.

This is a well written and entertaining book, and some of the basic advice is sound. However, the advice on playing a rush, or playing only low cards for a while if low cards seem to be winning, is wrong. Each hand of poker is independent. You can only know about "rushes" in hindsight. Limit Hold'em, as Doyle Brunson points out in Super/System, is essentially a mechanical game which should be played with the high cards. I bought Mr. Warren's book and I'm not sorry I did, but read it and every other poker book with a critical mind. Also, be sure to read Jones "Winning Low Limit Hold'em", Brunson's "Super/System", Sklansky's "Theory of Poker", and have a copy of Tablanette's "Statistics of Hold'em Poker" handy when you are devising strategies. And get a good beginner's book on probability and statistics if you don't understand why playing your rush or playing low cards is mathematically incorrect. A good example is Freund's "Introduction to Probability".

This is a pretty good introductory book for the low-limit hold'em player, but I would not advise anyone to use the strategies in this book for pot limit or no limit hold'em, nor would it be advisable to play at, say, a 15&30 table with some of these strategies.

In particular, Warren's notion (p. 70) that AQ unsuited is a better hand in the early seats than JT suited is mistaken. AQu is a good hand, but it doesn't play well when it gets raised preflop, as can happen in an early seat. Most players I think would rather have JT suited since you can either get away from it fairly easily or play it confidently and sometimes win a large pot. AQ unsuited too often has to pay off to AK or KK. AQ is a tough hand to play as Doyle Brunson has said many times.

Warren's list of the top 40 hands "Based on Earning Power" on page 195 can also be quibbled with. First of all he doesn't explain how he came up with the "earning power" of the hands. I think we would all dearly love to know that! I know of no authority including David Sklansky who has come out and explained how "earning power" might be reliably figured.

In truth, there is no easy formula, as Sklansky explained many years ago in his ground-breaking Hold'em Poker (1976). It is easy enough to figure or "Monte Carlo" which hands will win in a showdown against x number of players, and many people have done that. But to suggest (as Warren does) that, for example, AQ unsuited (he calls it "mixed") has more earning power than 99 is not only debatable but suspect. The same could be said even more strongly about his listing K8 suited before Q9 suited. K8 suited is the sort of hand that can be played with confidence only when the ace of the your suit is on the board. If you flop a king you have a horrible kicker, and if you flop an eight you don't have much of a pair and you have second kicker. And you can't make a straight using your two cards. Sklansky, for example has Q9 suited two whole groups above K8 suited. I think Sklansky is right. Warren must like kings since he has K7 suited above pocket sevens, which again is very wrong according to most authorities including Sklansky.

I could continue to quibble with other bits of Warren's advice, but instead I want to zero in on a couple of things he says that reveal his limitations as a poker authority. On page 67 he writes that "... [AK unsuited] is sometimes more valuable to me than a pair of Aces in the pocket." He "explains" (further up the page): "Let's say you win 100 total bets with each hand. With AA you lose 40 bets to other hands for a net win of 60 bets. With AKu...you win the same 100 bets as with AA but because you don't make anything on the flop you throw it away and you lose only 30 bets...for a net win of 70 bets."

This implies that AK unsuited is a stronger hand than AA, which is absurd. Notice the fallacy in the assumption that both hands ("Let's say...") win 100 bets. As nearly every hold'em player knows, AA wins many more bets that AK suited or unsuited.

Most revealing, however is this from page 87: "Cards can and do run in cycles. The theory of large numbers says so. If you experience a period where [when] it seems like nothing but the low cards are winning the pots, then it is a perfectly legitimate strategy change to start playing low cards."

This is a variant on the hoary "gambler's fallacy," in which it is imagined that somehow the cards (or the dice or the roulette wheel, etc.) or any independent event has a memory. What the theory of large number says about independent events is that whatever happened in the past has no effect on the future--except where something is rigged or (e.g.) there is some kind of mechanical defect, like an unbalanced roulette wheel or loaded dice. If you start playing low cards in hold'em all you will do is increase the probability that you will lose money. Warren adds that playing low cards for a while would be good "so that you don't get a reputation as strictly a high card player." This is okay advice, but he adds that "The trick is knowing when the cycle ends and low cards should not be played anymore." Let me give that an exclamation mark! That is like saying the trick is knowing when the run of black at roulette ends or knowing when to quit. Ah, if ONLY we knew such things we would know the future!

Bottom line: not for sophisticated players.

One of the above reviewers gave the book a single star, stating that KW gives advice that encourages people to play low cards. In the edition I have (I believe it to be the 5th edition, 2002), KW states on pg. 51 "A Hold 'Em player who consistently plays low cards cannot be a big winner in this game". I respectfully disagree with that reviewer, who seems to have taken something out of context.

As I mentioned above, this book has something for just about everyone. KW starts with simple concepts general to poker and then specific to hold'em, ruminates on the all important nature of position, includes plenty of strategy advice, and covers advanced ideas such as pot odds, the art of the check raise, and bluffing/semi-bluffing. He also gives tips on how to play specific hands, although I'm sure he is by no means unique among poker authors with this one.

He backs up his advice with a number of different charts showing percentages, ratios, etc. He also includes a good section on playing short-handed.

To summarize, although you'd probably get mostly the same stuff if you picked other poker books at random, KW provides a comprehensive and very readable guide to hold 'em. It's not perfect, but in a literary genre in which authors try to outdo one another to give the best advice and the secret tips no one else does, this book stands out.

Having said all this, in an otherwise excellent book, the "stereotype" section (e.g., you want to play against beautiful women and people with tattoos, as these folks are never good at poker) is silly and superficial. Additionally, his advice that off-duty poker DEALERS are preferable to play against is just plain dangerous. Unless you are an expert, if you know your opponents to be dealers you should avoid that particular game altogether.

There are a lot of great Texas Hold'Em books available. And if you're a serious hold'em player, you should own several. However, if you're only going to buy one, this is the one.

Ken Warren offers advice on everything from what to do before you arrive at the casino to what to do if you get raised on the river. He gives the reader position-by-position lists of starting hands, digestable tables of probabilities, clear guidelines on how to play individual hands in particular situations and solid advice about reading other players.

This book will make you a better poker player.

I currently play Hold em for a living and this was my first Hold em book. Political incorrectness aside, this is still the most complete guide to playing Hold em on the market. I find the Advanced Sklansky book to be more of a strategic case studies book (thought provoking but very incomplete and very qualitative only) but Warren is more tactically complete (what to do and when to do it). He goes out on a limb and gives you more of a complete action plan than Sklansky, Krieger, etc. and therefore is more easily criticized for it. No book is going to help you on an advanced level, however, when you're ready for real time, expected value pot odds calculations, chapter 14 (Hold em odds) is worth the entire price. As a side note, the odds he presents do not match the odds I have seen elsewhere despite the supposedly same methodology, however, the relative strenghths of hands seem to be in line. Also, to address another critic, Warren's rhetoric re: the pro vs. cons between AA and AK are 100% correct and he never states that AK has a higher W% or EV, he only uses it as the classic example of why AA will lose more when it is beat (his way of explaining this aspect of game theory).

There is no way to write a simple book for a complex game, and I doubt it is possible to write a complete book for Hold-Em. Things as simple as the publication of a new book change the dynamics that you will face the next time out. Warren's book is neither simple nor complete but, in comparison to others I've read, it is more easily understood by, and in my opinion more useful to, a new player. Part of this is because it is well organized and Warren uses language well. Part is because it is more forceful on what you should and shouldn't do, and it is more conservative in its advice. These latter strengths are, however, mixed blessings for the newer player and 1-time reader. I would agree that Warren appears to give some contradictory advice on first reading. But as you re-read this book, and read others and play more, you start to understand that what you are seeing are nuances, not outright contradictions. A bigger problem with Warren, in my experience, is that he teaches a strategy so tight that it is more appropriate to a middle- or higher-level game than the Low Limit game at which the book claims to be aimed. But, again, as you see more of the "real world," you can begin to make departures (some of which are suggested in those "contradictions") from the very tight line of play that he advocates for starting players. The bottom line on this book is that it will help you win if you follow it. But it dos this more by helping you keep from losing money than by showing you to wring every last penny of winnings out of the table. And since, as Warren points out somewhere in the book, a dollar saved is a dollar earned, that in itself makes it worth using this book as a jumping-off point. Thanks to Warren's advice, with average cards and against average opponents I have made money from the first Hold-Em game I played. I don't win every time I sit down at the table, of course, and I expect that I'll win less this year than next year, as I learn more about the game by playing it and reading deeper and denser texts. But to get this far I needed to make it past the starting gate in reasonably decent shape. Without Warren's book, that would have been a much harder and less certain thing to do.

As a semi-professional poker player, I STRONGLY urge anyone who is just starting out at hold 'em NOT to buy this book. I did, and it hurt me. Warren's advice, while solid is some places, is contradictory in others and often times flat out wrong. Throughout the text it is clear that Warren's strategy is based on hunches and slip-shod reasoning as opposed to mathematics and well-thought-out strategy . For example, at one point he suggests that if you feel like you are on a rush, it is okay to loosen up your starting requirements and play bad hands. This is patently false and guaranteed to deplete your bankroll. He also suggests that Ace-King may be a better starting hand than pocket Aces, an assertion which literally millions of computer trials - as well as the table experience of any veteran player - have consistently refuted. Under the guise of being comprehensive, the text is frequently repetitive, and too much space is devoted to bad-beat stories and irrelevant anecdotes that contribute nothing to the reader's understanding of the strategic underpinnings of the game.

Warren's advice is off-target frequently enough to negate the value of the accurate information he presents; if you followed all of the recommendations in this book, you would not win money playing hold 'em. If you are looking for a good introduction to the game, read Lee Jones' "Winning Low Limit Hold 'em" Second Edition and Lou Krieger's "Hold 'Em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner." Each is superior to to this book, and the combination of the two - combined with a little playing experience - should be enough to make you a consistent winner.

There is nothing wrong with this book. Ken Warren does a good job explaining the game of hold em and takes you through how to bet from pre-flop to the river. However, I would reccommend Lee Jones book Winning Low Limit Hold 'Em. Lee Jones does a much better job explaining the strategies, and there are even quizzes after each section to make sure you understand the concepts. Buy that book instead.

Warren's book is a breezy little poker tome well suited for beginners and novices looking to expand their chops. The basics are clearly explained in a reasonably easy to understand manner. More experienced/advanced players would probablly be better off diving into one of the 'meatier' texts available but may find some interesting perspective on topics such as:

How to evaluate a poker game for profit
Complete guide to playing every hand on the flop
overcards
bluffing
The 19 most common hold'em tells
Psychological tactics
Aggressive and Expert Plays

What's also of great value is the numerous charts at the end of the book detailing exact percentages for every possible pocket combo and odds of winning depending on number of outs. Definitely recommended for those still wet behind the ears.