Customer Reviews

Winning in Tough Hold 'em Games: Short-Handed and High-Stakes Concepts and Theory for Limit Hold 'em

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

 

 

I'm not one for writing reviews, but when I saw this book only had one to it's name, I had to say a few words.

I can honestly say this is the best book out there when it comes to beating tough 6 max online games. And I've read a lot of them!!

Stox is a genius. I've based my entire style of play on his "teachings" and I have been a successful online pro for 18 months. I hesitate to praise him too much because I don't want my opponents to get their hands on this book!!

I wont go into much detail other than to say there is a large and clearly explained section on Blinds play/defense which is a must read for any serious player. It has helped my game no end.

Flintoff 2+2

This is an unusual book, to say the least. Every detail of how to handle tough, short handed play is in here. The weakness is in the editing, layout and just general usability of the text. This would easily be a five star text with only a little bit of work. Large portions of this book consist of spreadsheets showing performance of certain plays under various conditions. The tables are staggering in their size. There are roughly 70 pages of spreadsheet tables with hundreds of cells apiece. While this is a scholarly work, the editors could have insisted in summations of the spreadsheets using graphs or charts and then put the tables in an appendix. It would have added greatly to the readability. Also, it would have been helpful if they had included a CD ROM with the tables in spreadsheet form for the rest of us to sort through.

This is a good book though. If you're willing to take some time to sort out the logic of the tables (here I'm talking spreadsheet tables, not playing tables) then the book is worth every penny. But don't go charging into this text expecting an easy read. This is a book for those serious enough to put extra effort into digging, reading and re-reading. The plus side is - you can rest assured these guys have done their homework.

This is a book by a couple of respected 2+2 er's (If you dont know what a 2+2er is then this book is not for you (yet) )

It specifically addresses tough 6 max limit games, tough, being with the explosion of internet games and the recent US gaming laws it is getting harder and harder to find what we call loose, profitable tables.

It is concise and to the point and includes alot of PT stats (if you dont know what PT is again this book is not for you) to back up their reasoning.

In conclusion the book adopts an aggressive (as you should be when playing short handed anyway) style and deep thinking analysis of every play including actual hands.

However this is not a beginner book and you should be a winning player at full ring/6 max games limit medium stakes $2/4 and above to find this book useful. it is also good for those players who have plateued and are looking to improve.

This is a good, useful book for advanced higher stakes limit players who already win and are looking to improve their bottom line. The content is excellent, but the presentation is lacking in some ways. As others have pointed out, this is seriously NOT a beginner's book. The authors clearly assume that their audience is as described in the first sentence of this review. Look elsewhere for beginner books. For materials on the fundamentals of limit hold'em, I recommend the books by David Sklansky, or to a lesser extent, Lee Jones. Those books don't really address much short handed play, however, so once the fundamentals are in place, if one is interested in the much more fun short handed game, one should read the book by Borer, Mak, and Tanenbaum. Once one understands all of that, it's time for this book!

I had high expectations for 'Winning in Tough Hold 'em Games: Short-Handed and High-Stakes Concepts and Theory for Limit Hold 'em' but after reading this book I was very disappointed. Authored by 2 very successful online (mainly limit) players, I expected to see great writing, analysis, hand inspection, the whole shebang. What I got was a half-hearted, borderline result that I quickly shelved. I don't doubt "Stoxtrader" and "Zobags" being successful players (not one bit) but I just was never sucked in to their book like I have with many other poker books like the Harrington NL tournament series or Small Stakes Hold 'em by Malmuth and Miller.

The major problem with this book is that there is simply too much time wasted on charts. The charts provided show the results of each hand that can possibly be played for a full ring player, 6max player, etc. It's interesting to see the results but not much is going to be learned from them. Obviously the better hands (it's expected that the reader have a basic knowledge of limit before reading this text) are going to win more, and this is the same for short handed or full ring play. Of the 300+ pages, about 50 pages or so are just charts. They add something to the book but not nearly enough to warrant so much page real estate.

Content is alright but I don't feel that I learned much overall. The authors advise a more daring style for the higher limit games with more bluffs and making river calls without even pairs (as an example). You do have to adapt to win at the nosebleed stakes but the type of analysis here didn't add much to my repertoire.

The thing that I was most interested in was the hand analysis and quizzes section and I was not pleased with what was there. The writing just didn't get me excited to go to the next hand like I felt with the Harrington books, itching to read the next analysis. Too many hands are just marginal holdings or non-holdings and I wonder how realistic this is. Of course I don't play at the highest stakes so maybe pushing with air or practically air is the norm but I felt that this wasn't the greatest effort.

There's no 2 1/2 star for this book so I tend towards the bottom scale as I was not happy with the end result. Most 2+2 books are fantastic but this doesn't get my stamp of approval. I feel that there are other limit books that handle 90-95% of the market for readers who need such books. For the other 5-10% the advanced concepts discussed are a subset in themselves and I feel hard to document.

**

This is a great book by one of the greatest and most successful online cash game players in the world- Nick "Stoxtrader" Grudzien (and of course his collaborator Geoff "Zobags" Herzog). If there is one person in the poker world that you could make a case for accepting his word as gospel then Stox would be it. You can count on what this guy has to say as being factual and accurate. This is not some armchair theoritician who played a bit of 10/20 in soft live games and is now banging out a book to make a quick buck. This is a guy that has played in the toughest, highest stakes online poker games in the world and won- big time- for a long time.

This is a book for advanced players who play in tough games against other good, thinking players. It is not about how to beat bad players in loose games so if that is the type of game you play, get Small stakes hold 'em by Ed Miller & co. This text covers multiple facets of the shorthanded high stakes online limit games and it's scope and content is far too deep to be expounded on in any great depth in a simple, two paragraph book review. I'll just say that it is a brilliant piece of work by one of the greatest poker players of the modern era and it's importance definitely cannot be overstated. I guess you could say that this book is the real "Hold 'em for advanced players" now.

Five stars and a glowing recommendation.

Pretty good book overall. This is narrowly targeted at higher-stakes, short-handed, limit holdem players. It has general guidelines for types of hands, and then specific guidance for particular hands. I found the general guidance and principles to be extremely good. But the particular hands to be not so relevant for the games i play. It also has lots of math in there that is only marginally useful.

This book gives a real feeling of "quick and dirty" story:

- Poorly structured (e.g. looking for considerations on bluff: the index gives you 30+ pages to look for in the book...)

- Lots of pages with statistics: will never remember those thousands of figures and won't have the time to search for it in a real game

- 100+ pages filled with sample hands: again, no effort to summarize lessons learned

Looks like the authors were looking to quickly "dump" a number of pages to sell paper.

Sorry for being harsh but this is my honest opinion.

This book is one of the best book ever written on limit holdem. The book covers pre flop hand ranges and sb and bb defense tailored for online play. In addition the quiz and hand example are simply excellent.

So my review is 5 stars.

This is NOT a beginners book. This is for sophisticated limit poker players. It goes into great detail on short handed play. With tons of stats to back up his points. Its a tough read unless you are in the top 3% of poker players. Great poker book..if you are a great poker player.

Limit...that is...