Book Reviews

This is the Book Review page, both in video (from 2008 and 2009) and selected reviews in text from this year. The GameMaster has a vast collection of Blackjack, Hold'em Poker books and books on general topics that may be of interest. The most recent reviews, presented in text are in the right-hand column.

Click on any book title to see the video review.

Tournament Poker: 101 Winning Moves

by Mitchell Cogert. Expert Plays for No-Limit Tournaments.

Amazon link...Tournament Poker: 101 Winning Moves: Expert Plays for No-Limit Tournaments

Texas Hold 'EM - Odds and Probabilities

by Matthew Hilger. Limit, No-Limit and Tournament Strategies.

Amazon link...Texas Hold'em Odds and Probabilities: Limit, No-Limit, and Tournament Strategies

The Poker Tournament Formula - Part 2

by Arnold Snyder. Valuable information specific to large poker tournaments.

Amazon link... The Poker Tournament Formula II: Advanced Strategies

Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand and a Time

by Eric 'Rizen' Lynch (Author), Jon 'Pearljammer' Turner (Author), Jon 'Apestyles' Van Fleet.

Amazon link...Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time Volume I

Sit 'n Go Strategy by Colin Moshman

If I had to advice one poker book only, my choice would be this one. It's explanation of the play with different blind sizes is fantastic.

Amazon link...Direct link to Amazon for "Sit 'n Go Strategy"

Gus Hansen: Every Hand Revealed

One of professional poker's most intriguing and fascinating players, Gus Hansen has often been called "The Madman" for his crazy, fearless, aggressive style. But you can't dispute the fact that this poker superstar knows how to win--and win big.

Amazon link...Direct link to Amazon for "Every Hand Revealed"

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book

By Phil Gordon. "Phil Gordon is one of poker's premier players and has few peers as a teacher of No Limit Hold'em. I would hate to have to compete with anyone who accesses the information in these pages." -Erik Seidel

Amazon link...Direct link to Amazon for "Phil Gordon's Little Green Book"

Harrington on Hold Em

By Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. Harrington on Hold Em takes you to the part of the game the cameras ignore the tactics required to get through the hundreds and sometimes thousands of hands you must win to make it to the final table.

Amazon link... Direct link to Amazon.com to buy book #1.

Amazon link...Direct link to Amazon.com to buy book #2.

Amazon link...Direct link to Amazon.com to buy book #3.

The Mathematics of Poker

By Bill Chin and Jerrod Ankenman. This book very complex and challenging, but self-improvement is rarely accomplished via easy endeavor. For best results use this book in conjunction with "Kill Everyone," our other selection for this month.

Amazon link: Direct link to Amazon.com to buy this book.

Kill Everyone

Advanced Strategies for No-limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments and Sit-n-go's. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, you'll be able to fine tune your play in many common situations with the detailed charts and hand rankings.

Amazon Link: Direct link to Amazon.com to buy this book.

Book Review for January, 2011

My book review this month is a non-Blackjack, non-Poker choice: The Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone. Published in 1993, the paperback edition is $11.56 at Amazon. Subtitled, "John Von Neumann, Game Theory and The Puzzle of The Bomb," this 278-page book is partly a biography of Von Neumann, a brilliant mathematician who co-authored the now-famous Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (with Oskar Morgenstern) in 1944 as they were working on a little project called "Manhattan," which led to the atomic bomb, but it's also a lot, lot more.

It sounds cool to say you're working on game theory, which implies all kinds of higher mathematics but in reality it can be pretty simple. My favorite game theory example is the old, "You cut the cake but I get to choose the first piece." That's one of the easier games to understand, whereas another old game - the prisoner's dilemma, as the book title suggests - isn't as simple to solve but the author does a great job of carrying us through the thinking needed to do so. Along the way, we learn how game theory contributed to Cold War ideas like MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - and, if enough of the U.S. National Security apparatus would read it today, they'd see that the incredible amount of blood and treasure we're currently spending on "The War on Terror" is way out of proportion to the actual risks of another 9/11 type of attack, which pales in comparison to the risks we faced from the Soviet Union. (Obviously, just waking up in the morning entails risk, so it can never be completely eliminated especially if your enemy is willing to die in order to harm you.) However, this book will not only entertain and educate you, but will also show you how to live your life less scared (Republicans, take note!) and that's a good deal for just 12 bucks.

Book review for February, 2011

This month's review is a really good poker book entitled "Secrets of non-Standard Sit 'n Go Poker Tournaments" written by Phil Shaw in 2010, which sells for $16.47 at Amazon.com. What he means by "non-standard" are heads-up SnG tournaments, two-table tournaments (as well as 45- and 180-player events) and tournaments for games other than No-Limit Hold'em, such as Pot-Limit Omaha, Razz, Triple Draw and others. For my $$$, the best advice I got from this book was his coverage of so-called "Steps" tournaments which are satellite tournaments that progress in value until you win an entry into an event like the WSOP or WPT event.

I personally play a lot of three-table (27 player) SnGs and, while he doesn't specifically cover these in the book, the concepts he discusses have reminded me of a few things that I had been missing, so I realized an almost immediate return on the cost of the book. And it has inspired me to play more 180-player tournies, which - in the $11 entry fee level - pays the top 18 finishers, with $540 going to the winner. If you want to get involved in large multi-table tournaments, the 180s are a great place to start, but one could earn a nice living from playing just those. If you're a serious Poker tournament player, get this book!

Book Review for August, 2011

This time I want to review another math-type of book, very easy to read and one that I found quite entertaining. It's called The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow (Vintage Books, 2008) and it sells for just $8.62 in the paperback edition at Amazon. The subtitle is: "How Randomness Rules Our Lives," but the author's not saying that basically everything in our lives is a random event.

What the author is attempting to teach us is that we humans try very hard to recognize patterns - it's part of what allows us to survive as a species - but sometimes we accept these patterns as true reality, when in fact they are nothing of the sort. For years I've explained to readers who write me about stuff like, "The dealer always busts when he has a red Ace showing" or "I win more at Video Poker by feeding coins in (back in the day when we used slot tokens) then by playing the credits." Of course all of that is nonsense but I try to be gentle by pointing out that we are a species - perhaps the only species here on Earth - who can look up at the night sky, see 7 stars that are totally unrelated to one another and declare, "Hey, look! It's a big dipper." We are very good at seeing a pattern where none exists.

A lot of today's mathematical principles come from the study of gambling in the 17th and 18th centuries because it's an activity that rewards success immediately, so more than one starving academic has devoted time and effort toward solving the problems presented by the gaming tables. Dr. Mlodinow refers a lot to those in history - Bernoulli, Cardano, Gauss, Pascal and others - who added to our understanding of the principles of probability and he does so in a very entertaining way. But for me, the best explanation of probability is his examination of the so-called "Monty Hall" problem. If you saw the movie 21, starring Kevin Spacey, which is about the MIT card-counting team (and if you haven't seen it you should,) he plays a math professor who uses the Monty Hall problem to identify a student with exceptional skills, whom he later recruits for the team.

Can a fabricated event from the long-gone "Let's Make a Deal" television program really teach us anything about probability analysis? Oh, yes. And the author tracks the whole event, from its first appearance in the "Ask Marilyn" column that appeared in Parade magazine, which used to (maybe still does?) come with the Sunday newspaper. You will not believe the heat she got from "academics" and others for giving an answer that they thought was totally wrong. The author does a very good job of explaining, visually and otherwise, why Marilyn's answer is totally correct. I like books that teach me how to examine problems in a structured and organized way - books like The Prisoner's Dilemma and The Black Swan - among others. This book is in that category, so I highly recommend it.