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The book of Big Bet Poker, covering Holdem, 7stud, omaha, omaha8, lowball (Stewart Reuben, Bob Ciaffone, 1997)
The Old Pot
First of all, Pot-Limit and No-Limit Poker is not devoted to NLHE exclusively. It has been written well before the Internet poker “boom” and the tournament fad; hence it essentially covers ring games, and many variants are addressed, even though some of them are now quite old-fashioned.
The book is organized as a series of short articles, dealing with various points and variants. The first parts cover general advice and recommendations: “poker’s ten commandments”, playing styles, depth of money, initiative, drawing hands, art of bluffing, bullies… Quite good information, but you are not taken by the hand like some readers like to be.
The authors sometimes go pretty fast on essential points, which is alright for intermediate players, but beginners are likely not to appreciate the points to full extent. The intended audience was perhaps less large when the book first went to print. As a consequence, the less experienced players will need to read and re-read the book several times before the clearly-but-briefly-exposed important concepts start giving all their “flavor”.
The following parts deal with a specific variant. Holdem and Omaha are the most interesting; some cover variants out of fashion (lowball draw and London lowball), and some others are not played at Pot-Limit very often (eg. 7stud).
The Holdem part is sixteen-page long, and is followed by a quizz (like all the chapters dedicated to a variant). It shows the shift of hand values compared to Limit, the importance of money depth, the difference between Pot Limit and No Limit, what to consider when you play draws, as well as other topics. It is well written, and again this is excellent material - but this is not a structured course for beginners. This does not mean that beginners cannot profit from the book, though.
The Omaha part is thirteen-page long. it contains many tips and deals with pot size manipulation, bluffs, paired board, nut hand on the flop (yes, this is worth discussing!), “X-ray” vision… It cannot teach you how to play Omaha from scratch, but if you have some good notions, it will certainly be instructive.
All in all, this book is full of useful information, but the approach chosen by the authors may turn some beginners down. Even intermediate players will want to read the book several times, so as to “wring” all the content out of it.
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