Secrets of the Amateurs

I picked up three books in the last month and here's a brief review of each :

Power Hold'Em Strategy (Negreanu et al)

This book tries to be Super System 3 (Hold-em edition) but has to go down as a FAIL. It's worth the price for Negreanu's section, which is excellent, and David Williams' which is surprisingly good. However the rest of it is basically filler. I was particularly disappointed with the sections by Todd Brunson and Eric Lindgren. Nonetheless, DN's stuff is very good and it's interesting to reflect on how he tries to distance himself from "internet players" when in fact he seems to play in much the same way as many of the best online tournament pros. Which brings me to :

Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand At A Time Vol 1 (Pearljammer, Rizen, Apestyles)

This, however, is the real deal. This is an absolutely top book. It's a lot like watching videos from each of these players (and I think I've seen videos by each of them here and there), but having it all written down so you can go through it at leisure. Pearljammer does tend to the nitty, but seeing as my biggest weakness online is that I am too much of a calling station, especially deep stacked, there's a lot of good stuff in there about how and when you can see that you should fold. Apestyles wins the book IMO, his stuff is really great, I can't speak highly enough of it. I didn't think the section at the end (where all three comment on the same hands) added all that much but that's a very minor criticism, and I can't wait for volume 2.

The Poker Tournament Formula 2 (Snyder)

This one's a bit of a curate's egg. There is some interesting, thought-provoking content hidden away but there's also a lot of verbiose fluff and some stuff that's just flat out wrong. I can't help suspecting, as I said on 2+2 today, that Snyder emphasises the extra value ("utility" he calls it) of having a large stack because he himself doesn't play a short stack all that well (his short stack advice in PTF1 was well intentioned but gave nowhere near enough weight to position). Worth a look but handle with care !

That's all the books for now, although thanks to the power of the Internet I have managed to order a copy of Fox's lesser known follow-up to "Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon", which is titled "How To Hustle Home Poker" and I'm really looking forward to that.

In other news, the Poker Million kicks off tomorrow (see Jesse's preview here). I was originally offered a seat in this, and provisionally accepted, but when Ladbrokes announced out of nowhere that they were chucking two people straight into the semi with no indication of how this was going to work (see Qualification here), I changed my mind. Not only did this halve the added money, but it just niggled me because this isn't how you should do things. Indeed, everyone's playing the heats this week and there's still no information as to who this is going to be or how it's going to work.

Now I see the field, which is pretty tough, especially compared to the event I played in April, I don't think it's a great loss. Good luck to the good guys in this, but on the flipside, I have initiated the bok by betting Neil, Vicky, Marty Smyth and Kongsgaard to win their heats. Sorry guys :-/.