CardSharp

I don’t play in Vegas all that often, so when I do make it out to the desert there’s always something new going on.  This time it was a new way of taking your first hand when sitting down at the table. Read the rest of this entry »

subtitle: expert play for no-limit tournaments

Author: Mitchell Cogert – website for the book

Publisher:  Self Published/CreateSpace

Since I took forever to review Cogert’s previous book, Play Razz Poker To Win, and he was still kind enough to send me an evaluation copy of his latest I figured I’d try to be a bit more timely.

Compared to the previous book, this one is on a topic a lot of people actually care about.  There’s no question that NL holdem tournament poker was responsible for the poker boom and it is the fomat the probably draws the most interest from new players.  Hell, my parents who do not know the first thing about holdem just got invited to someone’s little home tournament.  As such, beginner’s books targeted at this audience make a lot of sense. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve seen this happen a million times:

Beginner Bob has just absorbed the sage wisdom of Play Holdem Pretty Darn Good, NL Edition and sits down at a small stakes NL game to try out his newfound knowledge.  He knows his opponents will be playing far too loose at these stakes, and as such resolves to wait for big hands he wants to show down and then bet them for value.  Sure enough, 30 minutes into his session he flops a set, bets it, gets called down, and stacks someone.  Now Bob is sitting in front of a nice big doubled stack.  Then something funny happens an orbit later: Bob enters the pot by calling an under the gun raise with an AQ, hits an ace, gets check-raised on the flop, pays off the whole way to the river, and loses to AK.  Suddenly Bob is worse off in terms of money than he was before he hit the set.  Bummer.

I swear this happens FAR too often to be coincidence. Read the rest of this entry »