Monday, August 26, 2013

Review: The Theory of Poker


The Theory of Poker
The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This is an excellent introduction into the mechanics of good poker play.
The explanations are clear and detailed, and the writing is actually pretty engaging for a two hundred book that is basically a lecture about odds ratios.

There were a few minor things that bothered me about this book. In order to have the aforementioned discussion about odds ratios you have to know what the probability of various things happening are. For certain poker events, you can calculate these things readily.* For others you can't, and yet the author just states these things as given. In other words, I lost count of the time an example includes assume you know there's a 30% chance your opponent will beat you." How the #$%^ am I supposed to know this?!?!?! I found this somewhat frustrating.**

Secondly, the reason I picked up this book is that I was playing a fair bit of Texas Hold 'em at the time, and I was interested in improving my game. Certainly, the concepts presented here are extraordinarily valuable regardless of which game one is playing, and in particular for Hold'em, but, the examples across lots of different games got to be kind of annoying. Seriously, who the #@$% plays 7 Card Razz?

But again, these are minor complaints. I got from this book exactly what I needed: the fundamental mathematical concepts behind good poker play, and I can actually say it has worked for me.***

* Wikipedia has a fabulous article on Texas Hold 'em probabilities amongst others.
** I am being too hard on the book. The author says repeatedly, that the estimates of opponents hand strength are for didactic convenience, and that in actual play you attempt to glean this knowledge from learning how your opponent plays and reading their hand strength, the author also talks some about how to do this. Nevertheless, I found it frustrating.
*** By which I mean I have finished "in the money" in the last three poker tournaments I've played in.



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