Power Hold'em Strategy by Daniel Negreanu Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Power Hold'em Strategy
Book Review: Not as good as I expected
Summary: 2 Stars
All things considered, I was a little disappointed with this book. I was hoping it would focus on Negreanu's unique style of poker and that it would present ideas not yet covered by the other great poker books (like the Harrington series of books on tournaments and cash games). But it's a 485 page book and Negreanu doesn't even pen a word of it until the last 200 pages.
There are 5 chapters before Negreanu's, each written by a different pro: Evelyn Ng, Todd Brunson, Erick Lindgren, Paul Wasicka, & David Williams. Ng's chapter presented an interesting strategy for beginners that made a lot of sense to me and that I hadn't heard of before, which was good. But the other 4 chapters by the pros were a waste of time. Brunson, Lindgren, Wasicka, & Williams all wrote about very basic concepts that I'd heard of a million times before.
Brunson's chapter was on cash games, but he didn't even scratch the surface of cash game strategy in the way that Harrington on Cash Games did. He spent an entire chapter talking about re-buying, not bluffing, & trap hands.
Lindgren's chapter was about online play. The major flaw with that chapter was that it was written for players that cut their teeth playing in casinos and are now moving online. In reality, I think most of us start online and work our way towards casinos if we succeed online, so the whole chapter felt "backwards". He provided a little more actual in-game strategy than Brunson, but not much.
Wasicka's chapter was about short-handed tables. Outside of Ng's chapter I found this chapter the most useful. Wasicka presented some ideas which were new to me and even the ones that weren't new were at least logical and presented well.
Williams' chapter could have been written in 1 sentence: "Mix up your play so your opponent can't read what you've got." It's the first rule of poker to not let yourself fall into the trap of being predictable and Williams some how rambled on about this for a whole chapter.
With all that being said, Daniel's chapter was great and I thought it was good enough to stand on its own. About 200 pages in length, he describes in depth his small-ball strategy, the math that makes it work, and how to master it. He guides the reader through starting hand selection and position all the way thru flop, turn, & river play, making lots of easy to understand analogies along the way. Although I think the rest of the poker world as caught on to Daniel's methods since his immense success in 2003 & 2004, this strategy is a useful weapon for any poker player to have in his arsenal. Daniel's strategy, when properly employed, should allow the reader to pick up lots of uncontested pots and should keep pots small unless the reader has a big hand.
Taken on a chapter by chapter basis, I'd give the following ratings:
Ng: 4 stars
Brunson: 1 star
Lindgren: 2 stars
Wasicka: 3 stars
Williams: 1 star
Negreanu: 5 stars
But as a whole, with all the fluff in there, I'd give the whole book just 2 stars.
Book Review: Poker Strategy
Summary: 5 Stars
This book gives you a different view on how to play no limit poker. Have been trying these different strategy's and they are working very well! I have made the final table six times in a row. What the book is saying so far has worked excellent!!
Mike
Book Review: Pretty good book...
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a pretty good book.
Aside from the Evelyn Ng chapter, this is really more of an intermediate to advanced book. For people just starting to play no limit tournaments, though, her chapter is very good, and does present a system that will neutralize some of the trickier players at your table...
For people who have played some, there is some great stuff in here, though.... Paul Wasicka has a real nice chapter on 6-handed no limit hold-em on the internet, lots of good insights there... David Williams has a nice chapter on mixing up your play...
Daniel Negreanu has a long chapter about his "small ball" theory of poker... While I don't agree with all of it, it offers some great insights into the mind of the small-ball player, and he does have one of the best breakdowns of play on the turn and river that I have read...
A real good investment in your poker library.
Book Review: Small-ball puts the Power in your Hold'em
Summary: 5 Stars
Other books go over basic preflop guidelines with little explanation for the intricacies of postflop play. They never move beyond "mix it up," "value bet," "catch over-aggressive players in bluffs," and other basic sayings few authors go very far to explain. Aside from a few gems from Sklansky and his team, not until Harrington's tournament and cash game series did we see detailed examples of postflop strategies. Earlier authors focused on the simple line of thought associated with world class play: outplay your opponent.
What they failed to do was discuss the variables necessary to determine:
1.If we have the best hand in murky situations
2.If we do have the best hand, what lines of play extract the most value?
3.If we don't have the best hand, what situations and players can we exploit to turn our hand into a successful bluff?
4.What kinds of variables are necessary so we can exploit similar situations?
What we need is a book that addresses the weaknesses so many other books promote.
That's where Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em comes in, and where we jump ahead to it's real gem: Small-ball.
Small-ball is a style meant to confuse your opponent and give you maximum value. It is a style employed by many of the smartest, most successful tournament players including Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, and our author, Daniel Negreanu. As Negreanu states, when you watch a small-ball player, "you will notice that he appears to be in control of the table, yet at the same time, seems to be playing with reckless abandon, giving little thought to the strength of his starting hand."
Daniel Negreanu's small-ball section details a myriad of complex postflop decisions. He wants us to play as many hands as possible to put us in as many profitable situations as we want. The more hands we play, the more situations we must be able to exploit or we will become exploited ourselves. As such, the author must provide vivid examples of how to take advantage of common but complicated streets based off specific player tendencies, board textures, and typical methods of exploiting how certain hands react to different boards.
Once we move beyond the monkey play of getting it all in with the nuts, a player's skill becomes dependent not just on how to play his hand but on how to play his opponent. The message of other advanced strategists has been to read what hand your opponent has. Small-ball takes this a step further with the axiom: Don't play what your opponent has. Play what your opponent doesn't have.
Building on this axiom, Negreanu explains perhaps the most revolutionary concept in his book: "bluffing outs," a strategy that calls for us to determine the true odds of drawing out on our opponent as well as what cards we can bluff with. Negreanu stresses that advanced plays such as these require advanced reads. We must observe if an opponent is capable of folding, and if so what hands will he fold to what situations. Unless we have noticed a player can lay down pocket Aces to a low, 4-card straight board, it's best to just concede the hand and pick a better spot. But given we have a read, adding bluffing outs into our decision can turn a difficult fold into a clear call.
Players immersed in Negreanu's later sections may misconstrue some of the plays he suggests as too passive to succeed, but it's a style that's allowed him to go deep in numerous tournaments while his opponents' over-aggressive styles often lead them to either build a big stack, or more often to just bust out. Small-ball wants us to get maximum value for our legitimate hands as well as our bluffs, and Negreanu insists that sometimes means taking a small risk with big hands for bigger rewards.
For example, Negreanu suggests often just calling a preflop raise in position with big pairs like Jacks or Tens, while common discussions of such situations almost always advocate reraising. In his section on Turn play, he suggests check/calling or checking behind big but marginal hands that unfortunately cannot withstand a bluff.
Critics of these sections may note that not betting the turn fails to protect our hand as well as misses potential value, but as Negreanu points out, noting player tendencies and board textures allows us to put our opponent on a hand and determine spots in which we are well ahead or way behind. If our opponent only has 3 or 4 outs, it is pointless to create a situation that could deter our opponent from proceeding with the worst hand, or worse, failing to convince him to bluff with what he or she thinks is the best hand.
A small-ball player utilizes a mix of aggressive and passive strategies because, at the end of the day, the small-ball player wants to still be in the tournament with a stack that seems to have grown on its own.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not stack up. With all due respect to the contributing authors to Power Hold'em, their sections fail by following the same trend as their predecessors. Too many poker players are beyond learning a hand ranking chart, and those that aren't have many other books and websites to learn such basics. Televised poker games until recently utilized sports commentators. At best poker amateurs, those commentators are dropping off, replaced by professional poker players, reflecting an overall trend of increasing sophistication in both players and viewers of the game. The poker audience includes more than trained monkeys, and they are hungry for the advanced strategies found in the small-ball section of Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em.
If you're frustrated because you rarely go deep in tournaments, confused because your bluffs never work, sad because no one ever pays off your big hands, and eager to join a group of players that make poker seem effortless, you need to buy this book.
Book Review: Too Much Fluff, not Quite Up to Snuff
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm a big fan of Daniel's, I've been reading his blog and articles for years now.
I generally enjoy reading what he writes, but this one falls short.
The books is a spin off of Super System, several chapters from 'star' contributors on holdem. I've read several poker strategy books, harrington's books, and several two plus two titles. The content of this book just doesn't compare.
It's written in a very conversational tone, without much math and the detail I've come to expect from other poker titles I've read. This may be a good thing, however, if you prefer less dense poker reading. I want to like it more, but just I don't at this point.