The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition by Andy Bloch, Richard Brodie, David Grey, Gavin Smith, Chris Ferguson

Take this review with a grain of salt from a non-poker player...by WPcadet00

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September 22, 2009: I am not an avid poker player or particularly experienced with poker, which is why I chose to read this book. Therefore, take this review with a grain of salt.

The Negatives:

Overall, I felt that the information would have been useful if it had better editing. The editing was very weak in my opinion. Because the book is a compilation of different poker player's advices, the conversational tone of each individual changed with each author and had no flow. It was written as if they were speaking to you. I guess I would rather just have a narrative of what they were trying to say. I also felt that the language mixed poker slang with actual poker definitions and neither the slang nor actual definitions were defined. A glossary would have been nice, especially for someone who doesn't have that much experience with the game. Trying to follow some of the examples becomes pretty exhausting and boring. On page 324, the text didn't even match the pictures, although that was one rare mistake. What I had the most trouble was the explanation of the odds and how some of the decisions were drawn on statistics that either didn't make sense, or were vastly over-simplified. Sometimes I would re-read several sentences over and over to understand it. Lastly, I had qualms with the fact that the concluding chapters cover other forms of poker, but didn't give an explanation of what made them different from Texas No Limit Hold'em. In particular, the Razz chapter completely lost me. It even says that a lot of people don't play razz, so they don't know what to do.it would be nice if the editor would have explained it. I could look it up on the internet to find out the structure of the game but I guess I should have bought a different book.

The Positives:

It did have valuable lessons like leverage theory and any chapter that Chris Ferguson wrote was easy to understand (he did not use lots of slang). The Omaha and Seven Card Stud chapters were good chapters to read as well.

Overall:

I'm not sure if this book was geared towards audiences that have played pokers for years on end, but I know that as a leisure reader, I wouldn't recommend this book. But if you're intimately familiar with the game I'm sure you'll get a lot out of it since he has some of the best poker players that contributed to the book. My opinion, no more and no less.