Hold'Em Poker by David Sklansky - Review

Hold'em Poker assumes the premise of a $10-$20 game at the Mirage casino, and analyzes Texas Hold'em based on that. The book begins with basic concepts such as position and hole cards, and builds upon those concepts, formulating strategies based on position, pot odds, and reading hands. Hold'em Poker is short, around 120 pages, and would make a great prep session for someone heading to a home game, or headed out to do some recreational gambling.

Hold'em Poker begins with the basic concepts of Texas Hold'em: the rules, determining the best hands. It then goes into a discussion of position, and how your play can change depending on your position. This is followed by a chapter on hole cards. This chapter goes over various cards that you may be dealt, and how to play them. In Hold'em Poker, Sklansky organizes starting hands into 8 groups, according to their playability. He goes on to discuss the pros and cons of each of these groups, and later, formulates play based on which group your hand is in, incorporating other players betting.

The book then discusses what flops are good and what flops are bad based on your hole cards. For beginners, this section is definitely good reading, as some of the ideas here are slightly counterintuitive.

The fifth chapter is the meat and potatoes of the book. Here, the book touches on the more advanced concepts of Texas Hold'em. It takes all of the fundamentals from the previous chapters and formulates strategy based upon them. The section goes through what to do during each section of the game (preflop, 4th, and 5th street). It goes into the concept of the free card, as well as bluffing and semi-bluffing.

The next chapter goes over the all important concept of reading hands. Although touching on the subject of tells, Hold'em Poker does not delve heavily into them. Rather, it leans toward reading players based on their betting before, and after the flop. Unfortunately, these concepts only work well against poker players who know what they are doing. Beginners are much more likely to play erratically, and make this section rather useless. Sklansky cautions readers about this, suggesting they not rely solely on reading cards, but use it as part of their arsenal.

Hold'em Poker finishes up with a short section of probability, which is at the heart of Texas Hold'em. The probability section is quite short, but gives players an idea of where they stand based on the number of cards in the deck that will make their hand, and the number of cards currently on the table. This discussion is adequate for most beginners, but more serious players may want to purchase another book solely about probability, or calculate probabilities themselves. More mathematically inclined beginners may also wish to determine their own probabilities.

Overall Hold'em Poker is a good discussion of Texas Hold'em for beginning players. One of the problems I had with the book is that it moves right into the poker lingo, without first giving readers the definitions. There is a meager glossary of terms in the back, but it does not contain the various poker lingo contained in the book. The good thing is that readers can figure out most of the definitions by the way they are used in context. The book does move through material quickly, so some rereading may be necessary, especially if you want to thoroughly understand the concepts. The final problem I had, which is actually quite minor, is that when the author describes a poker hand, sometimes he will show the hand on the bottom of a page, and describe proper play of that hand on the next page, which requires a small amount of flipping around.

I would recommend Hold'em Poker to any beginning Texas Hold'em players who have played a few friendly games, or are somewhat familiar with the game. It’s a great book to read if you want to bone up on your poker knowledge before heading to a casino, or if you want to impress your friends at the house game. It’s an excellent book for beginners to read, since it covers neatly most of the basic concepts of poker.

-Dave

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