Product Description

For decades, the highest level of poker have been dominated by players who have learned the game by playing it, ""road gamblers"" who have cultivated intuition for the game and are adept at reading other players' hands from betting patterns and physical tells. Over the last five to ten years, a whole new breed has risen to prominence within the poker community. Applying the tools of computer science and mathematics to poker and sharing the information across the Internet, these players have challenged many of the assumptions that underlay traditional approaches to the game.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12968 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 382 pages

Customer Reviews

Just fab
This book covers the maths of poker in an indepth way. I found it reasonably easy to follow and enjoyed the way the maths is related to the game. I am slowly adopting a change in strategy to make full use of what I have learnt and I feel certain that it will pay dividends. The maths is heavy going but managable (although I am a high school maths teacher). The chapters on exploititive play are particularly interesting and I would say likely to be profitable for those able to invest the hours studying that the book requires. If your maths is not that strong (better than GCSE) you are probably better of spending your money elsewhere. Alevel maths students could buy it as a text book as much of the content is in the S1 and S2 modules, all non mathematicians have been warned.

The best poker book on the market
Sklansky is the world most respected poker theorist, and for a long time was reluctant to write a no limit book. For the reason that players with a sound theatrical background would still be under dogs to talented non-theoreticians, in the world of deep-stack NL, and he's correct. However reading and understanding the concepts in this book will improve anyone's win rate. This is the definitive work on the subject, but it is not for beginners, only Mathematics of poker by Chen & Ankenman is more complex. You should know how to play the game, and have a decent understanding, and probably read some simpler poker books like "Getting Started in Hold 'Em" and "Little Green Book" before you pick up this one.

The book sets out to teach you how to think about poker, guiding you thought advanced concepts in a simple, well presented manner. Concepts such as manipulating the pot size, adjusting correctly to stack sizes, winning battle of mistakes, reading hands and manipulating opponents into playing badly. There are a lot of examples and EV calculations, you can easily skip past the maths and concentrate of the concepts, but in doing so you'll be missing out. Having an understanding of how to create EV equations will allow to you evaluate your play to a greater level away from the tables, and therefore improve your results on them and this book will show you how to achieve just that.

Reading this book once will improve your game greatly, though you'll probably want to return to it again and again, my copy is by far the most battered book in my poker library, I have read this more than my other dozen poker books put together. I need say no more on how worthwhile this book is.

bestpokerbook
Wow! This is the best book ever written about poker. It will make you think about all aspects of the game and will make you into a very good player. The mathematics in the title, however, means mathematics.
If you are a mathematician and you like poker you will love this book.
If you are not a mathematician it will be hard work.