Product Description

DANIEL NEGREANU S POWER HOLD EM STRATEGY by Daniel Negreanu This power-packed book on beating no-limit hold em is one of the three most influential poker books ever written. Negreanu headlines a collection of young, great players Todd Brunson, David Williams, Erick Lindgren, Evelyn Ng and Paul Wasicka who share their insider professional moves and winning secrets. You ll learn about short-handed and heads-up play, high-limit cash games, a powerful beginner s strategy to neutralize professional players, how to mix up your play, bluff, and win big pots. The centerpiece, however, is Negreanu s powerful and revolutionary small ball strategy. You ll learn how to play hold em with cards you never would have played before and with fantastic results. The preflop, flop, turn and river will never look the same again. A must-have!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18292 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

About the Author
Daniel Negreanu, famously known as Kid Poker is widely recognized worldwide for his poker charisma at the poker table, especially for his ability to read opponents cards. Daniel Negreanu was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on July 26th, 1974. Even throughout his earlier years, Daniel Negreanu had what his parents would later call, quite simply, a knack for gambling. Negreanu s poker talent began to outshine at the early age of 15. By the time Daniel Negreanu was 16, you could find him spending his time in pool halls, spots betting, playing cards, and hustling. After playing poker throughout most of teenage years, Daniel Negreanu was so confident of his poker game that at the age of 21 Daniel left his college education behind, and he was only one credit short of a full graduation, and moved to Las Vegas to pursue a full time poker career. Daniel Negreanu is well respected by poker players as one of the best-liked players in poker, and has been described by his opponents as young, talented, friendly and positive . It s easy to see how Daniel s positive image for countless tournament victories has propelled to be the chosen pro poker player to represent PokerStars.com based on his reputation and tournament success. In 1997, Daniel Negreanu took the poker world by surprise with his two first place finishes at the World Poker Finals at Foxwoods earning a prize of $133,600 and taking home the title of the Tournament best all around player . Since those days, Daniel has earned himself 3 WSOP (World Series of Poker) bracelets, and 2 WPT (World Poker Tour) titles, not to mention more than 30 other victories in tournaments across the globe. Negreanu followed his 1997 win with his triumph at the 1998 World Series of Poker winning $169,460 at the $2,000 Pot Limit Hold em event making him the youngest WSOP bracelet winner in history until the record was broken in 2004. In the years following his WSOP win, Daniel Negreanu became of poker s most successful players, winning another 2 World Poker Tours and incredibly another 2 World Series of Poker. In 2004, he was named Player of the Year at the World Series of Poker and at the 2005 World Poker Tour, he was also named Player of the Year .

Customer Reviews

Okay, but if you only buy one book on no-limit hold 'em then it's not this one!!
I'm currently sitting with my freshly read copy of this book. My initial reaction is that it was fairly poor bar- as most reviews seem to point out- Daniel Negreanu's section.

Evelyn Ng's section can be entirely skipped. It's aimed at beginners, providing a "system" to avoid difficult decisions and post-flop play in general. The object seems to be to minimise the edge of better players, but to be honest you shouldn't be sitting with better players in the first place- especially if your knowledge of poker is this basic! There are better ways of learning the basics than by following a "system" and would advise "The theory of Poker" by David Sklansky for those among you who consider yourselves intelligent beginners.

The second section is Tod Brunson's and it covers high-limit cash games. It lacks structure and is fairly short. There are a few bits of useful information in there, such as never bluffing an idiot; however most of it is common knowledge- certainly to the players intending to play high-limit cash games.
This chapter should have taken a far deeper look at the subject, and certainly not been the second chapter in the book. I have to add that, though Tod Brunson is undoubtedly a fantastic player who has achieved a lot in the game, there was an elementary mistake in the chapter which was nothing short of embarrassing. Worse still it hasn't been pointed out by other (professional) reviews. On page 129 he states in an example, "You figure it's 10 to 1 against his bluffing..." and later states a few lines down regarding the same example, "You may have picked that 1-out-of-10 times this guy was bluffing..." Now that to me is extremely disconcerting (should read "1-out-of-11", given that we are taking advice on high-stakes hold 'em!!!! The basic nature of the error shows a total lack of care.

Erick Lindgren's section on online play is up next. This chapter is far more carefully structured than its predecessor. Generally useful advice for the intermediate player, however with a couple of contentious pieces of advice.
Firstly, "Maintaining a consistent bet size" is a controversial bit of advice given the benefits you forfeit by doing so. All that is really required is to sufficiently mix up your play... but more on that when we get to David Williams' section!
The second(less contentious, more misleading) piece of advice is "Protecting the Babies." It implies that you should take the number of chips in the pot that came from your stack into account when making a decision about whether to make a bluff on the river. Now this implication is dangerous. As Mike Caro correctly states, "What you've already invested doesn't matter." All that matters is the mathematical expectation of the play- the fact that some of the chips in the pot were initially yours has absolutely no bearing on that.

Now we come to Paul Wasika, dealing with short-handed games. I found a lot of his advice to be very solid. The small section on ego wasn't anything revolutionary, but it's extremely important. I found his coining of player types a bit counter-productive as I feel there are more efficient ways of doing this, such as in "The Psychology of Poker" by Alan N. Schoonmaker. I feel as if I'm repeating myself when I say it's generally useful advice for the intermediate player.

The fifth section is by David Williams on mixing up your play. Now some sections were informative such as "Making Moves," but as far as mixing up your play goes, there wasn't much useful information.
The assertion that you should generally play in a more straight-forward manner against top/unpredictable players is another contentious one. While it is true that it is wise to avoid playing against skilled players when there are weaker players at the table for you to target, it is of the utmost importance that you mix-up your play if you are forced to play them (e.g. heads-up or at a table comprised completely of top players). More clarity should have been provided regarding this topic.
This whole chapter could have been comprised of one tip from Mike Caro and been far more useful;
"Against very weak opponents, it's usually not necessary to randomize your decisions. You don't need to be very deceptive, because a straightforward strategy will usually earn the most money. But against more experienced players it's a good idea to mix it up, as long as you don't sacrifice too much in the process.
But how do you randomize? There are many ways to do this, some simple, some elaborate. One very easy way is to decide to choose the standard play for close decisions (such as mostly calling, but sometimes raising) three-quarters (75 percent) of the time and the exception one-quarter (25 percent) of the time. For situations in which a three-to-one ratio of standard play to exception seems reasonable to you, you can simply consider the suit of the FIRST card dealt to you. If it's a spade, choose the exception and raise (for the sake of this example). If it's any other suit, go with the standard play and just call.
As an extra precaution against the unlikely event that an opponent will catch on, you might change the exception suit from time to time. You could change it each session or even each hour."
That may have taken up a lot of space here but it has helped your game more than the entire 70-page David Williams section!

Last, but certainly not least, is Mr Negreanu's section. Finally! A section that met my expectations. A well structured and interesting look at the "small-ball" strategy and the section responsible for earning the 3 stars I have given this book! I don't have to go into too much detail ("thank God!!!," I hear you say!) as this section really does what it says on the tin.

A final mention for the author of the preface, Avery Cardoza. It was an extremely bias and infuriating preface that spends a few pages talking up the books under the cardoza publishing banner. Not good. His deprecating comment regarding mathematics concerned me. I worry that his opinion of mathematics cost us some insightful and more in-depth discussion of the differing mathematical expectations of certain plays throughout the book, especially in Negreanu's section.

My apologies for the length of the review, but I felt obligated to provide an in-depth review given the current lack of one. Anyways, all in all a fairly standard book saved by the final section written by Negreanu. More advanced players should take a look at "No-Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice," by David Sklansky and Ed Miller instead.

Better late than never, eek
The premier chapter is D-Neg's. I think he wanted to write 'poker bible', I think it's the only reason to get the book. The other chapters, are both superficial and superfluous - I reckon D-Neg must be disappointed by the other contributors efforts. Perhaps them being 'poker buddies' meant he was unwilling to be too critical and / or push to make similar effort. Given the delays in the books publication, they could be because he was keen to keep tweaking his chapter; or, he had to keep badgering the other contributors to pull their fingers out. Some of them I think must have only had beer mats to hand when they put together their chapters.

I don't think small ball is going rip the tables up on mid to low stakes cash tables, especially online where the call button is too easy to hit. Possibly, on a very tight tables it might yield some good implied odds situations; equally high stakes too. Of course, you'd have to be open raise with a wide range of holdings.

I see small ball primarily as a deep stack tournament strategy, with its chip accumulation strategy through a lot of positional blind stealing, implied odds benefits, and post-flop out maneuvering.

A good book
The book is really great if you like deep stack tournaments, the part by Daniel Negreanu is really eye-opening.

The other parts are not bad, but nothing particular.