Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195569 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Synopsis
Legendary tournament player Scott Fischman reveals the secrets of internet poker success. This is an invaluable guide to online poker from one of the world's most successful players. Online poker is one of the hottest games around and Scott Fischman is its unofficial ambassador. Having taught himself to play the game on the internet, he has subsequently made the transition to live tournament play with unprecedented success, winning the World Series of Poker - an invitation-only event and the most coveted prize in the poker world - not once, but twice. Fischman bankrolls his tournament play with money won from online poker, from which he nets enough not only to pay for his pots in real world card play, but also to support himself without the need for a job. Over two million players go online every day to test their skills and their wallets at virtual tables with real money. Now they can hone their money-making techniques with advice from the master, on everything from internet poker room selection and most profitable game types to priceless strategies for playing well and maximising winnings.

With clear instructions and step-by-step guides to instant improvement, Fischman's advice can be put into practice immediately by players of any level.

Customer Reviews

Good book for both experienced and inexperienced players
Scott Fischman is a guy who was once a dealer who went on to win a couple of World Series of Poker bracelets including one for the HORSE event. This interested me. (Yes, I used to play basketball and remember Bob McAdoo of the Lakers who was a deadly shot at HORSE about whom it was said--by Michael Cooper--"You do, McAdoo.") But I digress.

HORSE in poker stands for Hold'em, Omaha hilo, Razz, Stud, and stud Eight or better. It's spread in some clubs, but you can almost always find some limit games at PokerStars and other places on the Internet. A round is played of hold'em and then a round of Omaha eight or better, then a round of razz, which is stud lowball, and then a round of regular stud and then stud hilo, and the cycle is repeated. You have to be a pretty good all-around player to be successful at HORSE, and anybody who can beat that game regularly earns my respect.

This book, like many others published in the wake of the TV- and Internet-turboed rise of poker, is directed at beginners or near beginners. The "Mastering Internet Poker" in the subtitle is justified however because Fischman reveals a lot about his overall approach to the game of poker, especially his psychological approach. For Fischman the most important psychology in the game is self-psychology.

There is plenty of strategy presented throughout the book and some explanations given on how to play various hands in various situations; but mainly Fischman concentrates on his overall approach to the games. In a sense this is a hybrid book: part "how-to" and part "how-I-did-it."

Fischman is not a deep strategic master of the game or a mathematical whiz. He is a "by the seat of your pants" player with a wealth of experience both online and in the brick and mortar clubs. His advice on tournament strategy, especially online Sit-N-Go's is excellent. He divides the tournament, one-table or otherwise, into three "seasons," the beginning when blinds are small relative to stacks; the middle, when the size of your stack begins to dictate decisions; and the endgame, when many or most decisions will involve all your chips and your tournament life.

In the "beginning" he likes to "look for spots where I can safely--or as close to safely as poker allows--double my stack. Otherwise, I've got no business being in the hand." (p. 71) In the middle he likes to start making small raises often with the idea of picking up the blinds from his now very careful opponents. In the endgame, Fischman becomes super-aggressive. One excellent idea of his is that near the bubble when many players start to play very carefully you can steal a lot of pots. He believes that in Sit-N-Gos you should aim to finish first, not just in the money because of the big difference between first place money (usually 50% of the prize fund) and third place (usually 20%). So he advises, don't be afraid of finishing fourth and out of the money. A first and a fourth are better than two third-place finishes.

Also interesting is Fischman's take on "multi-tabling" online. He believes that playing several tables at once not only allows the expert to win more money, it allows the expert to get into the zone and become "the Robot," as he calls himself when he is just one with the decisions, one after another in front of him on his computer screen. His idea is that because multi-tabling is so demanding on your attention it forces you to focus. You don't have time to worry about bad beats or time to over-analyze. You are a Robot, focused, decisive and unemotional. Yes, you miss subtleties and some opportunities, but you don't try to do too much and you go with your first instinct which is often right.

Fischman tends to the superstitious, which of course is NOT recommended. However he justifies it from a psychological point of view by noting that if something makes you feel confident that will help you win. So it's okay to depend a little on that lucky shirt, and yes it may very well be the case as you drive into the club and see all those license plates with the poker hands on them, "KAA 555," etc., that yes you ARE going to be lucky today!

Some of Fischman's recommendations on how to play specific hands in specific situations go against the grain of the conventional wisdom. But here again I found his ideas interesting. Sometimes he seems clearly "wrong" or maybe just doesn't make himself clear. For example on page 125 he writes about tables being broken down later in a tournament as players are eliminated. He notes that he doesn't like being moved to a new table after having made some rebuys because "I want to have the chance to win back the chips I have lost. I can't do that if the players I've been kind enough to 'loan' my chips to are suddenly scattered throughout the tournament. There's nothing worse that rebuying 10 times, having your table broken down, then finding yourself at a new table where no one has purchased a rebuy."

Unless I'm missing something, this seems plainly illogical because it doesn't matter from whom he wins chips. He still has the same number of chips and the same relative chance of winning the tournament. I think what he must mean is that while losing those chips he picked up some valuable information about those players and now can't use that information.

What is obvious from reading this very readable book is that Scott Fischman is one heck of a good poker player and that his strength is in his overall approach to the game, some of which comes shining forth from these pages. I think both experienced players and beginners will find something of value here.

Hopeless
Top player tells you that a flush beats a straight etc. It's hogwash, full of pithy e-mails from his "top pro" pals advising you to "pay attention" and "exploit other people's weaknesses". Don't bother.

The worst book on Poker I have read so far
I have read over a dozen of books on Poker and this one was a waste of money. What made me very sceptical (I still tried to read the book with an open mind) was that the author states that he has read NO books on poker and only learned it through playing and discussing poker. This lack of theoretical understanding of poker appears for exp. in a flawed strategy for tournaments (suggesting some starting hands that have negative expectation). Positive is that it was an easy reading so one does not need much time to finish it.
A much better book about how to approach the online Poker is in my opinion, John Vorhaus "Killer Poker Online 2".