A large part of what I’ll be writing in this blog involves reviewing poker materials. Poker books are a large part of said materials and as such you’ll be seeing a lot of advice on what not to read and what to read. It is the former I’ll be talking about this week.

Phil Hellmuth is almost undoubtedly the best NLHE tournament player in the world. He ranks with the likes of Chan, Brunson and Gold. OK, I was kidding about the last one. However, he does not even fall into the same league as Hemingway, Joyce and Dickens nor Sklansky and Harrington. His Play Poker like the Pros and Phil Hellmuth’s Texas Hold ‘em are, sadly, abysmal.

“If you can absorb most of the information in this book,” he writes. “Then I may see you sitting across the poker table from me soon.” Despite what he would have you think, these books will not get you good enough to play $300/$600 in Vegas. A total beginner (that is, someone who has never even picked up a deck of cards before) will get a decent understanding of the game from this book, but sadly its teaching ends there.

Limited to a super-tight style, Hellmuth takes no account of the various situations that make QQ foldable pre-flop and his philosophy in the book can be summed up as: “Play only the best hands really aggressively but if the board is too dangerous fold.” Good advice for a hold ‘em newbie, but if you can already play the game then this book is certainly not for you. Literally no sort of advanced tactics are discussed in this book.

I hope Phil’s tournament success is built on better fundamentals than he teaches in this book, or I will be forced to conclude the WSOP is rigged.

Categories: Poker Books
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