Review of Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 2

Title:

Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 2: The Endgame

Author:

Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie

Publisher:

Two Plus Two Publishing

Date:

2005

ISBN:

1-880685-35-3

Pages:

450

Price:

$29.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@lvrevealed.com

August 11, 2005

Dan Harrington has repeatedly demonstrated that he deserves to be counted among the elite no-limit hold'em tournament poker players. Moreover, he has also demonstrated that he can communicate winning poker concepts in Volume 1 of this book series. While Volume 1 discussed play during the early and middle stages of tournaments, Volume 2 focuses on play near a tournament's end. Solid poker is almost always the right way to play hands early on, but once a player approaches the money the most profitable tournament strategy can deviate significantly from optimum poker play. This book considers many of these sorts of situations.

The first section of this book is really a continuation of the topics found in Volume 1, an extended exegesis on the topics of bluffing and slow-playing. Just about every conceivable bluffing situation is covered here although, perhaps strangely, less consideration is given to making large semi-bluffs with high-quality draws than I might have expected. There's a lot of good stuff here, and anyone who plays the bigger buy-in tournaments or cash games will eventually be exposed to all of these moves.

Harrington begins his endgame analysis with an explanation and examination of what he calls "inflection point theory". Basically, his thesis is that as players' stack sizes change relative to the blinds and antes different strategic considerations apply. This is well-known and has previously been addressed in the poker literature, but never with this level of depth. Much of this is understood, at least instinctively, by many, if not most, tournament veterans, but Harrington's analysis is extremely detailed and meticulously thought out. This may not be as revolutionary an idea as it is presented here, but it is important and well worth understanding.

Harrington goes on to cover short-handed and heads-up no-limit hold'em. As we have come to expect, Harrington is exceptionally thorough in his coverage of this topic. It's my opinion that this information is the best in this book, and maybe the best in this series. His analysis of these situations is carefully constructed and exceptionally well-considered. I especially liked his play-by-play commentary of the heads-up confrontation between John D'Agostino and Phil Ivey at the conclusion of the Turing Stone tournament in 2004. I suspect that there are few tournament players who won't benefit from what Harrington has to offer here.

Perhaps it's my personal preference for cash games over tournaments, but if I had to choose, I'd rate Volume 1 slightly higher than Volume 2. This takes nothing away from Volume 2, however, as it is an exceptional book. Anyone who is playing regularly in no-limit hold'em tournaments who hasn't read what Harrington has to say on the topic is missing out, plain and simple. I highly recommend this book as part of an exceptional two volume set.

Capsule:

Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 2 is a worthy follow-on to Harrington and Robertie's exceptional first volume. While the previous book focused on play in early rounds of the tournament, and thus was extremely valuable to cash game players as well as for tournaments, Volume 2 is exclusively a book for tournament players. If I had to express a preference, I would have to say that I found Volume 1 to marginally better than Volume 2, but it's a close call. The bottom line is that they are both exceptional books, and I recommend them highly.