Review of Holden on Hold'em

Title:

Holden on Hold'em: How to Play and Win at the Biggest Deal in Town

Author:

Anthony Holden

Publisher:

Little, Brown Book Group

Date:

2010

ISBN:

978-0-349-12345-5

Pages:

306

Price:

$15.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@jetcafe.org

May 17, 2011

Tony Holden is best known in poker circles for writing the classic, Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player, as well as its follow-up, Bigger Deal. He is a well-known celebrity in the UK poker scene. In the almost necessarily titled Holden on Hold'em, he shifts to writing poker strategy, aimed at the beginning player.

As an attempt to capitalize on Holden's celebrity in the UK, Holden on Hold'em was written with that market in mind. There are many references to players better known on that side of the Atlantic than in the United States, mentions of British poker rooms, especially the Vic, a general emphasis on European events, such as the European Poker Tour, and the expected anglicization of certain words and phrases. None of these interfere with someone from the United States understanding of the book. Strangely, though, the cash game chip denominations in the strategy section are represented in dollars, which I found surprising.

Holden on Hold'em is divided into two sections. The first deals with hold 'em strategy, mostly of the no-limit variety, although there is a chapter that briefly discusses the limit and pot-limit varieties of the game. The second consists of a series of accounts and analyses of poker tournaments.

The strategy segment of the book covers just over 150 pages, so it's not exhaustive. The intent is to provide framework of good advice as a starting point for beginning players. While a strategy book doesn't really give Holden enough freedom to really let his writing ability shine through, I do appreciate his precision. In most introductory books, I am continually thinking, "yeah, but," to the author's overgeneralizations. Honestly, a few of those situations crop up in Holden on Hold'em, but there are far fewer than I find in most introductory poker books.

Holden is rather thorough about his pre-flop recommendations. He provides quite a few reasonable suggestions about play on later streets. He doesn't hesitate to introduce such topics as implied odds and reverse implied odds, subjects to which I believe a true beginner should be more gently subjected. As a learning experience, I believe Holden's target audience would have been better served by axing stories from the last 40% of the book, and expanding the strategic portion. I'd prefer more examples, a more gentle introduction to complex topics, a more thorough treatment of multi-player hands, and more in-depth coverage of play on later streets. Nonetheless, a beginner could do much worse than learning to play from Holden on Hold'em.

The last section of the book consists of play-by-play descriptions of five major European poker events and the 2007 World Series of Poker. Holden gets to stretch out a little in terms of his writing, but as anyone who has tried it can tell you, it's awfully difficult to turn these sorts of descriptions into literature. Moreover, on occasion when Holden seems to make the attempt, details such as stack sizes or player holdings get dropped. In some cases the omissions are key to understanding the context of the hand.

Truthfully, these descriptions seem to largely come from television broadcasts of the events. I can't say this for certain, though, since I haven't viewed the European events recounted here. Some of the hands depict events such as players going all-in on the flop, followed by a suckout on the turn followed by a re-suckout on the river. These make for compelling television, but there's little poker education to be gleaned from them. The commentary on the hands is decent, overall, although on occasion I find it too results-oriented for my tastes.

Overall, I think the book is a decent introduction to casino hold 'em. Given the provenance of the author, I expect it would be quite appealing to those in the UK who haven't yet found a worthwhile intro to the game. Compared just on its merits to other books that fill the same niche, I find it above average, but not among the best introductory books. Thus, I find it difficult to come up with a compelling reason to recommend it to folks on this side of the pond. So, while it's a good introduction to the game of Texas hold 'em, there are others that I'd recommend more highly.

Capsule:

Holden on Hold'em is an introduction to the game of no-limit Texas hold 'em that was written with an audience for the United Kingdom in mind. It contains strategy advice that's good, but at the same time I found it to be more advanced and less complete than I'd like in a beginner's book. It also includes descriptions of the play at several major tournaments, most of which take place in Europe. I found the tournament descriptions to be on par with what one gets from the poker news media, and while I found the poker advice to be decent, I think there are superior choices for beginning players. In short, I found it to be a good but not great book in a crowded market.