Review of The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold'em Poker

Title:

The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold'em Poker

Author:

Sam Braids

Publisher:

Intelligent Games Publishing

Date:

2003

ISBN:

0-9677551-2-3

Pages:

183

Price:

$14.95

Reviewed by Nick Christenson, npc@jetcafe.org

April 21, 2010

It was early in the year 2003. Brittney Spears had never been married, Facebook didn't exist, Hurricane Katrina was two years off, the first episode of the World Poker Tour had not yet aired, and nobody knew who Chris Moneymaker was. It was in this time frame that Sam Braids published his book, The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold'em Poker. I have only just now gotten around to reading it.

The first thing I want to note is that this is a self-published book. Many of these end up being poorly laid out, badly written, and inexpertly edited. This is decidedly not the case with Braids' book. The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold'em Poker has none of these faults. Anyone considering self-publishing a poker book should pick this one up and use it as a guide for how to do it right. Kudos to the author on expending the effort to do a professional job producing his own book.

In th book there is a chapter titled "Texas Hold'em in a Cardroom" aimed to assist those who haven't spent time in one. Braids provides an explanation of hand rankings. So, this is a book aimed at very inexperienced players. Strangely, there is very little advice that covers situations players will actually face in these games. In fact, I count two chapters consisting of 27 pages that cover actual poker game situations and decisions.

The breadth of the topics Braids covers is pretty wide. In addition to rules, the way card rooms operate, and poker tactics, he also covers game and player types, poker math, online play, and psychology. Further, a full third of the book lists and reviews other books, web sites, and live and online card rooms. For a book that weighs in under 200 pages, that's a lot of ground to cover. Consequently, little in the book is given significant depth.

The poker landscape has changed a great deal since the book was published. This was before the tsunami that was the poker boom hit, much less before those waters receded. The information Braids provides about online poker is pre-boom, pre-UIGEA, and thus sadly out of date. Even the card room list is obsolete. After some contraction, the number of poker rooms in Las Vegas alone is about double what it was when the book hit the presses. Of course, it would be inappropriate to fault the author for this. The information provided was pretty good at the time it was written.

The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold'em has some features that I like. There are some interesting tables that I haven't seen in other places, such as a listing of the odds that an overpair to a given pair has been dealt given differing numbers of opponents. Even though much of the psychological stuff has been said more thoroughly in other books, the author does a good job of succinctly making several important points that winning players will need to learn.

Besides the lack of depth, I have a few other problems with the book. As with many poker authors, Braids doesn't seem to understand the provisions of game theory, and he demonstrates this in his "Strategies" chapter. I can forgive many authors for making these mistakes, but I would have hoped that someone with a PhD in physics would know better. He discusses computer poker in some detail, inasmuch as he discusses anything in detail, but he clearly wasn't aware of the research that was going on in the years prior to writing his book, and so he gets a lot of stuff very wrong. There are many other places where he says things that I don't agree with. Most of these are fairly minor, but they add up. In a more substantial book, these issues wouldn't bother me as much.

There are some good things in this book. On balance I believe it would help beginning players who are looking for a source to help guide their introduction to casino poker. Moreover, there is a little bit here that might be of mild interest to an intermediate player. The problem is that I believe there are better introductory books, and there is too little here that will benefit players with any more than an iota of poker experience. If this book falls into a player's hand, should the drop it and run screaming? Absolutely not. However, I really don't see enough here to recommend that someone both spend the money and take the time to read it.

Capsule:

The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold'em Poker is a book aimed at beginning poker players. It came to market just before the poker boom brought the game to a higher level of national attention. The author provides some interesting ways of looking at the game, but there are too few of these to make the book really worthwhile for knowledgeable poker players. Beginners are likely to learn something from it, but I think there are much better books out there for players who are just starting out. It's not bad, and I don't think people need to go so far as to avoid it, but at the same time it doesn't do enough well for me to really recommend it.