Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play

I’ve contacted customer service and no one responded. This is horrible service. The first 36 pages of the book are missing. I bought three books so I didn’t notice it right away until I decided to read it.

Seems like everyone loves this book! I bought it because I had just started playing a weekly tournament where I live and wanted to improve my game. Why do something if you can't be good at it, and why learn from your own mistakes (at cost) when you can learn from someone else's (free)? This book paid for itself immediately. Some of the fundamental concepts in this book seem extremely obvious once they've been pointed out to you, but cost real money until you grasp them. Others I already been using somewhat intuitively, but by examining them I apply them better. His tight pre-flop play, for example, was a sea change. Throwing away cards that I don't even want to get hit on the river instead of limping in to see the flop not only save me the blind when I miss the flop, but also the subsequent bets trying to defend the second-best hand when my 9 pairs up. Basic stuff, but how many hands/rounds/sessions of losing would it have taken me to figure out that mediocre hands cost more than trash hands? At $20, Harrington's book was the cheaper choice. How much money would it have cost me to discover the connection between an opponents stack size relative to the blinds and his playable hands? A lot more than $20, that's for sure! Furthermore, the book deals very well with the concept of pot odds -- something I as a beginner had a hard time grasping and calculating under pressure, but which is helping transform my game from purely intuitive towards odds-based -- a good thing when one's lack of experience makes one's intuition suspect. Obviously, there are tricks and stratagems in the book for the advanced player (which I'm studying furiously as well), but it's the solid presentation of the fundamentals that make this book and it's follow-up volume. The problems at the end of the chapters are also extremely valuable, if for no other reason than because they keep you from just skimming through the chapters and recognizing concepts instead of actually learning them. Many times I found myself challenged by the problems and having to go back and review -- again, a lesson that would have cost me cash only cost me time. I've already transformed my game and am a noticeably stronger player than before. While it's been hard to make the style adjustment, the returns are making up for it: I'm no shark yet, but I'm making money in the cash games as well as the tournaments, and against people who have been playing much, much longer than I. If you play hold-em for any kind of money at all, invest a few dollars and by this and the second book in the series.

I bought this book the other day and was rather skeptical about how good it would be, but, now that I finished it, I can honestly say that Harrington on Hold `em is the best book on poker that I have ever read. Am I over-exaggerating? No. The secret of this manual is that, while he expresses many of the same thoughts and ideas as other poker players/writers, he is far superior to them in the teaching of technique and strategy. As a teacher, Harrington is a master. Every page is crystal clear and comprehensible which is considerably more than I can say about the works of his publisher, David Sklansky. The lingo was in keeping with our common poker tongue, and I never had difficulty imaging the situations he described; whereas, with Super System I, while I totally recommend it, there were times when I could not apply Doyle's counsel to my own game due to a lack of skill. Such a situation never arose with Harrington on Hold `em. Many of my faulty and defeatist habits at the table were identified, and, more importantly, the manual helped me understand just how much careful attention needs to be paid to the betting patterns of my opponents. The strongest segments in the book are "The Problems" sections. They are found at the end of each chapter or part. Harrington uses them to "show" us information after he has already taught the concepts. These scenarios grab us by the wallet and place us atop the championship felt. The funniest, and most unique, thing about his examples is that Harrington observes the hands from a vantage point high above the players. He tells us what should be done and then often has to shake his head when the player analyzed does the complete opposite. Regardless of the quality of the amateurs, Harrington follows along and makes the best of their bad situations while being careful to point out how much trouble would have been avoided had the right play been initiated in the first place. Early on, "Action" Dan makes clear that he will be using examples from online play (and then does so extensively) which is extremely helpful for the majority of us who do not reside near one of the gambling Meccas. Most of the scenarios come from the commonly-played online single table satellites. Harrington, rather surprisingly, knows all about the pitfalls and characteristics of internet poker, and, time after time, illustrates how a particular play succeeds in a brick and motor card room but not on the web-and vice versa. Dan Harrington was the perfect person to write a book like this. Other than Texas Dolly, he has the most gravitas out of any of the poker luminaries. He won two bracelets in 1995, and finished at the final table two years running (2003 and 2004). Practically nobody else has the combination of experience and contemporary success as he, and his intelligence stands out like a flush in this initial volume.

Every time I read a 'poker book', my play seems to suffer until I can figure out how to incporate the new thoughts I have with my style of play. Not true with this book - in some instances my style of play felt 'validated', and in others, I learned where my style of thinking was differing from a 'professional'. This book has a different 'style' from other books - it doesn't start with lame advice like 'hand rankings'... it runs down the difference between amateur and professional thinking - things like position, bets a multiples of the blinds, etc. it then talks you through scenario after scenario from real poker situations, asks you what you would do, then explains how he would have thought about it. These scenarios are grouped into sections with 3-5 hands designed to 'teach a lesson'. This is truly a magnificent book - the first of its kind that I have found that teaches the person who already knows how to 'play', really how to PLAY.

No limit hold'em, obviously, is a complex game. So complex that there has never been a good comprehensive treatment in a book form; I had thought that this was because it involves more "table feel", experience and intuition that can't be easily taught or expressed in a useful format. Harrington and Robertie have done just that. Harrington is the 1995 world champion, and the only player to make the final table in both 2003 and 2004, overcoming the two biggest fields in World Series history (839 and 2,576 players, respectively). Robertie is a top backgammon player and author of several excellent books on that game. Among the top players, there are drastically different styles of play, from conservative to super-aggressive. One problem I expected was that given Harrington's solid, fairly conservative style, he wouldn't be able to give much useful information on playing at the other end of the end of the spectrum, styles such as those employed by Daniel Negreanu and Gus Hansen. I was wrong. The book does a fine job addressing the relative merits of various styles, playing against each type of opponent, and even choosing one for yourself. This makes sense; no matter his own style, to be successful he has to have spent a lot of time thinking about, observing, and combatting all different types of players. Further, a playing style isn't cast in stone; even the most conservative players have to switch gears and become much more aggressive at times, and vice versa. A few more notes on this idea: first, Harrington's own play as described isn't as conservative and cautious as many think. Second, a fairly conservative approach is demonstrably the more sound one for the student, and anyone without many years of experience. Hyper-aggressive play would be much harder to teach well, and also much harder to pull off successfully. The players who thrive playing these aggressive, gambling styles have exceptional talent as well as lots of experience and a great feel for the game and their opponents, and are faced with difficult decisions under lots of pressure much more often. For those who insist on trying, it probably still makes more sense to learn a fundamentally sounder style first and then proceed from there. The book is laid out well for learning. Each chapter starts with a discussion of the topic, touching on the theory. There are several example situations with the authors' answers and detailed reasoning, as well as the merits of alternative plays. Following each chapter there are problems, mostly from real hands. It provides a diagram of the table, the chip counts for each player, your knowledge of the opponents, etc... all the relevant information. The problems usually provide all this information even when some of it is irrelevant to the problem, which is a strength. A big part of the decision-making process in poker (as well as lots of other things) is recognizing and eliminating extraneous details to make analysis more managable.

This book wildly surpassed my expectations. I have read several poker books and I am a big fan of Sklansky and Malmuth's books in particular. Having read so many books on poker already it is rare that I find one that contains much new information. Mr. Harrington's book was a delightful exception. It seems as though he truly held nothing back and revealed the full spectrum of his tournament strategy for the early rounds (at least as much as possible for such a situation-dependent game). I highly recommend this book for beginners and experienced players alike (although I recommend the beginners "fill out" their poker knowledge with other books as well). I definitely recommend it over _Pot Limit and No-Limit Poker_ by Ciaffone and Reuben, and _Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold 'em_ by Cloutier and McEvoy. An aspiring expert should read all of these books eventually, but Mr. Harrington's is definitely the superior treatise on the subject of No-Limit Hold 'em--buy his book first. I hope this review was helpful to you.