Poker Book Review: Harrington on Hold'em Expert Startegy on No Limit Hold'em Tournaments by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie

If you can't take advice from Dan Harrington about No Limit Hold'em tournaments, then you can go ahead and ignore this book - to your own detriment. After winning a major WSOP event and The European Championships in the same year of 1995, he made the final table in 2003 and 2004, while placing in several other WSOP events. The man knows his poker.

Harrington and co-writer Bill Robertie are also champion chess and backgammon players, so if you think you've got things figured out, try getting in a conversation circle with these two geniuses.

This book describes in depth - starting requirements, playing styles, betting strategies, flop situations, pot odds, and bluffing. The self tests at the end of each chapter challenge your comprehension of what to do at the tournament table. In addition, it brings you into Harrington's thought process, and how he compares all the factors and makes a recommendation. I failed a good number of these problems the first time through, only to go back, review and truly understand why Harrington is a tournament winner.

Some of the chapters include full analysis of actual hands played at the 2003 world series final table where Dan sat with the likes of Sam Farha and Chris Moneymaker. Further credence to the man's experience and disposition.

There is a substantial amount of content on live, internet, single table, and multi table tournament situations. Internet players will find this particularly useful for the popular sit and go tournaments as well. If you are going to play in any NLHE tournaments, you should, really, read this book - twice.

by Marty Smith

MZone tournament spreadsheet - free download. Go to this link and you will find the MZone spreadsheet I made using Dan Harrington's MZone calculations. Its a handy tool for online tournaments.

Poker Book Review: Harrington on Hold'em Volume 2 The Endgame by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie

Trumping even his own first book this is the tournament book you need to complement your library. To put it even simpler, if you could only own 3 books on tournament poker, Harrington's name should be on 2 of them. have played in hundreds of online tournaments and have never known what inflection points were.

Harrington's book evolves around inflection points where stack size, player type, position, and cards all come together giving you more opportunities to outplay your opponents. Learning about Magriel's M-Zone calculation will also make you more aware of what hands your opponents are likely to play, at what stage, and what you can do about it. The examples are numerous, presented in a skill building way, taken from internet and live games alike. Harrington also goes into some of the great hands played at the last two WSOP final tables where he participated in both.

Further to this endgame volume, Harrington focuses on the final stages of a tournament. Whether it be the last 3 tables or the last 5 players, knowing what Dan teaches here will elevate your game. It forces you to think like a pro, make moves under the right circumstances, and parlay your image into prize money. While applying M-Zone calculations to confrontations at the table, a "poker science" emerges and you start to think like Dan Harrington. If you think you are good, ot even great at tournament poker, seriously stop lying to yourself - we all need this book.

Poker Book Review: Harrington on Hold'em Volume 3 by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie

This book would be better titled as "All the Stuff I Taught You in the Other Two Books, in Actual Practice using Well Known Poker Players, with Some More Stuff Thrown In, plus, How to Play After the Flop and Read Hands". It's not just a big multiple choice quiz (though they are in question format), there's a LOT of analysis going on.

He uses actual hands between other top pros (not in every case, but most) to illustrate his problems in many cases. Most of the 50 "problems" are actually entire hands (with about 10-15 pages in analysis per).

Here's a few examples:

Problem 4: Negreanu vs. Farha - Aggression Meets Aggression
Problem 9: Phil Hellmuth - Calculating the Proper Bet Size
Problem 10: Phil Ivey - Maneuvering with Nothing
Problem 17: Attacking Limpers
Problem 19: Harrington versus Hansen - Playing a Medium Pair
Problem 45: Negreanu vs. Arieh - Handling an Aggressive Opponent

I should throw in here that having a world-class pro analyzing some of these guys is a real treat. For example, we all know that Phil Ivey is aggressive and one of the best players there is, BUT... can you explain specifically what Ivey actually does in practice? Harrington helps, at least a little bit. Thanks Action Dan!

Of course, this book is based aroung Harrington's tight style, and a lot of the analysis here flies in the face of aggressive poker theory. But, Dan does have tons of credibility in the poker world, conservative or not.

What I really like about this book is that it does a great job of highlighting some common situations that you run into all the time, like calling all-ins and so on. One of the prior reviews noted there wasn't much in the way of new material, but that's just not true at all. It's not laid out the same way as in the other volumes, true: they're absorbed into the problems. And there's not as much new stuff, but it's still very much there.

AND, the new stuff is VERY situation specific. Like, if your M is exactly 4, can you go all in with AQ offsuit if a player before you bets (that is, without first-in vigorish)? When talking about inflection point play in V2, he stressed that you want to be the first one in to push all your chips in, but didn't get into it too much. There's also a lot more hand analysis, and the book really centers around post-flop play.

Structured Hand Analysis (SHAL) pops up several times again, and it's been huge in improving my game... I wouldn't skip over it, even thought it is a little dull.

But yes! This is more than I was expecting when I heard it was just going to be a collection of problems. Anyone who plays No Limit tourneys should most definately own all three volumes, in my opinion.

Jason Hughes "Gonso" (Egg Harbor Township, NJ United States) - See all my reviews .

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