World Famous Comics: Poker Night: Winning at Home, at the Casino, and Beyond
Poker Night: Winning at Home, at the Casino, and Beyond
By: John Vorhaus Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: St. Martin's Griffin Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 288 Publication Date: September 10, 2004 Release Date: August 12, 2004
"You can do things in a poker game that you'd never get away with in polite society."
Thus proclaims poker strategist, columnist, and author John Vorhaus in this smart, funny, and practical guide to mastering the fine art of the home poker game (in other words, entertaining your friends while deftly picking them clean).
Covering everything from the absolute basics to advanced points of strategy and smarts, Poker Night is an essential and entertaining manual for everyone who wants to excel at the most popular poker game in the world-- the home game, where the pots aren't cut and the winning gets personal. Topics include:
*Setting up and running rules that create a great game
*Understanding your opponents, including their "tells"
*Avoiding common and not-so-common mistakes
*Understanding faive-card draw, seven-card stud, split-pot games, Texas hold'em, as well as homegrown variations and entertaining twists
*Advice for no-limit hold'em tournaments, the latest trend in home play
*A glossary of poker terms to have you slingin' the slang like a champ
Filled with hilarious observations and hard-nosed strategies for beating the rules, this smart, sassy, and readable handbook holds the key to your poker success-- whether you're just learning or you already know the difference between a fishhook and a dead man's hand. Share it with friends at your own risk.
Pretty good for the home game player The book is geared for the home poker game and the goal is to teach you how to cream all your beer-drinking buddies and take their money. The first part of the book is a brief rundown of hand rankings, how to host a game, house rules and then a brief synopsis of the four major games - Draw, Hold 'Em, Omaha and Stud. Then the book goes into strategies for these games with a short section at the end on playing in casinos and going pro.
Overall I thought the book was ok and worth the money. I picked up a good dozen or so tips on strategies for playing. I coupled these tips with what I learned in Peter Arnold's "How To Play Poker" and I guess the tips are working because when I play online I win a lot (with play money of course). I liked the section on odds - no complex mathematical equations on calculating odds or memorizing tables of probabilities. Just a simple explanation on how to calculate card odds and then pot odds.
I would recommend the book to anyone who buys it. For $14 you can't go wrong. Plus it's funny too - I caught myself laughing out loud a few times at the humor Vorhaus put in the text.
Concise and succint hold 'em strategies. I've hosted and participated in home games for 15 years, including a hold 'em game the last two. Our games are a lot of fun with a lot of bravado. Now we're sending a player from our table to a WSOP satellite and, since, I want to be the one, I'm looking for a quick study to improve my hold 'em game.
This book meets that need well. I've thought about giving it to my poker buddies as a gift . . . but that would be pretty stupid, wouldn't it? I'm on the cusp of knowledge, and do plan to read Brunson, Slansky, Cloutier, Caro, etc. For a quick study, though, those books are a little intimidating. Vorhaus does a good job of explaining odds, pot odds and strategic considerations in hold 'em, including playable hands, how to vary your play in various stages of a tournament and how to play against various types of opponents. It's pretty distilled, which is what makes it a good starting point. There are a handfull of succintly stated useful tips that will improve my play. Now if only I can remember them . . The rest of the book is OK. I suppose if you're just starting out with a home game, there's useful information. The author has some pretty strong biases against crazy games and wild cards; though those are staples of many home games, he chooses to ignore them. And he sums up play in various games nicely with a major piece of advice: FOLD. That's his advice for 7/27 if you don't happen to start quickly with the nut 7. Of course, if you start "playing to win" at some of these home games, it might mark you as an unfun person. He talks about that, too. If you're looking for a compendium of poker variations, especially the whacky varieties, there are other books that offer much more. This book serves as a quick start guide for the casual player just ready to step it up to a more serious level.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
