REVIEW
The
popularity of tournament poker continues
to grow. As more and more people enter
poker tournaments, they get tougher to
beat. A great deal has been written about
poker tournaments, but surprisingly few
books have been dedicated to the topic,
and I'm still waiting to read the definitive
poker tournament book. Will this be the
one?
McEvoy
begins his book with some general poker
tournament strategies. The author is an
experienced tournament player who won
the main event at the World Series of
Poker in 1983 and plays as a professional
on the tournament circuit. Most of these
strategies will be pretty obvious to a
poker player with even a fair bit of experience,
but they're important, and anyone who
hasn't considered them would be well advised
to heed what McEvoy has to say. No matter
how skilled the player, they have to get
more than a little lucky in order to win
a poker tournament. One of the statements
the author makes that I really like is
that in a tournament a player should strive
to play well enough to give themselves
a chance to get lucky. This is about the
best expression of tournament strategy
in a single sentence that I've heard.
The
next 11 chapters covering almost 2/3 of
the book are about strategies for various
games played in poker tournaments. For
example, the reader is advised not to
play smaller suited connectors in the
early stages of a Limit Hold'em tournament
unless the pot is multi-way. As another
example, in late stages of a tournament
McEvoy suggests playing very good draws
on 5th street in Razz aggressively against
a mediocre but possibly made hand, like
a 9 or rough 8. Both of these suggestions
are good, but both are also very well
known to any poker player familiar with
each game.
Advice
on playing each game is divided into considerations
for early, middle, late, and final table
portions of the tournament. The problem
is that his advice changes only a little
during different times in the tournament,
and only a little from game to game. Thus,
I find that the book tends to become repetitive.
Moreover, the information that we do receive
is really pretty bland stuff. We're told
that in the early parts of a Limit Omaha
High tournament, there is very little
blind stealing. If this is a revelation
to the reader, then by all means buy and
read this book. This won't be news to
anyone who has played a Limit Omaha High
tournament. The information provided on
each game is usually reasonable as far
as it goes, but it's necessarily short,
and better information on playing each
of these games can be found in other books.
Of course, if a person doesn't have these
books, then the strategies McEvoy presents
will usually be better than going into
the game completely cold.
The
last chapters of the book include suggestions
on how to approach smaller buy-in tournaments,
satellite strategies, and information
on what it's like to be a professional
poker tournament player. Like the rest
of the book, there's some interesting
information here, but there will be few
revelations to someone who has played
a few tournaments and thought about the
game.
If
a player is completely new to tournament
poker or hasn't thought much about what
they should be doing during various stages
of the event, then much of this book will
be useful to the reader. However, anyone
who is well read on poker in general or
has spent any time thinking through tournament
strategy on their own won't find any big
revelations in this book. I believe it
is worthwhile for beginners only.
Capsule:
Tournament
professional Tom McEvoy's book Tournament
Poker provides some generally good fundamentals
on how to approach poker tournaments that
should be of benefit to an introductory
level tournament player. However, most
of the information in this book will already
be familiar to most tournament veterans
or widely read poker players. I recommend
this book to beginners only.
Nick
Christenson
Gambling
Book Reviews
|
