You’ve watched celebrity poker on TV; you’ve witnessed an accountant come from nowhere to win the World Series of Poker; now you’re ready to cash in on the online action yourself!
But before you do, you’ll want to invest in a copy of Beat the Odds: The Smart Player’s Guide to Online Poker for clear, no-nonsense instructions to savvy online poker playing. Learn the difference between online and real poker, how to set up an account and join a table, and where to go to find the most
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- ISBN13: 9781420824063
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
A job where the casino actually hires people to play poker! Is this the dream job of every gambler? Or, is it one of the greatest scams ever invented? After much agony, an average guy decides to take the job! Follow his journey as he delves into the mysteries of Proposition Poker Playing, a guy Paid to Play Poker. Our guy must use his own money to play poker, in assigned games. While playing, to the very best of his ability, he makes hand written-detailed records, collecting an extensive databas
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Very narrow target market– and it’s probably not you.,
Marty Cortinas, Beat the Odds: The Smart Player’s Guide to Online Poker (Peachpit Press, 2006)
This is, perhaps, a worthwhile book for the complete novice to online poker; if you don’t know where the sites are, and are still learning your way around a computer, there’s likely a lot to be gotten out of this. If you’re already registered at a poker website, however, there’s very little you’re likely to find here that will be new. (I did learn about PokerTracker from the book, though, so I can’t call it a total wash.)
If you think a more advanced book would be right for you, it probably would. Flip through this one before putting out your hard-earned cash; you may already know everything to be found in it. **
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|Not worth the time nor money,
This is just a superficial book about online poker. It is neither worth the time nor money to buy. I have been playing online poker for a little over one month and I could write a better book than this.
I was disappointed in the book.
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|The Scientific Method applied,
I read this book about a year ago and though I enjoyed the read and musing over the approach, I did not write the review I intended to. Upon scanning it again today looking for one specific item I decided to look at other reviews and realized there were none – and this book deserves to be on the bookshelves of serious poker players.
This is a great read and in my opinion any player can learn much about how to evaluate his/her own game from it. Barton Gratt claims to have made his living as a prop player – paid by the casino to play in order to fill the table so that a game would “make.” I know this practice has been used by casinos but have no directly applicable experience so I have to take the author’s word with respect to specifics.
The meat of the book, however, is not directly related to the “paid player” aspect of his experience. Instead the value springs from the approach described and advocated for evaluating ones own game.
The author used a “scientific approach” to analyzing his experience. This essentially means that he recorded his results along with a large number of variables that were expected to influence the profitability of his play. Every player knows that performance goes down when he isn’t feeling well, but few of us have ever recorded that information and quantitatively evaluated how it influences our performance. This is only one of many factors evaluated in this book.
His data collection sheet includes a large number of variables including:
* The month, day of week, and time of play
* The makeup of the table – number of players and number of “fish” and “toughs”
* His position relative to dealer, most aggressive player, and tightest player
Other factors he considers are personal factors including:
* General well being at the time of the game
* Fatigue and sleepiness
* Confidence level
* Betting skill
* Card reading ability
The results recorded are very specific to the author and will be of limited value to the reader. The concepts embodied, however, are universal and consideration of each factor – indeed collection of some personal data – should quickly reveal the major leaks in the reader’s game.
It is easy to think “I already know where the leaks are.” But there is something powerful about collecting the numbers and seeing in black and white just what the leak is costing you. And that’s the reason I think reading this book – and acting on what you learn from it – will improve your game.
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