Tournament Poker: 101 Winning Moves [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Normally when I review a poker book (and I've reviewed perhaps a dozen, including Mitchell Cogert's previous one on Razz) I like to take issue with a recommended play or two. The truth is there IS more than one way to skin a cat (a catfish, that is), and opinions can differ. Furthermore it's fun to offer a different strategy. Here, however, I'm going to skip the quibbling and just say straight out that Cogert knows what he's talking about and his advice really is "expert."

What I especially like about this book is how Cogert combines personal experience (he's a very good player who has, among other things, won the Northern California Championship for no-limit hold'em in 2002) with knowledge from books and from watching some of the top pros. His basic point is that to get beyond the bubble in no-limit tournaments you have to be willing to take risks. Nobody ever won a big no limit tournament who didn't gamble, and some of the most spectacular wins (Chris Moneymaker in 2003 and Jamie Gold in 2006) came about after some really wild risk taking! The plain fact is that in any tournament luck is a huge factor. You can increase your luck (or decrease it!) by taking chances. What is taking a chance? It means not playing "scared poker." Yes, it will happen that 65 percent of the time an overcard to your pocket jacks will fall on the flop (as Cogert explains in the appendix on "Most frequently asked poker questions"). And yes, pocket rockets tend in no-limit to win a lot of small pots, but when they get cracked, they drain your chips seriously--although people tend to forget that some of the biggest pots are won when pocket aces improve, or when somebody decides to make a stand with a painted pair.

Regardless of the danger, to have any hope of winning a tournament you must play aggressively and, well, bravely. In poker the aggressive player has the edge--that is, up to a very fine point where one can be too aggressive. Most players, as Cogert points out, tend to revert to survival mode sometime during a tournament. This can be a huge mistake. Follow Cogert's dictum: "Risk is good" and don't be caught leaning back in your seat until the tournament is over.

Another thing I like about "Tournament Poker: 101" are the tips themselves. They have the power even if never used of opening the player's mind to the possibilities and to what the other guy may be up to. And of course you're unlikely to ever use all 101 of them, and in fact, as some of the plays become routine, you'll have to abandon them, and come up with counter plays. But that is the beauty of poker. You need to change your strategy for the situation, to counter the moves of your opponents. Switch gears. Be creative, but avoid Mike Caro's Fancy Play Syndrome, Cogert advises.
In a way this book is a kind of original digest of the three volume set written by Dan Harrington, which is considered the "bible" of tournament play. Cogert's book doesn't have the seating diagrams with pot size and bets that Harrington's book has--which I think are okay but unnecessary--but it does have something else. Instead of precise analysis (although there is plenty of that), Cogert gives the reader the view from reality with the understanding that you and I are not Jesus Ferguson level mathematicians or Dan Harrington level analysts. Cogert conveys in his recounting of hands played, or in his advice on how to play a hand or how to make a "play," the actual sense of the experience, and lets you know how it feels to get there. Or not.

Cogert emphasizes the rough and tumble of tournament play, the psychology of not only your opponents, but the psychology of the tournament milieu itself and how it can affect you, as for example a run of dead cards leading to a migraine. He provides an appendix on "planning" which he calls "boring but necessary," both before the tournament and during each hand, from before the cards are in the air through the flop, turn and river.

Finally, "Tournament Poker: 101" is just simply a lot of fun to read.

It's not all original, very little of it is groundbreaking, and most of it has been written before. What is amazing is that in a book less than an inch thick, you get the best of books you would have to spend perhaps thousands of dollars on to get the same great information.

Some of the 101 tips you may never use, but just one or two of them may end up making you 100 or more times the price of the book. Here's a problem for you: you have 4000 chips and are on the button. The blinds are 100/200 and a player in early position raises to 600. Everyone folds to you and you look down at 88. What do you do? This is the type of hand that presents a problem for many novices, and causes angry debates among experienced players. After reading this book, there's no doubt how to play this hand, and when I read the tip regarding this situation and the explanation, it was like the brightest light bulb ever went off in my head.

This book has the potential to set off 101 of those light bulbs. Consider me impressed, and grateful to have this tool that so many other players don't.

It's not a bad poker book, really. But I don't see how it would help the kinds of players that are looking for new moves. Those kinds of players tend to be intermediate level players who think about the game, and they will find little of value here. It really is just a bunch of tips. No theory. There are a few very unusual plays. I'm sure they would confuse your opponents, but I don't think they are winning plays. Some just look like bad poker to me. And he provides little info on how he might decide when to use these some of the more unusual lines. Maybe he had to fill out the 101 count, which is why he tossed in the strange plays.

example: 33 in the bb. Blinds 500/1000, Button with 2000 moves allin.
Small blind calls, leaving him 16000. You have 22K. Book says isolate
and move allin. It just says calling is "bad".

It's not a terrible play. If you fold the small blind, then you are flipping. But you do risk your tourney - the small blind doesn't have to fold. He's pretty short, and did call, maybe he just gives up and plays his 55 here.

Calling has some real merits here. First of you can control the pot size. We have a dry side pot, so it is quite likely the sb is not going to run a pointless bluff. You have position, so you might get a little value if you like the board. But most of all, you are getting 7:1 expressed odds on your call, pretty awesome setmine price, and 16:1 implied odds if you get lucky. That's just the flop odds, but since this gets checked down a lot, you very likely get to see more cards. I'm dreaming of an A3x board and a villan that likes to check top pair.

I think his play is a little spewy, and seems to miss an awful lot of potential value, but he could be right. But he didn't even discuss the odds for a call, or anything, just calling is bad. I would need a good deal more info on how he analyzed the two alternatives to be convinced he was right.

I am not one to write reviews, and I have never written a negative review, but I bought this book specifically BECAUSE it had 14 reviews all giving 5 stars and glowing praise. I am pretty sure now, after reading the book, that these review are from the author's buddies. As a poker player, I should have been suspicious. But I was bluffed, I admit it. Nice hand, sir.

Read Harrington, and then read Gus's book, and you can skip this one.