Many people, when they've reached a certain age in life aspire to write the next great American novel. Somehow it validates what they've done with the first fifty years of their lives. Then they end up either giving it up or writing pretentious, over-baked b.s. The same is often true of poker players who write books. They want to create some sort of indicator that they've done something in life, rather than just hauled in stack after stack, hand after hand. The problem is, there's only so many great poker books out there to be written. And in the attempt of writing a great poker book, we often get overly dense, overly complicated, and even overly wrong books, by name pros who are trying to distinguish themselves.
Well that's not this book. Anybody who has ever seen Esfandiari knows that he's not one to overreach. He is comfortable laying out what he knows about winning at the World Poker Tour, which is enough to make this book a useful read. But he doesn't try to create some new philosophy of playing, or try to throw a bunch of gimmicky stuff at the book just to wow some people. He's clearly not a math guy at the level of Sklansky, and he's no Negreanu, but who is?
No, this book succeeds only because it does not fail, which, if you think about it, is kind of like how it feels to end up in the money. Not a big winner, but for the price, it's not a bad bet. And if you like Esfandiari, this isn't a bad one for the collection. Like someone else said, though, don't base your play on it.