Book Review: Great Poker Hands By Nick Berry

Author: Simon Dexter

It was Country & Western singer Kenny Rogers who once sang the famous lines: “You got to know when to hold them / Know when to fold them” and as every successful poker player appreciates, this is fantastic advice whatever level of the game you play at. But how do you know what to fold?

According to Nick Berry, a Seattle-based rocket scientist no less, most of us end up playing far too many marginal hands, a situation once succinctly summed up by Doyle Brunson, who said, “What separates winners from losers is not the cards the play, but the ones they throw away.”

It would appear there is now a way for amateurs to immediately identify the cards they should be playing and those that should be mucked.
The “strategy cards” produced by Berry via ‘GreatPokerHands.com’ are among the simplest, yet effective, teaching aids the game has ever seen as they show the relative value of every one of the 169 possible two card starting hand combinations.
The small, colour-coded cards show the frequency with which every two hole-card combination would win if the player opted to stay in the game all the way to the river. The strongest starting hands are shown in red, good hands in yellow, moderate hands in green, dubious opening cards in blue and those absolute stinkers, which should be thrown away immediately, are coloured grey.
Of course, the odds against winning change according to the number of players at the table, so Berry’s colour-coding method covers all eventualities whether there are ten or two players.
For greenhorns in particular, understanding the relative value of the two hole cards provides players with a unique edge and can assist in building confidence. Barry maintains that if his cards prevent you from entering just one pot, they’ve effectively paid for themselves. It’s a claim with which it’s difficult to argue.

Tags: Book Review, poker book, Poker Strategy, Poker Tips

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am and is filed under News & Promotions Blog.