From Publishers Weekly

Created for the millions of World Poker Tour (WPT) fans itching to get in on the action, this book offers no-nonsense tips for playing like a pro. Sexton, a former poker champion and spokesman for the WPT TV Show, outlines the rules and winning strategies of No Limit Texas Hold’em, a game that guarantees thrills by allowing players to bet all of their chips at one time. Responding to the rise in popularity of poker in the past few years, from TV shows to online gambling, the book contends that anyone can become a master, and it details all the tricks of the trade, from learning how to read other players to knowing how much to raise the pot. Although the tips are sometimes too abstract to be helpful-like the section on following your instincts, which vaguely insists, “you must have enough heart to take risks based on your feel for the situation”-there is enough concrete advice to truly improve one’s game. One especially insightful chapter, dedicate (more…)

From Publishers Weekly

Seizing on poker’s explosion in popular culture, Gordon (cohost of Bravo’s Celebrity Poker Showdown and two-time World Poker Tour champion) and Grotenstein offer an instructive overview of the game, lifestyle and culture that reaches beyond dry technicalities. A rigorous defense of poker as a game of skill—not chicanery—the book frames it as an all-American exercise in individual shrewdness. In jaunty prose broken up with diagrams of sample hands, the authors explain terminology, strategy and etiquette, weaving in quotes from poker movies and books, pearls of poker history and tales of colorful poker characters (like Phil Laak, whose habit of wearing hooded sweatshirts and dark glasses in order to conceal his features from scrutiny has earned him the nickname “Unabomber”). Statistics and probability figure prominently, and though the authors’ explanations are never overly technical, the sheer detail of their analysis renders this (more…)