This book was lying on my desk for a long time. I usually try to read all the poker books I get but with all the poker books being published at the moment it’s difficult to keep up with it. Yet another hold’em book from an author and a publisher I didn’t know wasn’t my first choice. There are just too many of these introductory books that are often of mediocre quality at best. After rummaging through the book a little bit it became clear to me that this author knows what he is talking about.

Matt Maroon is a professional poker player and this is his first book. Though the subtitle says it’s suited for “Players of All Skill Levels” it’s clear that the book is aimed first and foremost at beginners and intermediate players.

The first section contains basic poker concepts like mathematical expectation, pot odds, position, bluffing, slowplaying etc. The chapters are not too long but well written and easy to understand. The second section deals with starting hands, flop, turn and river play. Starting hand recommendations are divided into loose/tight, passive/aggressive games, your position and the action in front of you. This is a lot better then giving one of these many starting hand charts you find in most of the hold’em books. Playing before the flop is not as automatic as many of these other books would have you think and their charts would not be of much help and often it leads to disaster.

Here is a little true story to illustrate my point. It happened several years ago at the Mirage. A new player, Pizza Mike, had arrived at the $20-40 game. He had thought about what to do for a living and came to the conclusion playing poker would be an easy way to make some bucks. He had obviously read some books from which he had learned two things: First rule, he thought, to make enough money you have to play middle limit. That’s why he jumped right into the $20-40 game. Second rule, if you know how to play before the flop, that’s enough for most games. He had printed and laminated a starting hand chart which he had found in the internet. At the table he was trying to hide the chart under a pack of cigarettes.

One day the following happened: A tough pro had raised under the gun, our hero at the button was the only caller. The flop came ten high. The pro bet and Pizza Mike called. The same thing happened on the turn and river after two blanks had fallen, the pro bet and was called by Pizza Mike. The pro turned over KK for a pair of kings and our hero produced T8 for a pair of tens. It was clear to me what has happened. Sitting next to Pizza Mike I grabbed the laminated chart immediately and sure enough it says “call with T8 in late position”.

Well, playing T8 at the button might be ok if the conditions are right which obviously wasn’t the case here. Playing heads-up with the worst hand against an experienced pro is a sure way to lose money.

The astute reader of Maroon’s book won’t fall into this trap. The author teaches a tight and aggressive play which is usually the right way to attack a limit hold’em game.

The third and last section of the book is devoted to advanced concepts. The chapter about short handed play is quite good whereas the chapter about standard deviation lacks precision and clarity.

There are some inaccuracies that cast a cloud over the otherwise positive overall impression. In the chapter about preflop play Maroon states “that before the flop the looser your opponents play, the looser you should play, and the tighter they play, the tighter you should play.” (p. 120) It’s easy to see that the second part of the sentence is not correct. Take the extreme case that your opponents only play with pocket aces. According to Maroon you should now play even tighter which means you play aces every second time you’re dealt them or so. Obviously if your opponents play too tight you should play more hands because it’s likely that you can win the pot uncontested.

Very unusual is what Maroon says about maniacs: “Remember that maniacs are actually, in general, more intelligent than the average player. They aren’t stupid, and most of them are actually winning players.” (p. 203) I don’t know if maniacs are more intelligent than other players but I have never seen a maniac that was a winning player no matter what the limit is.

In the chapter about standard deviation Maroon claims that for playing for a living you should have a bankroll of 300 times the big blind (p. 230). This is correct as far as the math goes but Maroon omits to mention the conditions under which the statement is true. E. g. the 300 big bet rule assumes that you don’t take any money out of the bankroll or that you are willing to step back in levels if you lose about half of your bankroll (for a complete treatment of the subject see The Mathematics of Poker by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman). The pictures of the cards that are used for the hand examples are not much help because they are too small and hard to read; in addition, the odds chart in the appendix is pretty much useless due to poor formatting.

All in all Maroon’s book is not as complete and doesn’t give you as much examples as Sklansky’s/Malmuth’s Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players or Hilger’s Internet Texas Hold’em but you do get mostly solid information about limit hold’em.