Because of the TV coverage, poker is booming. It’s booming in North America and it’s booming in Europe. People are interested in poker and this is reflected in the poker book sales. What do you do if you want to benefit from the current poker boom but you don’t want to put in the time and effort to write a new book? The answer is easy: secondary use. Recycle what you have published somewhere else and sell it as a new book. That’s exactly what Tom McEvoy and Phil Hellmuth have done.

In 1983, as a relative newcomer, Tom McEvoy won the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He is still living off this fame today. His recent tournament successes are limited, so he makes a quick buck by writing poker books. All his books (with the exception of Tournament Poker) have two things in common: He works with a co-author, preferably someone with a big name like T. J. Cloutier, and the books give the impression of being hastily produced. Beat Texas Hold’em fits into this description. This time McEvoy chooses Shane Smith, author of Poker Tournament Tips from the Pros, as his co-author.

With 354 pages the book looks impressive but the publisher chose a very small format to achieve this page count. Without exaggeration you could print the content of a page on a postage stamp. E. g. page 216 contains 3 ½ sentences, page 217 2 ½ sentences etc. My guess is the book would be – normally printed – about 70-80 pages thick. Ok, quantity has nothing to do with quality, so let’s look at the content.

The book is divided into five sections. The first section “How Texas Hold’em Is Played” is only of interest to players completely new to the game. The following sections are about limit, no-limit, online and tournament play. This is a very reasonable structure. The limit and no-limit sections contain the following subchapters: “Tom’s Top 10 Winning Tips”, “10 Practice Hands”, “Shane’s Review Questions” and “How Would You Play This Hand?”

The other two sections are similarly structured. “Tom’s Top 10 Winning Tips” gives you some general guide lines, sometimes they are just banalities. E. g. the first tip in the limit section is “Always play good starting hands”. Who would have guessed that? Not even these simple tips are always accurate. Again in the limit section he advises “Seldom raise before the flop”. This is an old Caro concept which is clearly wrong. “10 Practice Hands” discusses how you should play the most common starting hands before the flop. This is mostly a reprint from the book “Championship Hold’em” and “Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold’em”.

Here is an example from the no-limit section:

“To win a no-limit hold’em tournament, you have to win when you have A-K and you have to beat A-K when an opponent has it. Although it may not be the final hand, A-K often will be the deciding hand, the one with which you win or lose the most chips. Big Slick is the biggest ‘decision’ hand in tournament play.”	“To win a no-limit tournament, you have to in with A-K and you have to beat A-K. You may not win or lose with them on the final hand, but it usually will be the deciding hand, the one that wins or loses the most chips for you. It’s the biggest decision-hand in a tournament.”
(Beat Texas Hold’em, p. 175)	(Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold’em, p. 117)

To test your newly acquired knowledge Shane Smith has put together some “Review Questions”. This is funny because so far you have read nothing about flop, turn and river play or any related concepts like pot odds, implied odds, outs and so on. Obviously, as far as the authors are concerned, all you have to do to be a successful Texas hold’em player is to choose the right starting hands. I wished it would be that simple. If you know McEvoys column in the Card Player magazine the last subchapter “How Would You Play This Hand?” should be familiar to you. In his column McEvoy usually answers questions about how to play a particular hand (“I recently received an e-mail from Stanley, who has been having some difficulty in the play of A-K in both tournaments and cash games.”) A collection of his columns has been reprinted in this book.

It’s beyond my imagination how somebody should learn how to play hold’em with the type of information McEvoy and Smith provides especially because there is no in-depth treatment of post-flop play. This is a book nobody has been waiting for.

Even more brazen is Phil Hellmuth. He (or his publisher) just took the hold’em sections from his book Play Poker Like the Pros and is selling them as a new book. If you already have the former book you can save the money for the new one and if you don’t have it, well, there are a lot of better hold’em books available on the market.

Phil Hellmuth has won nine WSOP bracelets, a fact he likes to mention quite often in his books. All his wins came from limit or no-limit hold’em play. So it looks like Hellmuth is first and foremost a hold’em specialist. But the funny thing is that in his book Play Poker Like the Pros the hold’em sections are the weakest whereas the sections about Omaha, seven card stud, razz and stud hi-low are much better.

The hold’em book covers limit, no-limit/pot-limit and tournament play. The limit section is divided into chapters for beginners, intermediate and advanced strategy. In the beginners strategy chapter Hellmuth tells the reader only to play ten hands before the flop (all pairs down to 77, AK and AQ) and bet and raise with these hands at every opportunity.

This sounds easy and Hellmuth thinks it is that easy (“I know that you’re probably thinking right now, ‘Is it really that easy? All I have to do is play Phil’s top ten hands?’ The answer is basically yes, at least as far as starting requirements (your first two cards) are concerned! Yes, because it will be easy for you to play before the flop (on the first round of betting) when all you have to remember is to play only the top ten.”). This approach is too tight, too aggressive and too simplistic.

It’s common sense that in hold’em “tight is right” but Hellmuth goes one step further and believes “supertight is right”. This credo is reflected by his starting hand recommendations. There are 80 combinations for the ten starting hands out of the 1326 possible hands. That means if you follow Hellmuth’s advice you are only playing 6% of all hands you are dealt. This is way too tight. It’s an often asked question whether you should play more hands in the low or higher limit games. The answer is clear: in the low limit games. Actually this has nothing to do with the limits but with the players you usually encounter in these games. In the higher limit games people raise more before the flop and there are on average fewer players seeing the flop. This means you have to tighten up but not that much that you only play 6% of the hands. In the low limit games there is less raising, more players are seeing the flop and the players are usually bad after the flop. This means more hands become profitable.

Conclusion: In low limit games you should loosen up and not tighten up as Hellmuth advises. To bet and raise with the top ten hands no matter what is not good advice either. Do you really want to cap it with a hand like 88 or AQ? And is it really of no importance how many players have already called, who raised or what your position is? Hellmuth thinks so.

As easy as the play before the flop, is the play on the flop, at least if you follow Hellmuth. You just bet and raise to find out “where you are at”. Here is an example: You have pocket jacks and three players call your double raise. The flop comes K♦Q♦7♠. The big blind checks, first position bets and now it’s up to you. For Hellmuth this is a clear reraise. Let’s rethink the situation. There is a flush and straight draw out, the flop contains two overcards to your pocket pair, the player in front of you has bet and there are two players behind you. Does that sound like a good scenario for a reraise? In a higher limit game I would think reraising might be an option because the player in front of you might be betting a draw and you might make a better hand (somebody with a weak king or a queen) fold.

In a low limit game things are different. The players are less likely to bet their draws and it is nearly impossible to make someone with a king or queen to lay down his hand. You are in an awkward situation. You are either behind and drawing slim or you are ahead and can easily be outdrawn. Sure, a lot depends who you are against but usually this is a clear fold.

In the chapter about intermediate strategy Hellmuth wants you to play some additional hands: the smaller pairs (66 – 22), Ax suited and KQ. His advice on how to play the small pairs before the flop is as confused as the rest of the book. If there is a raise in front of you, Hellmuth explains, “a popular theory says” you should call “to build the pot”. “I have a different preference. I like to reraise with a small pair before the flop and then ‘represent’ whatever hits the flop.” His reasoning is as follows: “I like my approach because it is mathematically more likely that the first raiser has two big cards than that he has a big pair.” This is an argument you hear quite often for reraising with a small pair. Nonetheless it’s flawed because you are either a small favorite or a big underdog. That means the correct play is usually to fold small pairs to a raise.

The advanced strategy chapter is not much better. Now suited connecters come into play. When to play them? “The best time to consider playing suited connectors is when you decide to reraise (three-bet) someone you feel is weak, before the flop, in the hope that you’ll be taking the pot away form this player later in the hand.” You can make this play once in a while against a player you know will lay down his hand if he doesn’t hit the flop but usually the best time to play suited connectors is when there are a lot of callers in front of you.

Both books have a common problem. McEvoy and Hellmuth are mainly tournament players. But their book is not only about tournament play but about ring games as well. They often confuse tournament play with cash games and it is not clear for the reader about what game type they are talking about. Even in the nontournament sections most examples they give are form tournament play. That doesn’t make much sense because in tournament play a lot of different factors have to be taken into account than in cash games. The hyper aggressive approach Hellmuth teaches stems from the fact that he wants to win a high percentage of the pots he plays. That might be reasonable in tournament play but it is not your main consideration in cash games. There you want to win as much money as possible.

(Tristan Steiger)

Buy the McEvoy/Smith book!

Buy the Hellmuth book!