Both of these books by Stewart Reuben, a British high stakes poker player, are very similar so it makes sense to review them together. They are not theory or how-to-books about pot-limit Omaha and Hold’ Em but a series of hands devised by Reuben to give the reader the possibility to test and evaluate his pot-limit skills.

“The book comprises 57 hands, each of which contains numerous questions for you to answer. In order to get the most out of this book it is recommended that you work your way through all of the questions for each hand before checking any of the answers. You should not assume that the player of the hand, often myself, made the optimal choice. In any way you will come to each decision ‘cold’ and will avoid receiving any hint which will help you to answer the remaining questions in the hand. Thus, as far so possible, the play will follow that of a ‘live’ hand. The analysis of each hand appears at its conclusion.”

What this passage means is that you, the reader, will take over the hand of a player from live play, Reuben outlines the situation and the action so far and then it’s up to you to make a decision. Usually you have the option to fold, call or raise. One of the trickiest questions in pot-limit is not only if you want to raise but how much. Because you play the hand from start to finish there are numerous decisions to make. At the end of each hand Reuben rates your answers (on a point scale) and gives you his conclusion how good or bad you played the hand.

As you can expect from an author like Reuben his analysis of the hand is good to excellent. He puts much emphasis on the fact that in pot-limit how much money your opponents have in front of them are at least as important as the odds the pot offers you. This is especially important new consideration for players who are used to play limit poker because in limit poker it’s usually not much of a factor how deep the money of your opponents is (one of the rare exceptions is if one player is all-in or close to going all-in).

It’s quite refreshing that Reuben not only shows you when he plays well but that he lets you see his mistakes as well. Most often (especially in the Omaha book) you take over a hand that Reuben played himself. Reuben is quite critical about his own play which means the way he played the actual hand is not necessarily the optimum play. Though Reuben often gives you the theoretical background that leads to his decision about the best play these books are no substitution for a theory book but a welcome and valuable addition. If you are not familiar with pot-limit poker you should read a book like “No-Limit and Pot-Limit Poker” by Ciaffone and Reuben first.

Every light has its shadows. I think the scoring system is close to useless. The point scale Reuben uses goes usually from 0 to 10 points but sometimes you get 12 points for the correct answer or -1, -2, -3 or -5 points if you are wide off the mark. The negative ratings look quite accidental to me. And I don’t think it makes much sense to rate someone’s play after one hand. It would have been much better to combine at least ten hands and rate them together. Another problem is that the hands are arranged in no apparent order. Hands from cash games are mixed with hands form tournament play though the correct play in tournaments is often quite different from cash games. At least these two types of hands should have been separated in different chapters.

Also bothersome is that Reuben sometimes withholds information from the reader that is important if the player is to come to a sound conclusion. Here is an example to illustrate what I mean. The game is pot-limit Omaha. You hold A♠Q♣T♣9♠ and the flop is J♠8♣5♠. The size of the pot is £100. You bet £75 and your only opponent, Kevin, raises £250. What do you do (Kevin has £2000 left)? This is a tough decision. Folding is out of question because you have the nut flush and straight draw. Should you call or raise? Of course it depends on what you think Kevin has.

Then you read the answer Reuben gives. You get -2 points for folding, 10 for calling, 2 for raising £250 and 5 for raising £750. He gives the following reason: “It is many years since I crossed chips with Kevin, but it was obvious that he had trip jacks. There is no need to put all my money into the pot when at best a small favourite.” The additional information he gives you here about makes all the difference in the world. Now it’s no longer a tough decision. You know you have to make your draw without pairing the board. Raising is no longer an option because a) your hand is not a favorite against top set and b) there is no way that Kevin is going to fold. Clearly Reuben should have given the reader the additional information about Kevin before otherwise the large scoring difference between calling and raising is not justified.

I have no idea why Omaha high is not popular in the States. It’s a great game, especially if played pot-limit. There is an old myth that the real action game is Omaha high-low. This is simply not true. Omaha high generates more action, no matter if it’s played for low, medium or high stakes than Omaha high-low. The loosest and liveliest game I ever played in was a $4-8 Omaha high game at the Horseshoe Casino in downtown Las Vegas. The average pot size was over $200, and $300, $400 and even $500 pots were not uncommon. The problem with limit Omaha high is that you have no way to protect your hand. That means an expert doesn’t play much differently after the flop than a tourist. If you have the slightest chance to win the hand, you play on because the required pot odds are nearly always there. For the expert this means that the profit doesn’t come from superior play after the flop but from playing better starting hands and because of the larger pots the swings are bigger. For the weak player on the other hand this means that he has a better chance to score a big win and that on average he will lose at a slower rate than, for example, at stud or hold ‘em. Change the structure from limit to pot-limit and Omaha high is no longer mostly a fun game but a skilful and complex game.

There is no question that Stewart Reuben is an excellent pot-limit Omaha high player. The hands he presents are carefully chosen and very instructional. His explanations are clear and convincing. The only thing that surprised me was to see how ‘loose’ he plays. Of course he knows that. “I would die of boredom if I did not play a large number of hands.” As far as I can see there are two reasons why he can do that and still be a winner. First, he plays excellently after the flop. It’s a well-accepted fact that, if your after-the-flop-play is better then that of your opponents, you can play more starting hands. Second, he plays most of the time in the same game (most of the hands are from the Grosvenor Victoria Casino in London) with the same people (you will often meet the same players in the book). This game seems to be pretty loose so he can play loose too. Actually playing loose in this type of game means just playing a little tighter than the other players do and is more profitable than playing a very tight game. In a normal pot-limit Omaha high game you should play fewer hands then Reuben does. E. g. he plays T♣9♦4♦4♣ under the gun and 9♥9♠3♥2♥. Of course he hit a set each time otherwise there would be nothing to talk about. Here lays the danger. The inexperienced reader might get the impression it’s ok to play like that.

I was less impressed with the hold ‘em book. The author is honest enough to tell the reader “I have not played any hold’em for some years”. This doesn’t mean Reuben doesn’t understand anything about hold ‘em but the he doesn’t have enough data for an interesting hold ‘em book. Many of the hands he gives look fabricated (sometimes he even admits it), the tournament hands are from no-limit and not pot-limit games. Two hands are about a game called Irish I have never heard before (it plays like crazy pineapple but you get four cards before the flop and discard two after the flop). A lot of the hands are from a £10-20 game in which he didn’t participate. It looks as if he was observing a pot-limit hold ‘em game and recorded the hands to get enough material for this second book. The result is that the hands are oddly assorted and less instructional than in the Omaha book.

If you play or if you are interested in playing pot-limit Omaha there is no question that you want to get Reuben’s Omaha book. It is interesting, contains solid advice and is reasonably priced. Recommended.

The overall quality of the hold ‘em book is clearly lower. Its advantage is that there is not much material about pot-limit hold ‘em available. Recommended with reservations.

(Tristan Steiger)

Buy the Omaha book!

Buy the Hold'em book!