Weighing The Odds in Hold'Em Poker by King Yao. A review.

Day trader turned card shark King Yao's Weighing The Odds in Hold'Em is a personal tour de force on Limit Hold'Em that is heavy on numbers and explanation, though much of the advice is open ended.

Weighing the Odds is an odds and stats book, more than a how-to book on playing effective limit hold'em.  It assumes a rudimentary knowledge of the game at least, and is aimed either at novice players looking to form a winning style, or for experienced players looking to build a stronger foundation to their game.

Yao's initial chapters on reading opponents and bluffing show this book's strategies may not work as well in looser low-limit games, where players are oblivious to other players' strategic moves (like bluffs), and many more players will call to see the flop and later streets with poorer draws or made hands regardless of who is betting and when.

Yao later admits his strategic advice works best at a table with two good players, three 'decent' players and three bad players, which is a tougher game than the typical low limit hold'em game at a cardroom.  The relatively high rake at the lower limits would ensure no one in Yao's ideal game was a winner in the long run.  Yao's strategy is certainly best suited for middle and higher limits, where players are generally smarter and the rake has far less impact.  It can also work in online games, as online poker sites take a lower percentage of rake and players in relatively low levels play with greater skill.

That said, Yao's book features lengthy discussion on counting outs and brings two valuable concepts to the table.

1) The DIPO Method: Yao's acronym stands for, "Do I have Pot Odds?"  Yao composes a simple method for determining whether a call is correct when drawing to a particular number of outs.  Using a "Good Number" and a "Bad Number," a player that knows his/her number of outs can more quickly determine whether a call on a particular street is correct.

2) A detailed starting hand selection.  About halfway through the book, Yao presents a table about five pages long with detailed instructions on playable starting hands in each position.

For every position (early, middle, late) Yao provides instructions for each hand (or a group) on how to play the hand whe 1st in, against limpers, against a raise, and against a raise with callers.  He follows this with an explanation on how to play the blinds, common mistakes to avoid in each position, and what you should try to do when you play each particular group of hands.

You will not find a more complete starting hand guide to Limit Hold'Em out there, not even in Small Stakes Hold'Em.


True to the title, Weighing The Odds centers around the mathematically correct plays to make, the plays that will net the most expected value.  The book is math intensive and fairly dense to read through, like a Two Plus Two book, but with less theory and more statistical math.

A beginner may want to seek out simpler materials before moving up to this book, but anyone looking to improve their game, move up to more advanced games, and make more statistically correct plays will gain from reading this text.

Why You Lose At Poker by Russell Fox and Scott Harker, a review

Players don't seek out negativity when looking for good poker books, thus a book entitled Why You Lose At Poker may not draw beginning poker readers that, say, Winning Low Limit Hold'Em will.

But Russell Fox and Scott Harker's book falls into that Mark Blade school of blunt honesty that many players struggling with their game really need to read and drill into their heads if they want to improve.  Facing facts, most poker players are losing players, and most lose because they fall into common bad habits, all of which Fox and Harker address at length over 200+ pleasantly written and readable pages in an attempt to bluntly tell readers, "Look, these are the reasons you can't seem to get ahead."

Sixteen chapters each focus on a common leak in both limit and no limit poker.  They hammer:

• bad bluffs in Limit Hold'Em
• bad bets in No Limit Hold’Em
• mechanical errors like mucking winning hands due to a misread. 

Then Fox and Harker move on to Hi/Lo Omaha and Stud in criticizing players who play for half the pot.  They typically elaborate with written accounts of fictional characters playing a hand at the game in question, followed by an explanation of the error acted out.
Fox and Harker also cover typical subjects like:

• playing without a solid bankroll
• playing scared
• not being well-read and informed on correct play
• not selecting the right game
• playing when you don't feel well.

It's counterintuitive for a player aspiring to win to pick up a book called Why You Lose At Poker, but the title shouldn't necessarily scare you away.A lot of the advice is common rhetoric in most poker materials... just not put in as bluntly a prevailing tone as Fox and Harker use in their aptly titled book.