Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition

Edited by Michael Craig

Book Review by Shari Geller

Did you ever wish you could sit around with twelve of the top tournament poker players and pick their brains? Learn their secrets for success? Find out just what it takes to make it to the final table again and again? In "The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition" edited by Michael Craig, you get the opportunity to do just that. Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch, Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow and eight other top pros teach you their strategies, tactics, and secrets to become a better tournament poker player. As if their reputations did not precede them, the book reminds us that the advice is being provided by twelve players who have combined poker tournament winnings in excess of $30 million and twenty-one WSOP bracelets (now twenty-two thanks to Matusow's 2008 win).

Craig humorously describes The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide as Doyle Brunson's "SuperSystem," but with better grammar and punctuation. As Brunson did thirty years ago with his seminal strategy book, Craig brings together great players from a variety of games to share their insights and experience to help the reader become a better poker player. From Phil Gordon, who notes that the four most important traits a poker player needs to succeed are aggression, patience, courage, and resiliency, to Ted Forrest who notes in the chapter "(Don't) Play Like Ted Forrest" that what works for him is often what other successful players would tell you not to do, the Strategy Guide is four hundred pages of different - often contradictory - approaches that can lead to victory. And it is one of the hallmarks of this collection that the writers often contradict each other, and even themselves, in their suggestions for strategy since they all acknowledge there is no one strategy that is employed by all successful poker players all the time.

In a nod to the popularity of Texas Hold'em, the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide spends considerable time on that game, providing advanced tournament strategies that go well beyond the basic Hold'em rules and approaches. But the book tackles more than just Hold'em as it has chapters on strategies for other tournament games including pot limit Omaha, Omaha 8/b, 7-card Stud, Stud 8/b, and Razz. There is even a chapter on how the theory and strategy behind the children's game Roshambo can be used in poker. And, as one might expect from a book with the name Full Tilt in its title, strategies for successful online tournament play is discussed in a chapter by Richard Brodie who is pretty familiar with the online world, having invented Word when he was at Microsoft.

It does not take long to figure out why Craig leads the book off with Chris Ferguson discussing betting. Ferguson is a five-time WSOP bracelet winner and noted game theory expert whose raw brain power (he has a PhD in computer science) along with his gut instincts makes him one of the most formidable tournament poker players. Despite his pedigree, Ferguson writes in an easy, but effective, conversational tone. When Ferguson notes that players should mix up their game not by playing the same cards differently, but by playing different cards the same way, the reader has an "aha!" moment without feeling stupid. In fact, each time Ferguson discusses a simple betting strategy, such as his preference for raising or folding rather than calling, when to bet on a flop, and the importance of the amount of your bets, his writing has a light bulb effect - it makes so much sense you cannot help but wonder why you did not think of it before. Ferguson makes a return appearance later in the book to discuss post-flop betting and, most notably, the pitfalls of the continuation bet, which he ironically demonstrates by highlighting how it got Craig into trouble.

While Ferguson writes in a surprisingly informal, effortless fashion, Andy Bloch's chapter on pre-flop play is exactly what one might expect of someone with degrees from both MIT and Harvard - long, detailed, and steeped in mathematical theory. The charts and stats are immensely helpful and illuminating, and if you could commit them to memory, you would have quite an advantage. But it is not a quick, easy read and you are left with the feeling at the end of the chapter that there will be a test. Andy dismisses any complaint that after writing a fifty-six page chapter filled with nineteen pages of numerical tables, his chapter is "too mathematical." He explains that his game also depends on feel and tells and that math is just one of many tools. However, the message is clear: if you want to be successful, you are going to have to study.

By contrast, Ted Forrest's chapter is easy to read and is mostly free of numbers, percentages and charts. Forrest is the contrarian who takes the conventional wisdom of his fellow poker pros and turns it on its head. They say never be the first limper in a pot? Preposterous, Forrest says. Why not see a cheap flop? Forrest also recommends playing the button opposite of what is expected. And he argues in favor of seeing a lot of flops - exactly the opposite advice given by Ferguson in the first chapter. If Bloch and Ferguson succeed because they are just smarter than the rest of us, Forrest succeeds because of his instincts, creativity, and ability to adapt.

The Professor - Howard Lederer - next introduces the little-written about concept of leverage, which he describes as the ability to make a small bet that carries with it the threat of more bets later on - something Phil Ivey used effectively to put Lederer to a difficult position in the 2003 WSOP. Lederer sees two pluses behind a successful leverage strategy - the ability to limit the amount you can lose on a hand while at the same time leaving the door open for winning much more in future betting rounds. But Lederer also acknowledges that using leverage is not for the faint of heart as you have to be aggressive, willing to bluff, and even willing to be caught bluffing.

Affable Canadian and television favorite Gavin Smith weighs in with a chapter on big-stack play. His motto: steal early, steal often. His advice: ignore the chapters in the book that tell you what hands to play in what position. If you have two cards, a desire to play, and are first to act - raise! Keep the pressure on other players and take advantage of your stack.

Phil Gordon, usually the tallest player at the table, takes a more studied approach in discussing what to do when you have the shortest stack at the table. Gordon notes that there is more to short stack play than simply pushing all in when you have less than ten times the big blind. He teaches that the short-stacked player should never give up and should instead stay focused, play aggressively, get your money in good, and preserve your folding equity.

Lest the reader think that poker begins and ends with Hold'em, there are several chapters devoted to a discussion of Omaha and Stud. Mike Matusow provides an interesting take on Omaha 8/b tournaments, which he describes as really two different tournaments - a limper free-for-all in the early rounds where many hands will make it to a multi-player showdown and a more aggressive one in the later rounds where raising and getting players off their hands is the plan. He teaches you how to use that structure to your advantage, by being patient, learning what hands to play in which situation, and how to bet them.

Seven card stud is divided between Keith Sexton, who focuses his chapter on what hands are playable on third street and how to play your hands as the cards continue to fall, and David Grey, whose chapter is on actual tournament strategy how it differs from cash games. The chapter on stud eight-or-better has Ted Forrest confessing that this is truly his favorite game because it can accommodate different styles of play and is a mathematically-driven game. He gives special attention to play on third street, where a mistake can be compounded through later streets, and advises readers on how to spot situations where they may be the "gas pipe" between two opponents with better hands both high and low.

Finally, what poker book would be complete without a chapter on Razz: the game where the worst hand is the best hand, and the game that is possibly the most frustrating form of poker there is. But, according to Forrest, it is also "one of the purest forms of poker." The Razz chapter comes from an interview with Huck Seed and Ted Forrest just before the 2006 WSOP Razz event and showcases two different approaches to the same game. But it should be noted that both pros finished out of the money in the Razz event the day after the interview.

The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide is clearly not meant to be read in one sitting - there is simply way too much information to digest. The different approaches to practically every situation in a poker tournament are best sipped, not guzzled. But the Guide's many different strategies are also its strength since in one book it affords the reader the opportunity to complement, adjust, or even deconstruct their game. And it provides insights that come not from the rail, but from the minds of some of the greatest poker players today.

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