Phil Gordon's Little Green Book
Lessons and Teachings in
No Limit Texas Holdem
by Phil Gordon
Quick Thoughts
A nice introductory book with
some good coverage of the basics, as well as touching on some more advanced
topics. As the title implies this book focuses on No Limit Holdem. The book is
strong at the introductory level, however you are likely to need to combine
this with other books if you are playing tougher games, especially online.
In my opinion this book gets four out of five
stars as a good introductory book on No Limit Holdem.
Basics
A nice small hard back book of
just under 300 pages. After introductory chapters the book goes on to cover a
range of topics from pre-flop and post-flop play, through to tells and
tournament play. Percentages, odds and probability are given a reasonable
treatment at quite an accessible level. Important topics such as bank roll management
and psychology are also addressed towards the end of this book.
Typical Cost
£8 to £12.99, $15 to $40
Additional Thoughts
After a reasonable introduction,
that a beginning player will appreciate, this book goes on to address pre-flop
play. Especially useful are the pre-flop
charts (at the back of the book) recommending hand ranges for some different
cases. Although note; the black and white print of charts designed to be in
colour is a bit cumbersome. While some
people might want to argue about specifics of pre-flop range; this is a good introduction
to this concept and should help with overly loose play (without good post-flop
skills) that plagues some beginners in the game.
The chapters on post flop play
and tournament poker give a good introduction to these topics within the space
provided. The tournament poker chapter gives coverage to tournament specific
topics. However, the book may well have benefited from some specific discussion
on the differences between cash game and tournament poker.
The chapter on tells, as Gordon
notes, is largely based on Mike Caro's book of Poker Tells. However, it's good
to see Phil Gordon's take on these tells. This summary on tells also provides more
depth to the book and a good starting point without having to read
Caro's book straight away. Although as the classic text on tells you are likely
to want read this book in due course. I'll get round to a review of Caro's book
in due course.
Update -
See this review here.
Online poker is covered in a very
short chapter, which unsurprisingly given the age of the book some may feel is dated.
As noted in my quick thoughts; if the online game is your focus you will
probably want to read this book in conjunction with other books that address
online specific topics, such as HUD's, tracking software and table selection.
The book is scattered with quite
a few interesting short pieces, such as the don't wear sunglasses to play
poker notes, page 230. Overall the style of writing is nice and accessible. Hopefully
you will enjoy this book and find it useful in
learning, or brushing up on, the fundamentals of No Limit Holdem. This book is also
a good choice as a first book on poker while still having some material of interest to the intermediate player.
You can also see a review of another one of Phil Gordon,s books, his
Little Blue Book.
If you have read this book please
share your star rating. Also let us know if you have any comments on the
book, or if your thinking about buying it.
