In the book review section of
www.blondepoker.com Sheriff Fatman's new review of Harrington on Hold Em Vol 1 can now be found.
A lot more reviews are in the pipeline, and Sheriff has helpfully produced an Introduction to his reviews in the section which appears above the reviews
I'm reproducing it here, so you all get a flavour of what he is seeking to do.
P.S Remember the Amazon link at Blondepoker if you are buying poker books and please feel free to add your comments/thoughts/criticisms of the reviews here as and when they are announced. So use this thread for Harrington comments
P.P.S And we welcome your reviews, if you would like to contribute
Meanwhile here's Sheriff's Introduction
Introduction to the BlondePoker Book Reviews
By Sheriff Fatman
In the last couple of years the number of poker books on the market has increased at an incredible rate. What was once the domain for a select few ‘known’ authors has become a free for all. Nowadays it seems as if one of the qualifications for being a professional player is to have your name on a book somewhere in publication.
In addition to the books that are already available there also seems to be a plethora of ‘works in progress’. A search on Amazon for poker books by publication date has just yielded a total of 72 books which are listed but not yet published!
In general this is good news for the poker player looking for ways to improve his game. After all, since when has too much choice been a bad thing? However, the quality of poker books, perhaps more so than books in other areas, varies dramatically. Some are extremely valuable reads and will undoubtedly pay for themselves over and over again. Others, unfortunately, are so bad that they will probably cost you money!
Since I started playing poker a couple of years ago I’ve managed to amass quite a collection of poker and gambling related books. At the last count the total was approaching 100! Whilst I’ve always taken care to buy books that were highly rated in the field I’ve still managed to end up with a few turkeys in the collection. The intention of this review section is to hopefully steer you towards those books which are of most relevance to you and which will have a positive impact on your game.
There are several alternative sources of book reviews available and, naturally, my opinions may vary from other reviews you read. Perhaps some reviews will trigger debate on the forum. I would certainly welcome any and all opinion of the content of this section, whether you agree with what I say or not.
With regard to the structure of the reviews the intention is to make them as consistent in format as possible. In each review I’ll provide a summary section, listing out key information as described below. The review will then contain a narrative section, which will be the ‘meat’ of the review. The length of this may vary as I’ll undoubtedly have more to say on some books than others. Finally, I’ll provide a mark out of 10, along with a short comment relating to it.
With regard to the mark out of 10, I thought long and hard before commencing these reviews about whether to include this, ultimately reaching the conclusion that some readers will look for a quick summary before deciding whether to read the whole review in detail (after all, I do this myself with film and CD reviews!) However, its extremely difficult to summarise a poker book via a simple mark out of 10 so I’d encourage you to read the narrative. There are so many variables to take into account with a poker book that I doubt that a simple mark out of 10 will ever be able to do a review justice.
Happy reading!
Sheriff Fatman
November 2005
The Information Panel
Each book review will contain a general information panel. The categories used, and reasons why, are highlighted below:
Title, Author Kind of obvious really!
Publisher, Year First Published Should help in locating the book.
Edition Reviewed: This is to give an indication of how relevant a book might be in today’s market. The edition reviewed information is included as books are sometimes updated, improved or corrected in later editions. In most cases the changes are relatively minor but there are some examples where the changes are significant.
General Info (No of pages, hardback/paperback, edition reviewed and cover price) To give you an indication of what you are getting for your money and to allow you to compare to the actual price being charged.
Type of Book (Instructional, Poker Strategy, Biographical, Fiction) Instructional relates to the ‘how to’ type books discussing games in a structured manner (e.g. street by street play). Poker Strategy relates (usually) to more advanced discussion of poker concepts, often via short essays/articles.
Intended Audience Scores will relate to how well the book serves its target audience. Consequently, a beginner-level book that fails to adequately cover basic information will be marked down.
Game(s) Covered ou’ll get little use out of a NLHE tournament book if you’re planning to sit in PLO cash games!
Date Of Review New books may well impact the reviews of older books. Consequently, including the date of the review will allow you to judge this to an extent. In some cases I may update existing reviews if I feel there has been a major impact on the existing review.
Author