“Hold’em Wisdom for All Players” Review

[LL] “As much as I love Daniel Negreanu,” Leroy the Lion disclaimed, “I was disappointed by his Hold’em Wisdom for All Players. It’s a book but feels like a collection of poker blog posts.”

[RR] “Which you both read and write all the time”, Roderick the Rock remarked.

[LL] “Yes, but Wisdom has no overriding theme, no continuity, no depth, and no organization.”

[RR] “You’d be happier if you could sort the articles or browse by tag?”

[LL] “With just a little more work, and very little additional writing, Negreanu could have tied the 50 essays together into a cohesive book. Although he did end up creating a great bathroom book, since you can read any chapter at any time in any order.

The articles themselves are mostly pretty good, with my favorites being:

• ‘Be Careful What You Learn on TV’: Negreanu gambled with his own money on High Stakes Poker but also got paid $1,250 per hour to play.
• ‘Top Ten Trouble Hands’: Starting hands that can lead you to losing big pots (some of these are repeated in ‘Dangerous Hands to Play, Dangerous Hands to Own’).
• ‘Where to Sit at the Poker Table’: Where you want to be relative to various types of opponents.
• ‘The Check-Raise’: An underused weapon.
• ‘Setting Up a Home Poker Tournament’: Equipment and rules you need to run your own event.

In addition to the trouble hands, there are a bunch of other listicles, starting with the first two chapters: ‘Top Ten Rookie Mistakes’ and ‘Top 5 Reasons Why You’re Losing at Poker’.”

[RR] “I’m sure Stan the Stat would love those.”

[LL] “In general, while most of these articles are well-written, they’re also too short. The book deserved to being double the length of its meager 150 pages, but perhaps Negreanu was saving up some of the good stuff for his voluminous Power Hold’em Strategy, which came out the next year with over 500 pages.”