oakmoses's review against another edition
5.0
This should probably be the second poker book any serious player reads, or the first book if you've already got a good handle on the rudiments of solid play. Gordon does an excellent job of walking the fine line between math, instinct, and aggression.
catliffe's review
4.0
This is a very handy book. I would consider myself an average player in that I understand the rules and win a pot every now and then. This is just one professional player's account of what works for him, but there's some really great, yet basic stuff in here that I think someone at my level could benefit from. There's good advice and tips on how to figure out what other players might have and how you should play in response, which was of great benefit to me.
Some interesting real life plays and stories peppered throughout which helped with picturing how a scenario might play out, but also added an element of humour and made for easy and enjoyable reading.
Some interesting real life plays and stories peppered throughout which helped with picturing how a scenario might play out, but also added an element of humour and made for easy and enjoyable reading.
mburnamfink's review
4.0
I'm terrible at poker. Not wanting to embarrass myself at the next poker night, I got Gordon's book. This is perhaps a little more advanced that what I could use, but it's a quick and readable introduction to poker strategy, and the art of imperfect information, livened up with examples from the table. Gordon provides the basics of "tight-and-aggressive" strategy, and why it wins most of the time, along with the bigger picture of tournament games and poker psychology. The mathematical parts of the book, on pot odds and quickly figuring the odds of your hand against an assumed AA or AK hand, as well as avoiding common statistical mistakes, is a little rough, and will take me another reread.
If there's any criticism that can be fairly levied against The Little Green Book is that it's become so popular that the 'meta' of the game has moved to take advantage of it. This book won't make you a star, but hopefully it'll keep me from embarrassing myself next Thursday.
If there's any criticism that can be fairly levied against The Little Green Book is that it's become so popular that the 'meta' of the game has moved to take advantage of it. This book won't make you a star, but hopefully it'll keep me from embarrassing myself next Thursday.
xterminal's review
4.0
Phil Gordon, Phil Gordon's Little Green Book: Lessons and Teachings in No Limit Texas Hold'em (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2005)
Howard Lederer and Annie Duke are correct, in their introduction, when they say that this book was, at the time of its publication, unique. There have been poker how-to manuals probably as long as there have been people playing poker, but back in 2005, no one had written a more personal, “how I play”-style book. Now it's five years later, and Phil Gordon's series of poker books has been as influential as Super/System or Harrington on Hold'em, both to poker players and, more importantly (at least as it relates to this paragraph), to poker writers. “How I play”-style books are still uncommon, but certainly not unheard-of (Gus Hansen's Every Hand Revealed is my favorite of the new breed). Given that, does Gordon's original little book hold up, or has it been surpassed by its cronies?
It holds up quite well in this reviewer's opinion, thank you. Gordon does a solid job of explaining the basics of his technique (which isn't all that out of the ordinary; tight-aggressive is the style you're going to see from most pros, or would before the coming of Tom Dwan, who's spawned a legion of loose-aggressive imitators), giving you both the how and the why of its mechanics. Like the entire tight-aggressive legion, he focuses a lot more on pre-flop play—why see a flop if you can get everyone around you to fold beforehand?—but the post-flop section is just as useful as you'd expect from one of the post-flop masters of the game—Hellmuth, Negreanu, Dwan, or the like. About two-thirds of the book is devoted to specific aspects of the game, after which comes a “general thoughts”-style section and a handful of the usual starting-hands charts and the like.
It's good stuff, front to back (well, okay, I could have done without the charts; even Gordon himself minimizes their importance as much as possible). There are a bunch of really good poker books out there, and the literate poker player's shelf needs to be a pretty long one to accommodate them all; this one should be on that shelf. ****
Howard Lederer and Annie Duke are correct, in their introduction, when they say that this book was, at the time of its publication, unique. There have been poker how-to manuals probably as long as there have been people playing poker, but back in 2005, no one had written a more personal, “how I play”-style book. Now it's five years later, and Phil Gordon's series of poker books has been as influential as Super/System or Harrington on Hold'em, both to poker players and, more importantly (at least as it relates to this paragraph), to poker writers. “How I play”-style books are still uncommon, but certainly not unheard-of (Gus Hansen's Every Hand Revealed is my favorite of the new breed). Given that, does Gordon's original little book hold up, or has it been surpassed by its cronies?
It holds up quite well in this reviewer's opinion, thank you. Gordon does a solid job of explaining the basics of his technique (which isn't all that out of the ordinary; tight-aggressive is the style you're going to see from most pros, or would before the coming of Tom Dwan, who's spawned a legion of loose-aggressive imitators), giving you both the how and the why of its mechanics. Like the entire tight-aggressive legion, he focuses a lot more on pre-flop play—why see a flop if you can get everyone around you to fold beforehand?—but the post-flop section is just as useful as you'd expect from one of the post-flop masters of the game—Hellmuth, Negreanu, Dwan, or the like. About two-thirds of the book is devoted to specific aspects of the game, after which comes a “general thoughts”-style section and a handful of the usual starting-hands charts and the like.
It's good stuff, front to back (well, okay, I could have done without the charts; even Gordon himself minimizes their importance as much as possible). There are a bunch of really good poker books out there, and the literate poker player's shelf needs to be a pretty long one to accommodate them all; this one should be on that shelf. ****
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