Customer comments on this selection.
 My favorite
Don't agree with the others who didn't like this book. It's my favorite out of 12 or so that I've bought on poker. Ok, so it doesn't get into specifics so much, but the strategy is very sound and the best for me.
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br /This and Harrington's books are my favorites, but this one gets me farther in tournaments without having to analyze numbers to death. I truly believe this is the philosophy that got TJ all the wins he has and he's one of the best ever.
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br /You can review a million hands and how they were played, what the pot odds were etc, and still not get to the final table as surely as this book will get you there.
 Write a storybook next time, T. J.
I love watching T. J. Cloutier play, so I jumped on this book with anticipation. Basically, it's a long discourse in which he takes every opportunity to tell you to play good hands and do your best to get paid off for them, and never stop studying your opponents.
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br /Although the author uses tournament theory throughout, he never particularly explains it, or ties it in to his exposition, except in the discussion of when to go all in in the big blind.
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br /He breaks down the exposition by number of players left and stack sizes, but his advice for playing the big and medium stacks is almost indistinguishable. He does give some good advice on which players to attack and which to stay away from, but it's slightly spoiled by the
br /superstitious injunction, repeated two or three times, to stay out of the way of players "on a rush." If you always do that, you'll miss your chances to stop someone's "rush," now, won't you?
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br /There's a chapter where he goes over the critical hands from the 2005 WSOP $5000 No-Limit Hold'em event. This is the high point of the book, but if you compare the commentary here with the kind of analysis Harrington gets into in Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategies for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. III--The Workbook (Harrington on Hold'em), it's pretty airy.
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br /What one does get out of this book is a sense of how much patience one has to apply, and (at least vaguely) what standards to use on one's hands. For some players, this will be a needed tonic.
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br /In many places throughout, the author admits he's just pointing to something he can't teach directly; he can give you an idea just how well-developed a top player's intuition and sense of timing are, but give only a couple of hints on how to get to that point: paraphrasing, they would be "study your opponents" and "remember your mistakes."
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br /The advice in this book is tailored for big tournaments with relatively deep stacks. In the tournaments most of us play, we'll bubble out if we try to follow T.J.'s advice without adjustment, which is exactly the problem the book sets out to solve.
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br /I do wish all my opponents would read this book, though, especially the ones who keep overplaying KJ and drawing out on me.
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 Terrible.
Don't believe the positive reviews, this book is awful. It's rambling, imprecise, and purely anecdotal, the worst example of the unhelpful "play the player" style of the lesser poker books. Over and over again TJ's grand sum total of advice in all kinds of different situations is to "learn your opponents" so you can "make moves" and "then you can really play poker". And that is it, the entire enumeration of the "strategy". Nothing about how to go about actually -learning- your opponents, nothing about -moves- to make, nothing about his way of -really playing poker-.
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br /The scenarios he sets up are the same thing you have heard a hundred times elsewhere. Anyone who has read other books (or played tournaments) will already have a firm grasp on basic beginner logic like, "if you're seriously short stacked, you've got to gamble". Just compare that to the in-depth examination of M and Q done by Harrington in his series.
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br /Anyone who hasn't read other books (and doesn't have much experience) will not find advice in this book that will improve their game.
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br /There is ONE actual concrete move described in this book, and that's the fact that when there's a preflop raise, TJ likes to reraise to steal the blinds + the original raise, which allows him to keep even for a few orbits. The rest of this book is at the level of advising you to "get your money in with the best hand".
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br /The final insult in the book is to recite the action of ESPN-televised knockout hands from the 2005 WSOP $5000 NL event. Great. But there's barely any _analysis_ of the hands, what was done right and wrong, what Cloutier might do differently or emphasize. Just a flat recitation of what was shown on TV. (I can't say there was _no_ analysis. Cloutier does at one point add the insight that "sometimes you just have to make the decision to go for it.") Again, compare to Harrington's deep analysis of D'Agostino vs Ivey.
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br /Just an awful book from an otherwise great player, a cheap attempt to cash in on the televised NL tournament poker craze, can't hold a candle to Cloutier's earlier (highly regarded) works with Tom McEvoy or the absolutely brilliant new standard for NL tourneys defined by Harrington or the very crisp and insightful ring game advice from Phil Gordon.
 Well worth reading
Like most of Cloutier's books, this reads like a transcript of conversations with him. It is not that well organized, and more specific examples would be helpful. BUT, you learn about the thought process of one of the best. It is hard to imagine too many serious players, who would not benefit from reading this book and thinking about the ideas. I probably won't re-read this book as often as Harrington or Gordon's, but it will be on the active part of my poker bookshelf.
Inside TJ's Mind
I have almost 30 books on Hold'em. Other than Harrington's books which are excellent, almost none put you really, and I mean REALLY inside the mind of the author/player (Erick Lindgren's book does a good job of this though). I've had the good fortune to have met TJ a couple of times, and ask him some questions. But in How To Win The Championship he brings you into his thought process, to the point where he even says that some more mathematical players may not agree, but he does it so-and-so way and here's why. The information is non-stop, with essentially no fluff. But be warned, if you are just a beginning player who hasn't played in a tournament before, he doesn't go into basics and it doesn't tell you what to do at the beginning or middle stages of a tournament. This is really for a bit more experienced player. His book essentially starts off at the point where you are 1 table before getting into the money and goes on from there to heads up. Being a tournament player myself (I don't play cash games much at all), this book is perfect. I better understand why I've hit walls in the past and how I need to adjust my play to win or at least get into the top 3. I get in the money a reasonable number of times in live tournaments but have real trouble breaking into that upper pay echelon. He gives great advice on how not to flame out when you just make it into the money but not into the bigger money. Really key points that I haven't seen in other books. I realize that at some point we all need to stop buying all these books (yeah, learning never stops but 30 books? I must be a junkie!), but I really can say if you want to improve your tournament play, TJ's book is a must. His writing style is like he's talking to you about exactly what he does and why (also what he doesn't do and why you shouldn't either).
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br /Chapters include:
br /* When you're one table away from the money
br /* When you've made it to the first money table
br /* When you've made it to the second money table
br /* When you've made it to the final table
br /* Six-handed at the final table
br /* Playing three-handed and heads up at the final table
br /* Several chapters on tournament strategies and some other thoughts.
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br /As you can see, this book's content is pretty specific and I haven't seen this in other books. In fact, in many of those chapters, he further breaks them down into if you are a short, medium or big stack, because the size of your chip stack greatly influences the types of situations that you should get involved in. It's like you've got a coach you can talk to as you continue to advance in the tournament...especially useful for those who haven't been into the money or final table before or keep seeming to make mistakes and missing the big money.
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br /Overall, highly recommended and it absolutely will pay for itself, whether you play in live or online tournaments.
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