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Erick Lindgren
Making the Final Table – No Limit Texas Hold’em Winning Strategies for Surviving and Thriving

$15.95

(6.5)
A book by two-times WPT winner Erick Lindgren. A book that is not bad, but that suffers from the same drawback that many famous-player books have: They are not in-depth enough. This book is quite good, but from a player of Erick’s calibre, one would simply expect more. In other words: If this is all Erick knows about the game, then winning a couple of WPT’s would not be all that hard. But since winning WPT’s is hard, it could only lead to one conclusion: Erick knows much more than he has written down – and for that reason, I think the book is not as good as it could have been. Some positive and negative things include:

Good things:
· Erick’s focus on “playing to win”, and his strategy of playing many small pots, even when it involves getting involved with marginal values. Also his emphasis how you should not shy away from slightly + EV situations is one that I like.
· Lots of things in this book are about postflop play, what is described by Erick as the cornerstone of his game. Most tournament books / articles only discuss preflop play.
· Erick talks specifically about long and gruelling 4- or 5-day tournaments, and the strategy changes that are required at the different stages of this event. Very few books discuss specifically this type of tournament.

Bad things / Points of criticism
· Too much WPT promotion for my taste. Instead of talking about big televised events, it is all about the WPT, as if there are no other big televised events. This is especially bad when he recommends some other books that beginners should focus on – and here, he only mentions one WPT book and one book by his friend Matt Matros, but not any of the other – much better – books that are available.
· The book has lots of white pages and lots of space – all to make the book look much bigger and thicker than it really is. Finishing the entire book took me less than 5 hours, and for a book that is supposed to have advanced poker advice in it, this is usually not a good sign.
· The math sections by Matt Matros (pp. 159-179) are not all that bad, but they don’t seem to fit well within the concept of the book. Also, no less than six pages of math (pp. 174-179) are all based on a rather unlikely assumption: the opponent is a player who has bet small on the flop, and will continue to bet small on the turn or river regardless of whether he has a big hand or not. Changing just one thing (let this player make a large bet instead of a small one once he has completed his draw / improved his hand) will make all of the calculations & conclusions useless.
· A strange recommendation by Erick (p.41) that when you are under the gun, shortstacked with just ten times the big blind and the hand AT, you should not raise all-in, but make a smaller raise of just 2 or 2.5 times the big blind. Quote: “By playing the hand slower, I can disguise my hand and make it look stronger than it is. It also enables me to fold if there is significant action behind me and I am certain I am dominated.” While I understand his reasoning, I think that this is a rather weak option, as this would be a situation where in my view there is just one move: Going all-in. (And if the situation does not seem good for an all-in, then fold.)Yet Erick describes this all-in move as “the equivalent of giving up.” He says he prefers calling, raising small, and yes even folding over the move that seems to be the obvious one at this stage: the all-in move. Of course, I understand that his recommendation is specifically for the early stages of an event, where you should not push the panic button too soon, and where there are no antes just yet, and I also understand that good players always like to have an “escape route”. But with a stack of just ten times the big blind and the big blind waiting on you the immediate next hand, this does not seem like the time to get frisky by making small raises that can give someone (say, the big blind) the chance to call you cheaply with a hand like 97 or 86 suited, outflop you and bust / bluff you out. The time to get frisky and make small bets & raises is when you have a big stack IMO – not when you are struggling to stay alive.





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