Internet Texas Holdem: Winning Strategies from an Internet Pro

by Matthew Hilger

Book Overview

EXPANDED NEW EDITION A Complete Course in Playing Winning Limit Hold'em No Limit Hold'em has become the glamor game of poker. Yet today's savvy pros know that some of the best low-risk money-making... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974150207
• ISBN13: 9780974150208
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Dimat Enterprises, Inc.
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

More Than a Beginner Book

The reviews here that say this is just another hold 'em text book for beginners really don't do it justice. There is no way all of the information in this book could be ingested in a single read; it is extremely well structured, and doesn't patronize its readers (like, say Phil Hellmuth's lame excuse for an introduction to poker). I like the way it begins, not with starting hands and all that jazz, but with key concepts like hand reading, pot odds, bluffing and so on. While it's true that most of this is in familiar Sklansky territory, the real bonus comes in the thoroughness of the hand analyses and the test hands. Hilger covers a lot more ground than I've seen in other books of this sort, and needs rereading to get full appreciation. You really feel at the end that you could use this as a primer for internet (or live) poker, it's so complete. No, I'm not a friend of the author - I wouldn't know him if he sat opposite on the subway. As for the price - I think it's fair, compared to other poker books which deliver less value for about the same investment.

A new outlook to this game

As a relatively new player to Hold'em, this book has opened my eyes. I finally understand why they say it takes a minute to learn this game and a lifetime to master. Matthew seems to be a master at taking this complicated game and presenting it to the reader in a very organized and logical manner which is easy to understand. My game has jumped leaps and bounds since reading this book. He fully explains some important poker concepts such as bluffing and slowplaying and when they are appropriate. He discusses each round of Hold'em in a lot of detail. What I like about his approach is that he explains why you should do things, not just what you should do. He gives over 200 hand examples which gives you a unique glimpse into the mind of a pro which helped me greatly into how I analyze different situations. If you are serious about poker you will probably read this book several times. As a beginner, I picked up a lot of new concepts but there is too much material here to fully absorb in just one reading. An overall fantastic book.

Excellent all around hold'em book!

When I first started playing hold'em online about six months ago I realized that if I didn't study the game I would just become another gambling statistic. Though I like poker I'm risk averse at heart, so I hit the books hard, picking up reading recommendations from the 2+2 forums. The most frequently recommended trinity of hold'em poker books to start with seem to be: Winning Low Limit HOLD'EM [WLLH] (Lee Jones), The Theory of Poker [TOP] (David Sklansky), and Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players [HPFAP] (David Sklansky/Mason Malmuth). I've been through all of these, the latter two several times as they are particularly good.However good TOP and HPFAP are I felt there was something subtle lacking which made the advice more difficult than necessary to put into practice. Not until I stumbled upon a copy of Matthew Hilger's Internet Texas Hold'em by chance did I realize what it was: hand examples! Remember learning subjects like math? Very difficult to solidify the concepts by simply reading theorems. Most people require the repetition of doing many examples to use the theorems with any facility. Poker is no different and the "Test Your Skills" sections at the end of each chapter in this book are worth their weight in gold. The "answers" to the examples are perfectly concise and there is no pretension that they are set in stone. You will be challenged just enough to think about each situation without feeling bogged down. For this reason Hilger's book serves as more than just another book on hold'em theory. It is "workbook" that will help you to start thinking through typical hand situations rather than simply memorizing tables of starting hands and odds. Overall, your ability to recall strategies for common hold'em situations will be much better having thought through the carefully chosen examples Hilger presents up front.For the beginning/intermediate player (I can't really comment on expert players...yet), Hilger's is the best single book on the subject. Make no mistake, Hilger's books is comprehensive enough to take you into the tougher, higher hold'em limits and I envision coming back to it many times in the future for a refresher. In comparison, Jones' WLLH (the most often recommended introductory low-limit text) feels threadbare: very few examples, loose starting hands, and not nearly enough on post-flop play. Do yourself a favor and substitute Internet Texas Hold'em for WLLH in the trinity. You will have to do much less experimenting at the tables and will be well prepared to integrate the topics covered in HPFAP and TOP.

I finally see the light!

Systematic, Complete, Accurate.Most of the poker books I've read have a stream-of-consciousness format. Matthew's book is a revelation. Before I bought this book (two weeks ago, on a whim, because I laughed at the cover's illustration), I had been playing online for about six months. I'd read Sklansky, Malmouth, Krieger, etc., and had some success in $3-$6 online. I figured I knew the game better than most. But wow! I learned more from this book than I had from the other dozen I've studied. The starting hand chart is nothing less than brilliant in its design and research. It automatically adjusts your play for loose and tight games, by loosening your standards as the number of callers rises. It also adjusts your play for raised pots, and for playing in the blinds. The chapters on flop play showed me how much I didn't know about the game. I now find myself folding much more often on the flop than I used to. Matthew identifies several catagories of flops based on their characteristics (two-suited, triple-connected, etc), and cross references these with the hand you hold given your pocket cards (flush-draw, mid-pair, etc). He teaches how to play the hand on the flop given the number of opponents, and the preflop and flop action. I had recently been getting very frustrated by having a good preflop hand, and then almost always losing by the river! Now I understand why that was happening, recognize if a flop fits MY hand or is more likely to fit that of any of the five callers behind me. I now know when the reward will not compensate for the risk, and fold. This alone has saved me a lot of money and irritatation. In fact, it's fun to watch the play-out of the rounds after I fold flop-hands that just weeks ago I would have played, and see how much I'm saving.