Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game

by John Vorhaus

The second in Vorhaus's winning new series, this will teach players how to adopt a warrior approach to the game and dominate the opponent, even if it is a computer. This is the Art of War for online gamblers, combining advice on gameplay as well as how to spot common pitfalls specific to internet gambling.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0818406313
• ISBN13: 9780818406317
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Lyle Stuart
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Not a How-to-Play but coves very important aspects of online play

If you are looking for a book that will tell you HOW to play poker, this book is not for you. There are a million books out there that cover starting hand requirements, positional considerations, pot odds, and game selection. If you are a beginning player I would suggest Winning Low Limit Holdem (Lee Jones) or Play Poker Like the Pros (Phil Hellmuth). This book covers many topics that are critical to learn if you want to become a winning player such as "mood management", "money management" and gathering "book" on your opponents. I see that many people have slammed this book but these negative reviews also had fantastic phrases like "the advice is too general and time consuming to be of any value." I LOVE TO HEAR COMMENTS LIKE THIS!! Yes, many of the topics covered in this book will take a great deal of time such as gathering data on your opponents. Nobody can ever say that playing winning poker is easy, if they do, they loose plain and simple. Learning which hands to play and in what position will do wonders for your game. Learning how to calculate pot odds will take you further, however this will only make you an average player who may squeak out very meager gains at the lower limits. As you start climbing into the higher limit games you must be able to spot your opponents betting patterns, tendencies and then be able to quickly adapt to change. While your doing all of this you must also keep your ego and mood in check. This is easier said than done. The topics covered in this book are very important for online play. This book is not Super System, Harrington on Holdem, Championship Holdem nor the Theory of Poker but it does have its place in your beginning poker library. Buy Winning Low Limit Holdem, buy Play Poker Like the Pros, learn how to play from these books. If you think you want to learn more check out Killer Poker Online. If nothing else, Killer Poker Online may shed some light on the amount of work that is required to play a winning game online at respectible limits. After you are finished with Killer Poker you can decide if you are ready to continue on a winning poker path or if you are more comfortable squeaking out minor gains in a low or micro limit game.

Hard-nosed, realistic

It's obvious that John Vorhaus knows introspection because that is what this book is all about: Take a look at yourself. Often. Remember if you're losing (and most online players are, to put it bluntly, losers, who, guess what, LOSE) the only person you can really blame is yourself. What Vorhaus does is make objective the very subjective experience of self-analysis in relation to the game of poker and attendant psychology. Poker is a game that lives within the very heart of the rapacious human soul. Because it is about money (and money is the electricity of the human enterprise) and because it is highly psychological, in that we ask not only what is the other person up to, but also what does the other person think WE are up to, poker is perhaps the quintessential human game. Vorhaus in this book, in contrast to most books on poker, goes to the very heart of the personal psychology of poker. After all people playing poker GET INVOLVED. They sweat BB's and they go on TILT. They rant at the screen and pepper their opponents with "trash talk" chat and other lies. It's an emotional game. A bad beat on the river in a huge pot can cause many an otherwise level-headed person to go bananas. Vorhaus, who cut his teeth in the California casinos, in particular at the spacious Commerce Casino ("The King Of Clubs") just down the road from his residence in Monrovia, hands out tips, exhortations, and advice, makes observations--some of them rude and off the wall--and using his own very extensive experience, attempts to guide the average Internet poker junkie into his or her own mind to see why he or she is a guppy amongst the sharks, as the case may be. Vorhaus himself is obviously a very good poker player, but he is also a very good writer, and that is what makes this book interesting. There's not a whole lot of strategy, and you won't learn much about which hand to play in which position, or how to play JT when A, K, rag flops or whether to check the nuts on the river. You will learn, for example, about "feste verstellung" (German for "fixed idea"). What does this have to do with playing poker? Well, many players believe all sorts of bizarro things about why they win or lose, and in believing them they lose track of reality and end up massively focused on such delusions as "the game is fixed," "I'm playing against 'bots," "the river always kills me," etc., ad nauseam. Vorhaus observes (and this is a splendid example of how well he writes): "The fixed idea...stands squarely between a person's perception and his outer reality, warping incoming information like a black hole bends gravity and light." (p. 167) What Vorhaus insists upon is keeping records of both how your opponent's play and how you play yourself. Say you run salty for a while at a game you usually beat. You feel you have been unlucky, that you just haven't been holding any cards. Normally in the brick and mortal world, barring a photographic memory, you can't really be certain

Great book for beginner to low-intermeidate transition!

For $10 you can't go wrong with this book! Some of the details here basic, but if you're new to the online game -- regardless of how much experience you have in live play -- this book is worth reading even if it seems to touch only on the basics. The concepts of taking notes on other players and game selection is a very unique concept to the online game.

Thought Provoking for the Experienced Player

This is a great book if you are past the point of studying pot odds, drawing hands, what to do when etc. It raises excellent points on how to keep a winner at the tables with your mental attitude, looking for good games etc. The author actually gives examples how to do this. He raises excellent points about differences between B & M play. Online tells and keeping books on your opponents. Really a very good book on hold'em and I have read most of them.

Great Book!! Tells the TRUTH about Internet Playing

This is a GREAT book. It is not about HOW to play poker, it is about the REAL LIFE differences between person to person poker and Modern Internet poker. If you are at all serious about playing online....you MUST get this book!!