I am going to say essentially what everyone else on here has been saying... If you buy this book, know that you can use the chapters not written by Negreanu as toilet paper or kindling for your fireplace. What you are buying this book for is Negreanu's explanation of "small ball" NL tournament poker. I noticed from reading the other reviews that everyone else is similarly interested in small ball, and have found this strategy to be quite effective. I also noticed that one guy on here seems to think Daniel is advocating a "weak, passive" approach to playing poker. This is far, far from the truth. Either he didn't read the book well enough, or is just not intelligent enough to get what Daniel was trying to communicate. Here are some basic ideas behind the small-ball philosophy:

1) Keep the pots small, pre-flop. You don't want to put a lot of your chips at risk before you even see the flop. Your aces may get busted by deuces post-flop, and you'll be pot committed after a few big bets. Not good. Instead, you wait to see the flop, then evaluate the situation based on what your opponent is doing. By keeping the pots small, you will pick up more pots that people don't really care about after the flop and not risk getting drawn out on by some crazy donk.

2) Play lots of hands that have big post-flop potential. That means opening up your starting hand selection by a large amount. This has been a big adjustment for me, but by doing so I have learned a lot about how to play poker in general. I have won a lot of big pots in tournaments and deep-stacked cash games by calling raises with mediocre hands that turn into monsters post-flop. Daniel expounds on which hands to call with under which set of circumstances.

3) Don't let your opponents get a good read on you. By playing your big hands the same as you do your weak hands, it makes it very hard for your opponents to know what you are playing with. It forces players into a guessing game, and if you are fairly decent at reading other people's hands, you can make some really good plays.

4) Playing the texture of the board. A good amount of Daniel's small ball approach deals with making decisions based on the texture of the board. This is something that is key to any poker player's success, I think. You don't always have to have the best hand to end up with the chips.

Those are some main aspects to playing small ball that Negreanu pays a great deal of attention to. What I've noticed for myself and other players is that the people who consistently do well in poker tournaments rely on more than luck and aggression. They rely on skill and discipline. I think this book will help you in both areas, if you aren't a small ball player already.

Daniel's books are good reading and easy to understand. His style in book writing is as good as his style in playing poker.....winning results!

This is a long awaited tome from Daniel, and his part of the book is interesting and informative. The rest of the book is a randomly thrown together collection of innocuous filler. The publisher overexaggerates the value of this book to the extreme versus previously published literature like Super System and Harrington. If you buy this book, know you are doing for Daniel's small ball approach to poker only.

I really was interested in Negreanu's writings about small ball and it did not disappoint me. It's written well and it's witty. But wait, why do you have to go throught 200 pages of written material by other writers, whose work does have almost nothing in common than... well, that it's about poker. I did not find their work very inspiring. It all seemed rather some bits of this and that. And what the ... is it that entire pages are used to illustrate one hand vs the other hand, like what hands dominate a certain hand. What a waste of trees.
All in all, the book is worth it's money. But I would have paid it too for 200 pages of Negreanu solo (and than I would have some spare space on my bookshelve too).

Yope

Other books go over basic preflop guidelines with little explanation for the intricacies of postflop play. They never move beyond "mix it up," "value bet," "catch over-aggressive players in bluffs," and other basic sayings few authors go very far to explain. Aside from a few gems from Sklansky and his team, not until Harrington's tournament and cash game series did we see detailed examples of postflop strategies. Earlier authors focused on the simple line of thought associated with world class play: outplay your opponent.

What they failed to do was discuss the variables necessary to determine:

1.If we have the best hand in murky situations
2.If we do have the best hand, what lines of play extract the most value?
3.If we don't have the best hand, what situations and players can we exploit to turn our hand into a successful bluff?
4.What kinds of variables are necessary so we can exploit similar situations?

What we need is a book that addresses the weaknesses so many other books promote.

That's where Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em comes in, and where we jump ahead to it's real gem: Small-ball.

Small-ball is a style meant to confuse your opponent and give you maximum value. It is a style employed by many of the smartest, most successful tournament players including Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, and our author, Daniel Negreanu. As Negreanu states, when you watch a small-ball player, "you will notice that he appears to be in control of the table, yet at the same time, seems to be playing with reckless abandon, giving little thought to the strength of his starting hand."

Daniel Negreanu's small-ball section details a myriad of complex postflop decisions. He wants us to play as many hands as possible to put us in as many profitable situations as we want. The more hands we play, the more situations we must be able to exploit or we will become exploited ourselves. As such, the author must provide vivid examples of how to take advantage of common but complicated streets based off specific player tendencies, board textures, and typical methods of exploiting how certain hands react to different boards.

Once we move beyond the monkey play of getting it all in with the nuts, a player's skill becomes dependent not just on how to play his hand but on how to play his opponent. The message of other advanced strategists has been to read what hand your opponent has. Small-ball takes this a step further with the axiom: Don't play what your opponent has. Play what your opponent doesn't have.

Building on this axiom, Negreanu explains perhaps the most revolutionary concept in his book: "bluffing outs," a strategy that calls for us to determine the true odds of drawing out on our opponent as well as what cards we can bluff with. Negreanu stresses that advanced plays such as these require advanced reads. We must observe if an opponent is capable of folding, and if so what hands will he fold to what situations. Unless we have noticed a player can lay down pocket Aces to a low, 4-card straight board, it's best to just concede the hand and pick a better spot. But given we have a read, adding bluffing outs into our decision can turn a difficult fold into a clear call.

Players immersed in Negreanu's later sections may misconstrue some of the plays he suggests as too passive to succeed, but it's a style that's allowed him to go deep in numerous tournaments while his opponents' over-aggressive styles often lead them to either build a big stack, or more often to just bust out. Small-ball wants us to get maximum value for our legitimate hands as well as our bluffs, and Negreanu insists that sometimes means taking a small risk with big hands for bigger rewards.

For example, Negreanu suggests often just calling a preflop raise in position with big pairs like Jacks or Tens, while common discussions of such situations almost always advocate reraising. In his section on Turn play, he suggests check/calling or checking behind big but marginal hands that unfortunately cannot withstand a bluff.

Critics of these sections may note that not betting the turn fails to protect our hand as well as misses potential value, but as Negreanu points out, noting player tendencies and board textures allows us to put our opponent on a hand and determine spots in which we are well ahead or way behind. If our opponent only has 3 or 4 outs, it is pointless to create a situation that could deter our opponent from proceeding with the worst hand, or worse, failing to convince him to bluff with what he or she thinks is the best hand.

A small-ball player utilizes a mix of aggressive and passive strategies because, at the end of the day, the small-ball player wants to still be in the tournament with a stack that seems to have grown on its own.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book does not stack up. With all due respect to the contributing authors to Power Hold'em, their sections fail by following the same trend as their predecessors. Too many poker players are beyond learning a hand ranking chart, and those that aren't have many other books and websites to learn such basics. Televised poker games until recently utilized sports commentators. At best poker amateurs, those commentators are dropping off, replaced by professional poker players, reflecting an overall trend of increasing sophistication in both players and viewers of the game. The poker audience includes more than trained monkeys, and they are hungry for the advanced strategies found in the small-ball section of Daniel Negreanu's Power Hold'em.

If you're frustrated because you rarely go deep in tournaments, confused because your bluffs never work, sad because no one ever pays off your big hands, and eager to join a group of players that make poker seem effortless, you need to buy this book.

I've notice a lot of the complaints here are from players who seem to have read every other poker book, and there's nothing wrong with that, but one has to realize the more you read about a particular subject, the more 'recycled material' you are going to come across. Was this book perfect? Absolutely not. Did it have a lot of good information in it? Absolutely. I've read the Super System's, and a few other books, and didn't feel like everything I had read in PHS was just 'reahashed material'. As a matter of fact, I think it fits in well with the Super System's as a 'compliment' or extension.

This book is the best book I have read on hold'em and I have read most of them. This book is a great way to improve your cash game skills but an even better way to improve your tournament strategy. The way Daniel Negreanu presents the information and examples is very clear. You learn how to think like a pro and have a better understanding for what they are thinking. Hope this helps.

It's a mediocre book. I like Daniel very much but he gives no real insight in his mind...he advocates the weak-passive approach but doesn't explain deeply how to become a winning player with it. It's recommended if you think the only way to win is to be iperaggressive...otherwise buy Harrington books on cash games.

I'm a big fan of Daniel's, I've been reading his blog and articles for years now.

I generally enjoy reading what he writes, but this one falls short.
The books is a spin off of Super System, several chapters from 'star' contributors on holdem. I've read several poker strategy books, harrington's books, and several two plus two titles. The content of this book just doesn't compare.

It's written in a very conversational tone, without much math and the detail I've come to expect from other poker titles I've read. This may be a good thing, however, if you prefer less dense poker reading. I want to like it more, but just I don't at this point.

I received my book about three weeks ago; the invoice showed I had ordered it on March 3, 2006. It is difficult to give an unbiased review after 6 or 7 delays over the last two years but I will try. The publisher has still not updated the description page they created when the book was first being marketed; the original book was to cover limit, pot limit and no limit for tournament and cash games. This book covers only no limit and adds online no limit cash and tournament games. Several of the original authors did not make it into this book. Also, Evelyn Ng is not one of the greatest stars in the game in my opinion although she is somewhat well recognized.

If Daniel Negreanu's contribution had been a stand alone book I might have given it a 5; unfortunately after making many promises and marketing the book so aggressively two years ago I think he was obligated to keep it a multi author book which is partially why I ended up with a three rating overall.

First issue I have with the book is the heavy hand of the publisher, none other than Avery Cardoza. It seems there is an ongoing feud with Cardoza Publishing and 2+2 Publishing and Avery Cardoza is arrogant, audacious and downright rude in the preface which immediately made me question his integrity and the book's integrity. To call this one of the top poker books ever written will be decided in the court of public opinion and by those who know poker not by Avery Cardoza. He should keep his personal issues personal and not taint Negreanu's book with unneccesary garbage.

Evelyn Ng's contribution appears to me to be written mostly by Negreanu; I have read Negreanu's writing for many years and it seems to be his voice. Not a hugely useful chapter and not very original as the main approach is strikingly similar to "The System" put forth in Sklansky's tournament book several years ago and expounded on in "Kill Phil". Primarily a beginner approach to no limit tournaments.

Todd Brunson's contribution is very short in several ways. More advice than strategy and not nearly as thorough as his chapter on high low split in "Super System 2" which I thought was outstanding. It covers high limit cash games which seems to juxtapose the previous "beginner" approach in Ng's chapter. Sequence is important in this type of book and Brunson's chapter seemed out of place as well as my other comments.

Eric Lindgren is also more advice than strategy and covers online no limit holdem. A few ideas to use but again put this into the preface's promises by Cardoza about this being one of the top poker books written.

Paul Wasicka's chapter is short-handed online no limit is short on content also. Only 25 pages and again with its brevity it creates many unanswered question that you will have to search for elsewhere. No limit holdem becomes more complex shorthanded and this brief chapter falls short.

David William's chapter "Mixing it Up" is actually fairly decent but it is an approach and style that lends itself to seriousness variance and is for fearless and skilled players who must still navigate the inevitable traps this approach creates. It is actually complimentary to the small ball approach that Negreanu teaches.

The meat of the book is Negreanu's "Small Ball" which many top winning tournament players have been using with great success. This style is similar to Gus Hansen's style which likes to see many flops, keep the pots small, make good reads and exploit your opponents with hand ranges and position. It's not an easy style to play successfully and requires many intricate and finesse type plays that
might be challenging to learn from a book. I do feel though that it is a thorough and solid treatment of his style. Thinking through a hand in reverse takes some work and focus and implenting plays based on good reads takes hundreds if not thousands of hours of playing. I have always liked Negreanu's writing style and approach to poker and would buy the book for just his chapter. Too bad he didn't write the whole book; it lost points on the other chapters not on his.

All things considered, I was a little disappointed with this book. I was hoping it would focus on Negreanu's unique style of poker and that it would present ideas not yet covered by the other great poker books (like the Harrington series of books on tournaments and cash games). But it's a 485 page book and Negreanu doesn't even pen a word of it until the last 200 pages.

There are 5 chapters before Negreanu's, each written by a different pro: Evelyn Ng, Todd Brunson, Erick Lindgren, Paul Wasicka, & David Williams. Ng's chapter presented an interesting strategy for beginners that made a lot of sense to me and that I hadn't heard of before, which was good. But the other 4 chapters by the pros were a waste of time. Brunson, Lindgren, Wasicka, & Williams all wrote about very basic concepts that I'd heard of a million times before.

Brunson's chapter was on cash games, but he didn't even scratch the surface of cash game strategy in the way that Harrington on Cash Games did. He spent an entire chapter talking about re-buying, not bluffing, & trap hands.

Lindgren's chapter was about online play. The major flaw with that chapter was that it was written for players that cut their teeth playing in casinos and are now moving online. In reality, I think most of us start online and work our way towards casinos if we succeed online, so the whole chapter felt "backwards". He provided a little more actual in-game strategy than Brunson, but not much.

Wasicka's chapter was about short-handed tables. Outside of Ng's chapter I found this chapter the most useful. Wasicka presented some ideas which were new to me and even the ones that weren't new were at least logical and presented well.

Williams' chapter could have been written in 1 sentence: "Mix up your play so your opponent can't read what you've got." It's the first rule of poker to not let yourself fall into the trap of being predictable and Williams some how rambled on about this for a whole chapter.

With all that being said, Daniel's chapter was great and I thought it was good enough to stand on its own. About 200 pages in length, he describes in depth his small-ball strategy, the math that makes it work, and how to master it. He guides the reader through starting hand selection and position all the way thru flop, turn, & river play, making lots of easy to understand analogies along the way. Although I think the rest of the poker world as caught on to Daniel's methods since his immense success in 2003 & 2004, this strategy is a useful weapon for any poker player to have in his arsenal. Daniel's strategy, when properly employed, should allow the reader to pick up lots of uncontested pots and should keep pots small unless the reader has a big hand.

Taken on a chapter by chapter basis, I'd give the following ratings:

Ng: 4 stars
Brunson: 1 star
Lindgren: 2 stars
Wasicka: 3 stars
Williams: 1 star
Negreanu: 5 stars

But as a whole, with all the fluff in there, I'd give the whole book just 2 stars.

I pre-ordered this a long, long time ago and had almost given up on it when I got the the email that it was being shipped.

The funny thing about this is that the most important thing I learned from this book wasn't in the book at all..

First of all: this really isn't a book for beginners. There is a chapter by Evelyn Ng that lays out a strategy for beginners, but that's not the main thrust of the book. This is about power tournament no limit poker and it's the absolute best book I've read yet.

The problem with many other poker books is that you sometimes can't tell what game they are talking about: pot limit, limit, cash games? The strategies for all of those are much, much different than those for tournament NL so the lessons learned can be very harmful. Daniel makes it very clear what he is talking about.

Here's another thing: most poker books aren't really written well. The authors aren't writers, and it shows. Daniel Negreanu writes very, very well and that makes a big difference. I really appreciated that.

There are several other chapters by important players: Brunsen, Lindgren, Ng, Williams and Wasicka all contributed material. Frankly, they could have left all of that out and I would have been just as happy. I don't mean that those are bad chapters, but for me the meat of this book is Daniel's.

So what's that most important thing I learned here? Simply, that I was right.

That is, over the few years that I've been playing, I have slowly come to the same place that Daniel outlines: "small ball" is the path to winning tourneys. But every time I'd express any opinion along those lines, the old-style Doyle Brunsen high-aggression players would insist that I was wrong. Well, if I'm wrong, so is Daniel and I don't think many are in a position where they have any claim to question his play.

Not that I'm in Daniel's league, of course. But so much of what he said caused me to say "Yeah!" and feel vindicated and of course the rest helped me refine and improve the things I have been thinking about.

Of course the thing about poker is that if "everyone" started playing small ball, the old style Doyle Brunsen aggression would once again be the best play. You always have to remember that primarily you have to "play the player" and be ready to switch your style as circumstances dictate. However, right now a lot of the lesser wannabees still know nothing about small ball so the few that really apply these lessons will benefit greatly.

I feel a little funny recommending this book. If everyone I play with read it, I might not do as well as I do. Well, unless they all took this as cookie cutter recipes (something Daniel warns against, by the way). The big lesson here is that good poker is smart poker - that it's not about "always do this if that", but only about looking for (and creating) opportunity.

I'm not a great poker player. I've only been playing NLHE a few years and may never get beyond mediocre, but if I ever do, I know that Daniel's book will have had a lot to do with it.

With the game growing so rapidly, there is always a need to get that edge on your opponents. Daniel is a master at his craft, teaching the lethal low ball strategy. I play online, home games, and casino. This book caters to all with sections on online, deep stacks, short stacks, high stakes, low stakes, on and on... it has it all. In my mind, this book is better than Super System I and II. A real must have for any serious poker player!!!