I recently finished reading Matthew Janda’s Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘Em and considered it one of the most helpful poker books I’ve read in some time. On a scale of 1 – 10, I give it a 9.5.
Applications is a Two Plus Two book par excellence. It’s dense, it’s thorough, it’s mathematically rigorous, and the only thing keeping it from a perfect score is that the writing and editing are sloppy at best and downright confusing at worst. There are dozens of typos, some as significant as a missing “not” which of course completely changes the meaning of the sentence. The subject matter is complicated, and the prose doesn’t do as much as it could to elucidate it. If anything, it serves to make the material seem even more overwhelming, and I can imagine many bookstore browsers getting intimidated.
If you can get past all that, though, you’ll find the most thorough and practical guide there is to playing unexploitable no-limit hold ’em. There are no toy games here; Janda gets right down to business applying game theory concepts to real no-limit hold ’em situations.
His techniques for estimating optimal pre-flop ranges are ingenious, and it only gets better from there. He emphasizes repeatedly that the goal isn’t to construct perfectly balanced ranges – that’s generally beyond human capabilities and in any event the details matter very little at the margins – but rather to build intuition and to recognize spots where you should be bluffing, value betting, calling, or folding more than you currently are.
Perhaps the most eye-opening conclusion for me was that there are many situations where the optimal strategy likely involves multiple bet sizes. Although Janda doesn’t go into a lot of depth on this, it’s certainly inspired me to investigate these situations for myself.
That’s not to say that Janda never goes into any depth. One of the highlights of the book are the hand examples at the end, where builds ranges for both players across multiple decision points in a single hand. His wise decision to shift the focus away from how to play a particular hand and towards building range-based strategies is the best illustration I’ve scene of both how one ought to think about poker and also how, specifically, to do that in a given situation.
This is not a book for the lazy or the close-minded. A quick skimming or surface-level reading won’t do much for you, and unfortunately the prose sometimes gets in the way of understanding already hard-to-grasp concepts. The effort is worth it, though.
Great review.
When do you think a poker student should read this to get the most out of it?
I’m a break even 1/2 player that is math focused and I’m working on my game. Should I focus on other books first and add this when I’m a winning 2/5 player and/or taking shots at 5/10, or will this be good to build a solid foundation now?
Thanks
Brandon
If you’re a smart and motivated break even 1/2 player, you’re probably better off reading this book a few times while playing microstakes on bovada than you are reading Harrington on Cash or something. Pieces of advice like “bet ace high flops when you are the preflop raiser” and concepts like pot control that you’ll read about in other poker books are heuristics for good strategy, but they won’t actually make you understand what makes a strategy good. You’d be even better off reading all the famous books though.
I have trouble getting past a sloppy presentation and likely won’t be buying this book. I have the same problem with training videos. Many are so poorly done that I don’t spend time with them, even though they may have worthwhile material is one can get past the bad stuff.
I agree with this review and wrote a similar mini-review in the 2+2 thread about it. Janda’s book completely changed the way I think about poker.
The typos are annoying and some of the arbitrariness in the math is irksome (who uses 3.5bb opens as standard?) but the basic ideas of thinking in terms of ranges instead of individual hands, and playing less exploitably, are crucial when playing today’s tough opponents.
Perhaps its best quality is that it encourages the reader to continue his/her study with some actual range work. It’s not a simplistic guide saying “This is a good spot for a squeeze play” or “C-bet the flop and print money”. It says “Here’s what optimal play *might* look like, but go and have a think about it.”
I do not play holdem.
I just wonder if and how fast the concepts and approach found in this book will become axioms for 0.10-0.25 6-max ZOOM on PokerStars?.
Is any chance that more unexploitable no-limit hold ‘em will become game of more fun, more action?
Or just add more restrictions on bet sizing,openning ranges,bluff frequencies,etc ?
I felt the same about this book. At first, I was annoyed that he would repeatedly restate things. Later, I came to realize that he’s probably doing that on purpose to make sure we get it all.
Just wanted to stop by and say I thoroughly enjoyed reading Andrews WSOP diaries ( ordered for my kindle via your link) on my holiday balcony in Lanzarote.Very entertaining and loved reading the thoughts behind the hands and descriptions of villains.Biggest shock for me was Andrew listening to Jay Z to get pumped up! I Hope there’s a part 5 after this years main event.
Couldn’t agree more. Loved the WSOP poker diaries. Excellent work Andrew!
Thanks!
Thanks, really appreciate your reading them and taking the time to leave a comment! There will be a Part 5, but it will be about the 2010 Main Event (in which I once again finished in the Top 100). It should be out well before this year’s Main Event.