I was furious after I read some of the other reviews of this book. I looked only out of curiousity, considering I had already read (and reread) this book four year ago- before Varkonyi won the WSOP on ESPN or the WPT was being televised on the Travel Channel. The fact was, this book changed my life and my playing to a degree where I considered myself semi-professional. If you want a book on "How-to-begin-learning-poker" get Skalansky's skinny book on Hold 'em. But these pages are packed solid with enough information to make the book seem even heavier in your hands than the number of pages implies. Markus Damanski from Germany found it hard to understand, maybe english is not his first language. Jamie Landry from Seattle said she had to read it two whole times before she gleened a couple ideas from it! wow. And J. Gelling from NY gave it one star with an example quote to illustrate it's complexity which he could not follow.

BUT... my response is: Noam Chomsky was not easy to get through. St. Thomas Aquinas made me want to pull my hair out. J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmerillian is just a bunch of nonsensical words! My points are as follows:

1. THERE IS NO OTHER PLACE TO FIND THE INFORMATION PRESENTED IN THIS BOOK. I have read them all. Yes, all of them. Many times.

2. THERE IS NO WAY TO PRESENT THIS INFORMATION IN A MORE PRECISE FASHION THAN IT IS. I had to read sentences, paragraphs, and whole pages over and over and over again until I understood it too (just like Chomsky & Aquinas), but there is no way I could I have said it more succinctly.

3. THEY ASSERT THAT SINCE SKLANSKY OFTEN REFERS TO LIMIT HOLD EM ON HIS LESSONS, IT HAS LITTLE OR NO VALUE IN NO LIMIT HOLD EM. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I could not reasonably move up to no limit hold em until I could understand and apply (with dicipline) the ideas and theories he presents for limit games.

I play all over CA and NV at medium stakes ($5/$10 No Limit or $10/$20 Limit) against dozens of old men and young rookies (I'm only 28) who think they know it all. But it only takes a conversation at a short smoke break or a couple rounds of the blinds to recognize the basic theories they lack. And they scoff at me, "bah, i never read those damn books, sonny."

Well, most of us are not smart enough to have spontaneous knowledge of complex ideas. The next best thing we can hope for is to be smart enough to follow the line of logic of smarter men than us like Einstein, Chomsky, Aquinas, and yes, even Sklansky. If you can't follow their advanced theories yet, go back and reread the basics.

I shudder to think of reading an Einstein book for "Advanced Physicists" less than reading an idiot's review of it.

After reading several of the 2+2 offerings, I finally got around to picking up this one. I have to say that it is an excellent companion to Ed Miller's superb work, Small Stakes Hold'em. What I love about Hold Em for Advanced Players is that it recalibrated my fundamentals which is exactly what the mathematician ordered. It seems that the more I'm online competing, the more likely I am to make plays I should never be making. One can only be beaten so long by knuckleheads making straights with 9/5 offsuit before you start becoming experimental and see raise after raise with suited connectors that may have no value after the flop.

Admittedly, the book is not brand new, but they did update it to make it more in keeping with today's aggressive, aggressive, "I'm all in like Gus Hanson," game. The focus is ring games, which most of us play them online. I did not heed the author's advice when I got it (to read it straight through first), but skipped ahead to the new chapter on playing in loose games. Based on my experiences, their advice was on point and quite helpful.

I perused the reviews below, and, I have to say that I disagree with the recent about there being too many exceptions to the information given. I find the inability to state things categorically, and, for every instance, to be in the nature of the game. Endless and bizarre exceptions basically are Texas Hold'Em. It's semi-formal rules with exceptions everywhere you look. If there were not so many contingencies, the fish would never win, and, as all of us know, the fish win quite a bit. The randomicity of the game causes authors like Malmouth and Sklansky to alter their advice slightly depending on the situation, and to always try to find a way for the player to get an edge and slant the odds in his favor. And what is "in his favor" depends on the hand, the street, and the bet. A great many people long to impose order upon poker, but you cannot completely do so. With any form of gambling there will always be some chaos inherent; there's no getting around it. Once you accept this fact, you tilt far less. As for the writing style, okay, these are math guys. No, they aren't great writers, but so what? We are looking for their expert analytical guidance. I don't care if the sentences are choppy and devoid of personality. If you ask me, my game could use a little less personality. As a fellow soldier in the trenches, let me say that this would make a valuable purchase.

I am really wondering about the reviews on this page. Some were critical, but then there was a huge mass of positive reviews, completely ignoring the obvious problems with this book.

Let's try to get a picture of this. A book is good if it not only contains valuable information, it must also transfer this information to the reader. The second part is where this book fails completely.

In an essence the book offers you a collection of plays. The authors are trying to come up with concepts and rules, but at the same time they are giving so many exceptions, that the concepts and rules become vague and unreliable. In the end the reader is completely confused and doesn't know what to do with all of this.

Also their starting hands are questionable. Some guys did research on it and they discovered a few errors (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/mummert/poker/). Now it is up to the reader whom to trust, which adds even more to the confusion.

Overall I gave 3 stars for the information that must be hidden somewhere in this book. I didn't find much, but I can't deny that some conclusions made me say "ahhh". If you don't mind reading the same stuff twice or more before you vaguely understand what the authors wanted to say, I am sure you can find a few gems.

This book will definitely put you in the twillight zone of poker education. When you read it you have the feeling that there is lots of important stuff presented to you, you just don't know if you will ever understand it.

I've tried to make my way through this book twice unsuccefully. His style of writing is very very hard to follow.

However, what he says makes a lot of sense and the theories behind his ideas are very sound and profitable.

So, if you can climb your way through the jungle of tangled ideas and methods that he describes, you will be able to advance your game. If you're looking for something that flows a little easier then you should try picking up another book.

Also, to be mentioned, is this book covers only limit hold'em, not the more popular no limit of today's games.

Author David Sklansky thanks his father for helping to edit this text; he really ought to have hired a professional editor to re-write this book for him! Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players is poorly written and even more poorly organized. Here is a typical bit of wisdom from the book: "One criteria to keep in mind when deciding to play a small pair or a medium to small suited connector is how passive/aggressive the game is, in addition to its being loose. Specifically, as just mentioned, small pairs play well in loose aggressive games providing that they are not too aggressive. This is because if you flop a set you can anticipate many bets going into the pot. If the game is too aggressive and you hold a small pair you will frequently be forced to play for several bets, and now your hand will not achieve the implied odds that it needs to be profitable. If the game is passive, you prefer the suited connector to the small pair. This is because a 'set' will have trouble collecting a lot of bets. On the other hand, if the suited connector flops something like a gut shot draw it won't necessarily be bet out of the pot."

EDIT: All the advice in the book is presented in this manner: in this particular situation, you should raise if you think your opponent is bluffing and/or is loose aggressive and no one else is likely to re-raise behind you, but merely call if they're loose passive or your position is bad, and give some consideration to folding if they're tight aggressive or tight passive, unless the pot odds are good or the table is weak or you've folded too often in the past, etc. I realize poker involves thinking about your cards, your opponent's cards, your opponent's image, your opponent's view of your image, the odds of improving your hand, the pot odds, etc. It's a complex game in that way. However, when writing a text on the strategy of Hold 'em, to me it makes eminently more sense to focus on one or two topics at a time! Don't give advice presenting ten different factors to consider in the same sentence; very few human beings process things at that level. Break each factor down into its own chapter or at least paragraph, and save caveats and minor exceptions to strategic themes until well after making the main point. This is my criticism of this text; and I understand that some people might think that this book has the refined brilliance of Noam Chomsky; I think they're wrong about that, but suffice it to say there's no real excuse for this book's lack of organization or focus. The subject matter never approaches the depth of pondering fundamental questions of human existence, so comparisons to Chomsky are a significant stretch, in my humble opinion.

That all having been said, and having been criticized by some of the other reviewers for my poor view of the comprehensibility of this book, I would revise my earlier opinion on this book, if I could, to give it 3 stars. This is mainly because I had not persisted long enough to wade through the Q&A section at the back of the book (which I originally thought was more of an appendix), which while terse, contains brilliant concepts I have never seen presented anywhere else. The answers there are also clear and comprehensible in a manner unlike everything else that precedes it. All in all, there's greatness in this book... it's just well hidden.