I think the pre flop strategies are the best part of the book, as they are broken down into four categories and generally better than Sclansky. For those who find the math in poker difficult this book might help as it goes through in detail very basic EV calculations.

What this book is lacking is some depth and skills for higher stakes. It should be useful up to 2/4 but has little to add for 15/30 and above. It has some good thoughts in every chapter, but most of the time is spent on the mechanical aspects of poker, like pot odds, EV of free card etc.

For those who do not buy all good poker books, make sure you have red Ed Millers "Small stakes hold'em" first. This is in my view the best beginner - Intermediate level book in the market.

If I could only read one book on Limit Hold'em this would be it. The book is quite readable and Yao goes out of his way to simplify the calculations required to "Weigh the Odds". Yao distills much of Sklansky's "Theory of Poker" into a very simplified format. He simplifies the calculation of pot odds and expected value. One reviewer made some completely untrue comments regarding Yao's DIPO (Do I Have Pot Odds) calculation. The calculation is a simplified version of Sklansky's method and required only knowledge of how to multiply and add or subtract. What I most liked about Yao's treatment was that he shows how he comes up with statements like "there is a 10.5% chance of drawing a particular hand". Other books just make the statement and stop there. Also, the calculation of 10.5% generally turns out to be very simple, requiring only a knowledge of the number of outs to make a hand and the number of unknown cards (both of which are discussed in detail). There are extensive exercises in determining the number of outs and many examples of DIPO and Expected Value calculations.

Yao discusses: Types of Players, Expected Value, Pot Odds, Outs, Position, Starting hands, the Flop, the Turn, the River, Short Handed Games, Bluffing, Semi-bluffing and many other topics.

This book is for Limit Hold'Em. Much of the approach does not apply to No limit games.

I liked King Yao's book, but I wanted to like it more. It's a very good introduction to Holdem (and more), but I really think the "Weighing Odds" is too complicated and doesn't add more than rote memorization of common Holdem situations. For example, Yao gives a formula for calculating a flush draw on the turn. It's not that complicated that you couldn't use it, but why bother when most Holdem players know that a Flush draw is 9 outs and that's 5:1. Gutshot draw is 11:1. You need a bigger pot if there is a pair on the board or if your flush isn't to the nuts and there's someone else calling along who might have a bigger flush.

Yao gives good general advice about many other parts of Holdem besides odds and I'd recommend this book for its comprehensive approach to teaching people how to play Holdem well. The English of the book is a bit stilted but you can tell its Yao's own voice coming through. If you already own several Holdem books, such as Hilger's Internet Texas Holdem book and Sklansky's Texas Holdem for Advanced Players, you may not find that much new here (but then again you might). I look forward to more books coming from Yao.

Mr. Yao assures us he has been playing poker since the age of ten. Is there ANYONE in America that has not been playing poker since the age of ten? What does he mean by that? Now, Mr. Yao was once a derivatives trader. As to why Mr. Yao has found poker playing more lucrative and exhilirating than derivatives trading, I cannot venture a guess. Perhaps it is because he has played at derivatives since the age of 25, and is not nearly so pleased with it as he is with card clipping. Perhaps Mr. Yao is just a poor trader. It is certainly true that Mr. Yao is a very poor writer. I caution the prospective buyer (that's you) Mr. Yao's book nestles snugly somewhere between pedantic, inflated, obscure, and peculiar. For instance, Mr. Yao spends umpteen pages explaining FIFO, or is it DIPO, or DIPPITYDO, or FIFYFOFUM? which is a method of evaluating the playability of a hand given ones outs and the pot size. This might seem a handy dandy tool; however, it requires some 20 arithmetic calculations to pull it off. Try four tabling and using this method, and somewhere between getting your odds calculated, and multiplying the pot (in units bet) times the square root of the sine of the quadrate power divided by the molecular weight of a venusian hair, and you'll find all your windows shut down by the server for taking too much time. Someone should have whispered in Mr. Yao's ear " the rule of thirteen" a few times, and saved poker players who purchased this book, a mental spanking of Mr. Yao's sorts.

I can tell you for sure Mr. Yao had me whining his name quite a few times (YAOOOOOO!), especially when having found the use of the feminine pronoun for specifying any unknown person maybe six million times in the course of reading the first several chapters. Since English lacks a complete declension of the indeterminate case (it is, well, that's it, alas), it has lately become all the rage to use she and her to cover pronominal ambiguity. This wonder began in Berkeley a number of years ago, when it was found that the female students there possessed a sexual apparatus not only indistinguishable from the male's, but actually a tad larger. Some say, it is because the Berkeley female is actually a hyenna, but I leave that to the reader's discretion. Anyways, now, although a readership may be 99.9% male, (as with poker players) it is assumed that the ladie's pronoun should replace their no longer larger cousins as the indeterminate case. Mr. Yao exercises this supplantation to the extreme. Is Mr. Yao a Mrs. Yao? May be, oh wise reader, may be.

There IS useful material here, I think, although it's hidden under so unusually dense a smokescreen that nigh on anything could creep in pretending to be a thing it isn't. I would like to offer in Mr. Yao's defense that his book is very nearly hilarious, except that it is so self righteously presented, I cannot. I have read something over half the book, and found nothing that remains with me at the tables. You will say that half the book is hardly justice, but you fail to understand that reading half the book is rereading a third of the book 20 times, a quarter of the book 22 times, and so on...

I give it 2 stars because it is a thick, heavy, sturdy tome--for a poker book--and I hate to see so many trees giving up their steadfast lives to be reincarnated thusly, without at least nodding in their direction. I also suspect that Mr. Yao might well burst out weeping if I didn't.

Midwest book review guy........do you give anything but five stars? do u get paid to write reviews?

J Gelling ...your review was honest and i wont buy book... thanks