First off this is not a 'WINNING AT INTERNET POKER' book...it is a 'EXPLANATION OF INTERNET POKER'. I bought this book hoping to learn something. The first (and I am not exaggerating this) 2/3 of the book has nothing to do with actual poker playing. Throughout those chapters they discuss how to use your computer to choose and download a poker program. I saw that they had a chapter on tournaments. All they do is simply explain the enviroment of the tourney (i.e. how many people are in certain tournaments, how much you have to pay to get into them...) You will not learn any actual strategies or what to do in certain situations. I recommend buying this book if you have never in your life played any poker over the internet. If you saw the world series of poker on your TV and thought to yourself 'hey maybe i can play online' then right at that point this book wouldn't be the worst idea. Let me take an exerpt from the book...page 18 5th paragraph..."If your screen is kind of fuzzy, and you don't normally stare at it for excessive periods of time, you may want to consider upgrading to a new monitor. Gawking at fuzzy images for hours at a time is draining,"...

And if you want more examples of what you are in for buy the book and read the whole thing. Once again to emphasize...YOU WILL NOT BETTER YOUR GAME BY READING THIS BOOK, IT IS A WASTE OF TIME.

I met one of the authors at a dinner, and he was so articulate and enthusiastic about online poker that I became interested in it-although before that, I had never once thought about online poker in my life (seriously). Later I mentioned the conversation to my 77-year-old dad who had been playing "some" online bridge when he wasn't crashing AOL, and he decided to try it. Well, long story short: while I got this book to see what I've been missing all this time, and read it just for fun (and it was fun, too, written with a sense of humor, and full of information), my dad was getting extremely frustrated and starting to hate the whole idea. After hearing him grumble more times than I could count, I went over to his house, sat down with him, and-completely based on what I'd read in this book-got him up and playing comfortably on a site in about an hour and half.(While reassuring my mom over my shoulder at the same time...) He's been playing ever since, but I'm still too chicken, having played a lot more Yahtzee than poker growing up. Anyway, the book was very helpful for two beginners: a non-poker-playing, computer-confident woman and her un-computer-savvy father who's been playing cards for more than six decades.

Sometimes when I read--and I use that word with some restrictive license--a "Dummies" or an "Idiot's" guide to a subject, I find myself thinking, "how aptly named!" This book is no exception. However--and really this is what is important--if you're new to online play, this is the book you want to peruse. It's very basic, almost painfully so in some respects, as all "Dummies" books are; but whether you are a neophyte poker player or an expert, this book will give you everything you need to know to begin playing online.

Notice I am not talking about reading the book from cover to cover. As the authors say in their introduction: "Read any chapter at any point. Feel free to skip around." They do a good job of giving the links and naming the sites--playing sites and sites associated with online poker. They explain how you can deposit money and they alert the reader to some of the dangers of online play. They even give advice on how to play. However, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this might not be the best book to buy if you are interested in becoming a better player. What advice they do give is generally good although not of world class quality.

Here are a couple of examples that the causal player might want to skip:

[First, there's their analysis of a hold'em hand they observed being played at the $3 & $6 level (p. 138). I won't rehash the hand, but will observe that their conclusion that "Player 1 may have had A-K, or a large pocket pair, but dropped the hand when the other players clearly showed the board had paired" is faulty in several places. One, of course, is that the board had not paired. What they mean is that the bet, raise and re-raise action after the flop of 9s 10s Qd indicated that at least one of the players had a queen in hand and therefore had a pair. The fact that Player 1, with 17 bets in the pot, giving him 17 to 2 odds on his money by calling the raise and reraise, did NOT call strongly suggests that he did not have AK, since if he had he would have had two overcards and a draw to the nut straight, which has something like a 40% chance of improving on the river to a hand that could very well win the pot. It's hard to say what he had. It looks like he misplayed his hand. Furthermore, the authors don't give us the full story. At the showdown they reveal that the winner had AQ and won with just a pair of queens and the top kicker. They remark that the site folds the caller's cards because "the runner-up doesn't show." That's correct, but if you are in the hand and refer to the record of the hand that is sent to your computer on sites like PartyPoker, it will show all hands still in play at the showdown, and you could find out what the runner-up had.]

[Another example is on page 190 in the box discussing 2-2 vs. A-K. They say that it's a 50/50 proposition, but then contradict themselves by pointing out what most players know, namely that the deuces are a slight favorite head-up. Then they muddy these waters by saying, "The true odds vary from 50.3 percent versus 49.7 percent in favor of the pocket deuces to 53.2 percent versus 46.8 percent for the deuces, depending on the suits involved." Note that this is quote, unquote. It's a little unclear exactly what they are saying, but trust me the deuces are always the favorite. Their point (apparently) is that if the deuces are in the same suit as the aces, then, should four of either of those suits fall on the board, the deuces will always lose, thereby lessening their small advantage. However since one can never know until the hand is over just which suits the other player is holding, the proper way to figure the odds is to ignore the suits, since the distribution is not only unknown, but evens out over the long run. Furthermore, they are relying on the calculator at Card Player's Internet site, which is a Monte Carlo simulation, not an actual calculation of the odds. For most purposes, a simulation of a few thousand hands is sufficient. However, the real odds can only be figured out mathematically, which nobody these days, it appears, bothers to do. Well, I'm sure David Sklansky still figures his odds.]

These quibbles aside, Harlan and Derossi's book is well worth the investment, especially if you are a total newbie. They cover just about every aspect of the experience that a beginning online player would want to know about. Here's an example of their guidance under the subheading "Grappling with the Psychological Basics" on page 70: "From a psychological point of view, the biggest differences between online play and the brick-and-mortar world include the radical increase in the speed of play and a heavy (mental) disassociation from the money you put in play."

The plain fact of the matter is that when the dollars seem like virtual dollars (although they are not) there can be a tenancy to bluff too much, to play too loosely, and perhaps to play at a higher game than one can afford.

Another good (and very different) introductory book on cyberspace poker is John Vorhaus's Killer Poker Online, which I also recommend.

Incidentally, if you really are a beginner at poker, I recommend you buy a computer game and practice with that for a while, and then--as the authors recommend--play at the "play money" games that the online poker sites offer before you risk any real money.

I started online poker before I had this book, and... call me a dummy... I managed to blow 50 bucks in appallingly short order. I'd failed to understand some fundamentals of how online poker is different from my neighborhood games, and got burned. If only I'd had this book earlier!

The best advice in the book has to do with the psychology of online poker relative to table games. Understanding this is critical for people like me who migrated from neighborhood games to online, because I was totally baffled by the style of play, and its a huge mistake to assume that what one is seeing has to do with an increase in players' skill. This alone can shred quite a few hard-earned bills. On top of that, there are some "gotchas" in the mechanics of internet game play that the book explains (like thinking you're calling $1 when in reality its $100, or playing like a video-game zombie). Buy this book BEFORE you waste your bucks.

I'm just starting to play poker and bought this book along with "Poker for Dummies," and love it! You'd think an Internet poker book would be boring but this is far from it -- it's sassy, fun and keeps me paying attention. I play the lowest money stakes I can and this book helped me find a great site with a good sign-up bonus. If you're new to poker online, it's hard to imagine a better choice.