Poker Insight

In some ways, this book is a bit of a joke. I have only read the part by “Rizen” Lynch so far, and hope that the parts by pearljammer and van fleet are better.

I’ve played with the latter two, but only watched rizen play on TV. From watching him, he is a little loose, but intelligently aggressive, and seems to have good poker judgment. I think he also benefits from a lot of live players who are playing actual poker, folding, whereas rizen is used to online poker where drawing to gut shot straights against “good” opponents pays off — since such draws hit so much.

The hands that Rizen describes, playing largely in larger buy in tournaments, are seemingly largely against donks. And reading the book reminded me why I stopped playing online. Almost every other hand Lynch describes (at least that I’ve read so far) he happens to hit his miracle card, and he acts run of the mill about it.

A variation on a classic online situation where in my own online mtt and satellite experience I was running at about a 65 percent win rate (which over the 100 or so occurrences renders this an exceptionallty low probability — if online poker were truly random, but that is not even the tip of the iceberg) is the AA v Ax pre flop all in.

In Rizen’s hand, its not a pre flop shove, but a small raise from Rizen in the small blind with A7 of clubs after it’s folded around, and the bb re raises 3x, with still about 80 – 90% of the effective stacks behind. The flop is 689 with two clubs, a fantastic flop for him, giving him the nut flush draw with the open straight draw. His opponent has AA, and of course they get it all in, and he hits his 10 on the turn. Shocker, that. Pretty worthless hand description. The others are better for the thought involved, but the cards Rizen hits are often similarly ridiculous — albeit post flop rather than on the flop, or he has no real draw just a semi weak but not horrible hand, and his opponents play like donks.

I know lynch knows percentages, but his description of hands seems to intuitively rely upon a much higher probability of cards hitting for him than sheer randomness would dictate. And in most of the hands he describes, it is exactly that, again, which happens.

Combine that with what is often seemingly very poor play by his opponents, and his section is in some ways a testament to the absurdity of online poker. And the fact that players who do well have an extremely strong vested psychological interest in believing that it is truly random (when most have no clue as to whether this really is or is not the case, as every single “study” I have ever seen cited does not fully or correctly address the issue) and that it is all their skill gaining them the rewards they reap online, and nothing else.

On the flip side, I would still mildly recommend this book just off Lynch’s section. The reason is three fold. First, knowing that the other two authors will provide similar type of “here’s the hand, here is what I was thinking and why” type of analyses, and likely differing points of view. Second, Lynch is a good player, and reading his analysis of specific hands that he has actually played is revealing, if sometimes fairly basic. And third, the hand by hand layout makes it interesting and easy to read, and provokes thought about how to play certain situations, which is particularly helpful in combination with Lynch’s decent enough analyses of the hands.
Rating: 3 / 5

these guys are strong players no doubt but they dont offer much assistance to any players who are past the novice level.
Rating: 2 / 5

This book quite simply took my poker game(and my decision making) to a new level! I feel that it really showed me( in real tourrnament situations) the power of position. Helped push me into higher levels of thinking as I play, whether it be a 1-table sit-n-go or a tournament with thousands of players.

Can’t wait for Vol. 2!
Rating: 5 / 5