Texas Hold'em for Dummies

by Mark Harlan

Turn on the TV, drop by a newsstand, or just browse the checkout your local supermarket and you'll see firsthand that Texas Hold 'Em is the poker game everyone's playing. It's a game that's deceptively simple, yet within its easy framework you'll find truth and trickery, boredom and fear, skill and misfortune—in other words, all the things that make life fun and worth living!

Texas Hold'em For Dummies introduces you to the fundamental concepts and strategies of this wildly popular game. It covers the rules for playing and betting, odds, etiquette, Hold'em lingo, and offers sound advice to avoid mistakes. This handy reference guide gives new and even seasoned players winning strategies and tactics not just for playing the game, but for winning.

You'll learn:
—Rules and strategies for limit, no-limit, tournament, and online play
—How to play the other players
—The importance of your bankroll—recommended sizes and more
—Hands you should and should not play
—How to camouflage your play and dodge traps
—When, who, and how to bluff
—How to maximize your win with check-raising and trapping
—The different approaches for playing in private games, casinos, card rooms, tournaments, and on the Internet
—How to use mathematics to your advantage

Texas Hold 'Em is a game of both skill and chance. But it's a game that can be beaten, and whether you want to make money, sharpen your game, or just have a good time, Texas Hold 'Em for Dummies will give you the winning edge.

Genres: Nonfiction, Games, Reference

288 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Marti · Rating 5 out of 5]

good intro or, in my case, great refresher while stranded in airports. you could follow the basics here and do decently at the tables.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you play hold em on a regular basis, you probably only need to skim through this book to see if you missed some of the basics. It could also help you if you have never played in a professional card room and wanted to learn the lay of the lay of the land before walking into the lion's den.

For anyone how has more than a passable knowledge of hold em, I recommend skipping to the section on the tens and reading the about how to jazz up your home game or the ten things you can do to improve your play.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the style Mark advocates and I learned a lot from it.

Next book I’m gonna log on this site will be an original Gutenberg Bible I bought to park my poker winnings in to appreciate … and bc I wanted to see how it stacked against the King James heads-up!

[Georg]

Google Books

[Crispin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great introduction to the game covering all the basics (a lot of topics!) in a brief and accessible way. Very readable straight through, and well organised for future reference. The many interactions between skill, chance, emotion and communication in poker make for an extremely interesting game, perhaps especially for people coming from a perfect-information background from games like chess or go. Games are a great source of metaphor. The situations and metaphors of poker are really different in character from those of chess or go, and in some ways more varied because the random nature of shuffled cards makes it slightly harder to settle into unhelpful ruts, habits and unspoken/unrealised agreements in the way that perfect information games can allow.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very basic foundation advice on playing but still kind of incomplete. Some of the chapters in here were interesting - he has one on bad beat stories.

[Jason Galloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended by a friend and goes over some of the strategy of poker...a little light on the math.

[David Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book I read to research this post was Texas Hold Em For Dummies by Mark Harlan which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Texas Hold Em is a form of poker played with 5 cards like most forms of poker and you discard cards and pick up cards to improve your hand. If you and someone else has 2 pairs the highest pair from each hand goes head to head and if they are the same the 2 lower pairs go head to head to see which is highest. The dealer probably only gets minimum wage if in a casino so probably relies on tips. The highest possible hand called a spoke is the same as a royal flush in poker, the odds of getting this if the cards are properly shuffled are about 700,000 to 1. The lowest kind of flush is a wheel or 1-5 in the same suit. If you accidently see someone else's hand maybe because they are a bit inebriated tell them they need to protect their hand and if you subsequently see it, it is just bad luck for them as you have warned them. Bluffs work best when there are no limits to what you can bet and either novice or very skilled players. Bear in mind some players believe in never folding regardless what hand they have. If you play online paypal doesn't believe in working with gaming sites and the 2 most popular payment options are firepay and neteller. I really enjoyed reading this book which is on quite an interesting subject. You best bet for getting good at this game is lots of practice and play against really good players where you can study their strategies.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been wanting to learn about Texas hold'em for awhile. And now after reading Texas Hold'em for dummies I know more about it.

One of my favorite chapters was Chapter 21 called Ten Bad beats where the author writes about 10 people who got beat.

What do I want to say about Texas Hold'em for dummies. It has a lot of information in it. It talks about poker math. Not that I understood all of the chapter. I will have to read that chapter again sometime.

And also bluffing in poker is harder than I thought it would be.

Before reading Texas Hold'em for dummies I thought there was only No-limit Texas Hold'em. The book talks about Limit and one or two other variations of the game.

I also learning about the differences of playing online and playing in a card room. I did not think that they would be that different but, they are. Online play is a lot more fast paced.

I thought Texas Hold'em for dummies was entertaining and fun to read and taught me a lot about Texas Hold'em. Now all I need to do is put the information I learned in the book into practice.

[Tara Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this! And what to say. Well, I think for the serious poker player this has some good advice. But for the type I play, just friendly neighborhood games, I'm just not going to do most of the stuff in this book--it's too involved. And the stuff that I did think was doable for my type of playing, I had already figured out on my own from just playing for a few years. There were a few tips that were in between serious playing and friendly games that I could use, but overall the book was not meant for me.

[Ravanagh Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poker is far and away the most complicated game out there (more so than Bridge). I’ll have to read it again before I start playing.

But then, does an unlucky man who neither has nor wants friends need to know how to play poker?

[Saeid]

It's better to know what you are doing when playing poker. Especially the part about the pot odds was very interesting.

[Austin H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now here's a self help book with some hair on its chest!