David Apostolico has written a flurry of poker books over the last year or so. Because of his new-found stature in the poker world, Apostolico was invited to participate in the Professional Poker Tour, a series of no-limit hold'em tournaments filled with some of the best and best-known poker players in the world. This is an excellent chance for a journeyman poker player to observe and learn from some of the best.
"Lessons from the Pro Poker Tour" is a collection of lessons he learned while observing and playing in no-limit hold'em tournaments with some of the biggest names in poker.
Each lesson is drawn from a real hand that the author describes for the reader. Consequently, we are invited to learn by example, sometimes along with the author, who is actively educating himself. Apostolico is tireless in his attempts to glean any sort of edge from the situations he faces, an admirable trait in any poker player.
Perhaps predictably, the execution doesn't matche the promising premise. The big problem is that, as an improving poker player himself, Apostolico, I believe, misfires in his analysis of many of the poker situations he examines. With some of them I think his recommendations are overly results-oriented, but with others I believe he simply misunderstands the situation. This is a problem in a poker book whose aim is to educate the reader on tournament strategy.
Here is one example of Apostolico recommending a play that I believe is demonstrably incorrect. In this hand, it's folded to our hero with Ad 5d in the small blind. He raises, the big blind calls. The flop comes 9d 5h 2d. Our hero bets, the big blind makes a pot-sized raise, our hero folds, and the big blind shows his top pair. Apostolico says, "... I do not think I played that hand incorrectly ... ." However, unless the big blind has an ace for a kicker or a better hand than one pair, Apostolico may have been behind, but he folded a hand where he was actually a money favorite.
It isn't that I believe Apostolico gets everything wrong. I think many of his lessons are on the money. But I have to say that even when I think he's correct he doesn't demonstrate a great deal of insight. Beginning players might find some worthwhile advice here, but I'm afraid that they'll have to wade through some other suggestions that will hurt more than help their game.
Advanced players are more likely to be able to discern the difference, but the good advice will almost certainly be familiar to them.
This is too bad, because "Lessons from the Pro Poker Tour" is a fine idea, it just suffers from its execution. This is even more unfortunate since this is the best written of the three books Apostolico has produced so far. It's conversational and direct and is an easy, pleasant read. I'd like to be able to recommend this book, but, unfortunately, I can't. There are too many books on the market written by expert poker players. I believe these books will do more to help improve most players' poker acumen than Apostolico's latest effort. -Nick Christenson
