Playing in a poker tournament for a fi rst time can be intimidating. Since the vast majority of participants of nearly any tournament are experienced players, tournament staff generally assumes that the players know what's going on. If that's not the case, tournament rules, procedures, and etiquette can be bewildering. There is a defi nite need for a book that helps fi rst-time players understand what's happening in tournament poker and David Apostolico's "The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Tournament Poker" aims to fi ll this gap.
The book is obviously aimed at poker tournament novices. It begins with a chapter titled, "What Is a Poker Tournament?" before explaining the basics of No- Limit Hold'em and the basic fl ow of a poker tournament. Having the introductory material is entirely appropriate here, although given the title, I was a little chagrined to learn that only no-limit Hold'em is covered.
The book moves on to discuss different tournament types, including those with rebuys, add-ons, satellites, shoot-outs, bounties, and online tournaments. All of this is entirely appropriate, and Apostolico does a good job of covering most all the bases here.
The book then provides several chapters on poker strategy before discussing poker etiquette.
There's no way to do any semblance of justice to poker strategy in a book of this size, and what is in here resembles the sort of vague platitudes about poker that have been fl oating around cardrooms for decades. On the other hand, the etiquette chapter is absolutely excellent, probably the best material in the book. This is information that should be truly useful to a novice player, and information that they may not learn from other sources. My biggest criticism with the book is the general imprecision in the language used by the author. In a great many places he makes a statement that is often true, but for which there are signifi cant exceptions. So, most of the time the situations faced by readers of this book will be what they expect, but sometimes they will not be, and I expect these situations may be especially confusing because the literal text of this book states that they won't happen.
Additionally, in my opinion the strategy chapters are essentially useless, even for a novice player. If the publishers wanted to make the book short, they could have just covered the rules and mechanics of the tournaments themselves. There's a lot of stuff that the book doesn't cover that might be confusing to the novice, and could be included to replace the strategy sections. Some of these topics include chip racing, what happens when players get knocked out in the blinds, side pots, and many other useful procedural discussions could have been mentioned as well.
I expect that experienced tournament poker players won't learn anything of value from this book, but they're not the target audience.
The question is, is this book worthwhile for a novice player? For a complete novice, I believe that they would, indeed, be better prepared for playing in a poker tournament having read this book. Still, I don't think that group is as well served by "The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Tournament Poker" as I might have hoped. It fi lls a niche, but I believe it could have done so better.
