Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments; Volume II: The Endgame

Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 2: Endgame author: Dan Harrington Bill Robertie rating: asin: 1880685353 binding: Paperback list price: $29.95 USD amazon price: $19.77 USD

This is the terrific follow-up to HOH1 (Strategic Play). HOH2 is about the endgame, which revolves around short-handed, often high-blind situations.

Harrington and Robertie introduce M and Q, two tools for assessing how big your stack is relative to the game. M is the ratio of a stack to the size of the preflop pot, and Q is the ratio of your stack to the average stack. The book teaches how to adjust your decisions based on your M and Q, explaining how strategy changes in different zones, or ranges of M. These are useful, practical tools for playing in the late stages of tournaments. The authors walk you through many hand examples, as they do in HOH1,

The authors use what they call Structured Hand Analysis as a framework for evaluating certain decisions. It appears to be a similar method to the Independent Chip Model, although they don't specifically call it that. It's an important lesson of the book, to be prepared to do a mathematical analysis of hands, because there are some very counter-intuitive results in tournaments (such as surprisingly high requirements for calling all-in). As you learn to do the calculations, though, the results become more and more in line with your new expectations.

There's a nice chapter called Making Moves, which gives the reader lots of ideas for how to win pots without the best cards. The section on the Squeeze Play includes Harrington's description of his $1,200,000 reraise at the 2004 WSOP final table with 6-2 offsuit.

The book concludes with discussion of short-handed and headsup play, including a hand-for-hand analysis of Phil Ivey and John D'Agostino's hands at the conclusion of the 2004 Turning Stone tournament.

This is also a must-buy, if you are playing poker tournaments. This is definitely a book you will find yourself reading more than once as it's packed with solid advice.