Harrington on Hold 'Em: the Workbook: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments (Harrington Tournament Series) Paperback – Illustrated, May 30, 2006

A great book from which to improve one’s poker and learn about in depth poker analysis. This series of Harrington books constitutes the best holdem books I have read.

Some other reviewers have suggested that you can buy this book separately from the other two volumes, but I would strongly suggest you read all of them in order!This book is exactly what the title suggests - a WORKbook. For that reason, it's not well-suited for the Kindle, which is why the publisher hasn't made it available as an e-book. You are supposed to write in it. This volume puts into practice all the theory that you've (hopefully) read in Vol 1 and 2. You will likely have a pencil tucked into the volume at all times.The best part of this book are the very last few pages - the appendix, if you will. The vast majority of the book presents you with scenarios where you are given multiple-choice questions as to what your decision should be. You transfer your scores from the questions at the end of each problem (50 problems total with about 4 questions each problem), total it up, and the book gives you an assessment. I'm better informed now, but as I answered the questions the first time around I scored 385, which is just below "a very good player who should show a solid profit in tournaments." I'd say that's because I read Volumes 1 and 2! I think going through the book again, I could easily score 450.One fun thing I found to do is to search on YouTube for many of the hands presented in this book. Several aren't just theoretical scenarios - they are taken from major tournaments with real professional players. It's like reading a movie script and then watching the film.Harrington's approach is often called conservative, or even nitty, but I disagree. He merely advocates picking your spots. In a tournament, this is important - you usually only have one life to live, and these are tournament books after all.Also at the end of the book is not just an assessment of how you did, but a list of what mistakes you tend to make most often! Mistakes are categorized as either pre-flop or post-flop errors, and are given titles like "Over-reliance on reads", "Excessively tight play", and "Properly sizing your bet", among many others. You take all the answers where you failed to get the most possible points, and find out what your which category your wrong decision falls under. I am currently working through this final part of the book and it is alarming to see how often I make the same sorts of mistakes. It gives me an opportunity to identify my problems and read through the sections of the book(s) that address proper play in those situations.The brilliance of this book is that it allows you to do just that, and does a good job of it. It's second to having a pro player sit behind you, take notes of how you play, and give you feedback, but as you can imagine, that kind of coaching costs quite a bit of money! Asking questions on messageboards are fine, but I often find explanations from others lacking, and often there is a hive-mind phenomenon. Harrington makes his case easily and with authority.If you've read Volumes 1 & 2, I'd highly suggest getting a new copy of this book. Take it seriously, and treat it like a textbook. Don't cheat yourself - score your answers correctly, so that you can give yourself an honest assessment. If I ever find myself in a multi-day casino tournament, I'll be sure to have Harrington's books on the ready after each day's play.

The truth is- this is one of the 1st paperback poker books that I bought.(the other being Little Green Book on same day) I've been playing with "play money" poker online for over a year now. Most of my NL poker knowledge came from playing Sit-N-Go(SNG), 900(Fulltilt)~8000(Partypoker) freeroll MTT, and information from various poker forums. I've won $2.00 on Fulltilt freeroll once and lost most of that balance by finishing 8th place through a SNG tournment.I'm in no way experienced enough to make the jump from a freeroll player into a $500 N/L buy-in tournaments or $10/20 cash player. I do, however, know the importance of M and position, calculation of pot odds and implied odds. If the blinds are relative small, I play a lot of small pots and trust my post-flop skills when I play against weak players; I'll need good position to play against strong players, because I can't outplay them in the long run. Those are the things I know before I read this book.Having said that, I scored a "448/591"(I scored "0" 27 times) on the Harrington's scoresheet, which implied I sould be "A very good player who should show a solid profit in big tournaments"---No, I don't deserve that.I am amazed with the amount of trouble Mr. Harrington went through to provide detailed explanation for each example. One of my favorites is Daniel's 9h8h (from 3rd position, full table) Vs. Sam's 9s2s (button) in 2005 WSOP main event. The explanation of how to play 9h8h from pre-flop to river is 9 pages long, almost as long as my mid-term electromagnetics report. (and yes, it is much more interesting than my report) Before this book came out, I was very interested of how Daniel can lay down such a monster after river. Now I know Daniel made the laydown base upon combined information of hand strengths (his and Sam's) after turn and river, evaulation of Sam's style, and Daniel's stack relative to blinds(M was big). I think Daniel knows in the long run, if the exact situation comes up again, folding would be better than calling, and thus we saw an excellent laydown by Daniel. What an excellent example by Mr. Harrington.On the flip side, the scoring system is not as good as I thought. There are some plays I'd like to do when I'm changing gears, or after I've already changed gears. For example, I'm in cut-off seat, and I flip my cards and see Ac10c, I might call, raise, or raise-big according to some other factors that Mr. Harrington didn't take into consideration. I've gained and lost a lot of scoring points just base upon the initial decision.Bottom Line: Read the analysis carefully, don't worry about the scoring system. A great book for intermediate and expert players.