There are many recreational poker players out there who consider themselves to be pretty good, yet have a difficult time as they move in to the world of online and card room poker. This won't be a surprise to those who have already made this transition. Public games tend to have a much different personality than poker played at the kitchen table. The game goes by much faster and the players tend to be more aggressive. Add in the house rake and a home game champion can quickly turn out to be a big loser in the card room. Randy Burgess' book, Stepping Up is designed to assist a player in making the transition from home poker to the live and online games.
Stepping Up begins with a section titled, "The Basics". Mercifully, it skips over some of the most, well, basic poker information. A poker player who doesn't know the hand rankings or how common poker games such as seven card stud and Texas hold'em are spread is not yet ready for Burgess' book. Instead, the author writes about basic odds, the technical aspects of playing poker, and provides some suggestions about what books to read for introductions to playing various popular poker games. Despite the author's explanations, I found it a little difficult to figure out where this book was headed from these first few chapters. At the same time, I found the particular advice given by Burgess in this section to be reasonably sound.
One of Burgess' goals for Stepping Up is to provide some information on reading opponents that is aimed at beginning poker players. This is the emphasis of the second section of the book. Here we get advice on topics such as categorizing opponents and recognizing and avoiding tells. The author provides some good information here, but in a novice's hands I'm concerned that it could possibly be at least as dangerous as it is beneficial. It's my opinion that there exist better books out there that cover most of these topics. Burgess makes the claim that these books are generally appropriate for more advanced players who are often playing in higher limit games, and that when he would attempt to put these books' advice into practice the techniques would often backfire on him. My problem is that I'm not at all certain that Burgess' explanations will be much more beneficial for the novice player.
The third section covers some thoughts about how players might continue to develop their game. There is information here on how to avoid making mistakes and more suggested reading as one advances in ability. These suggestions are generally pretty sound if uninspired. Burgess writes well and he is able to make his ideas come across clearly, especially in this section.
Overall, I believe that Stepping Up contains some generally good poker advice. While I believe some of the specific analysis is a bit weak, much of the other advice is worthwhile. For me, the primary difficulty I had with this book was in defining the target audience and determining its applicability to those people. I believe this book is aimed at non-winning players who have played some casino poker and read one or two books on the topic but don't understand why it is that they're still losing. Stepping Up contains information that is useful to relatively inexperienced Internet and card room poker players, but it's much more applicable to live play than to online poker.
Most of what I think beginning poker players want is situational analysis, that is, advice that answers the question, "What do I do in this particular situation?" Burgess' book spends very little time addressing these sorts of specifics. Instead he focuses on "bigger picture" issues. The topics he explores are certainly important, the question is how much benefit will his audience receive from this analysis? My guess is that some will find Stepping Up to be quite valuable, and some won't realize much benefit from it at all. The problem is that I don't think I can precisely define who will fall into what camp.
Randy Burgess' Stepping Up is not a typical poker strategy book. Instead the author attempts to inform an audience with limited card room experience about the other skills that it takes to become a winning poker player. Much of his advice is solid, but I wonder how much of his target audience will value the things he says. My guess is that some will and some won't, but I don't know how to tell in advance who will fall into which category. It's pretty clear to me, though, that well-read and experienced online and live poker players won't find much new in this book.
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