In The Greatest Book of Poker for Winners, George "The Engineer" Epstein provides his formula for winning at poker, including his "Four Basic Rules and Strategies for Winning the Game of Poker". A career engineer in the aerospace industry, Epstein attempts to apply engineering principles to the game of poker.
The book begins with a 50 page first chapter titled "Introduction". While providing the standard introductory fare and motivation for his book, Epstein also provides here an introduction to poker terminology, the basic mechanics of playing 7 Card Stud in a casino setting, some sample poker room rules and regulations, as well as other information. One doesn't have to read very far into this book in order to gather that its focus is on low-limit poker games. Reading a little further will provide ample evidence that despite what it says in the forward, this book is aimed at an audience of beginners.
In chapter 2, the author expounds upon his "Four Basic Poker Rules for Winning". While these four rules are generally sound poker advice, they contain no information that hasn't already been discussed, often more thoroughly and more clearly, in countless other poker books. Some of these ideas I don't agree with, such as Epstein's general strategy of setting session loss limits. For some people, especially those prone to steaming or who have a block preventing them from properly evaluating a game, this may be good advice. On the other hand, a lot of what the author presents as general recommendations are really only his preferences and shouldn't be given the weight ascribed to them in this book. As another example of this tendancy, Epstein indicates his strong preference for Las Vegas style spread-limit no-ante Stud games as opposed to the ante limit games played in California. His reasons for this are based on stylistic preferences, not on a comparison of the hourly value of these games to a skilled player.
The next two chapters cover strategy considerations for playing 7 Card Stud. His recommendations are based largely upon playing the no-ante games the author prefers. As applied to ante games, I feel that several of his recommendations are less aggressive than what is optimal and shouldn't be followed. Even in no-ante games, I would recommend against adopting several of his strategies. As an example, he spends relatively little time discussing how to use bets and raises for the express purpose of squeezing other players out of the pot in order to get heads-up with a single opponent, an absolutely key strategy in the game of 7 Card Stud.
The next chapter covers the game of Texas Hold'em, written by co-author Dr. Daniel E. Abrams. There's very little of substance here, and quite a few better introductions to this game are available in other books. While the author's emphasis on tight play is certainly good advice, this often goes too far. It's just wrong to state that players who play only AKs or better Hold'em hands will "be a winning player at any level." Further, as in other chapters, I believe that the style of play this book advocates is much more passive than is desirable. In my opinion, this is less of a mistake in Stud than in Hold'em, where playing very passively is usually quite costly.
The last three chapters cover poker psychology, higher ante games and tipping, and the book includes a special chapter encouraging senior citizens to play poker. Again, there's nothing ground breaking in these chapters, and in general they often represent more of a "what works for me" attitude than provide any strong reasoning for the positions they take. As an example, Epstein states that a player should tip and what typical tipping ranges are, but provide no direct advice on how much a winning player should tip. Without this information, there isn't really any substantive advice for the reader.
Besides the information in this book not being terribly interesting, in my opinion the book isn't very well written. The Greatest Book of Poker for Winners lacks focus in many places, jumping from one topic to the next without an overall sense of coherence. On a stylistic note, I'm not a big fan of interrupting the text periodically with almost tautological affirmations, excessive use of exclamation points (especially in the early parts of the book), and replacing the word "money" with dollar signs. However, even if the book were professionally edited and its style were more to my liking, the bottom line is that this just isn't a very good book. While there certainly exist poor and beginning players who would benefit from the information it contains, there are just so many books that are better introductions to beating the game of poker that I simply cannot recommend The Greatest Book of Poker for Winners to any audience.
In many places, I found The Greatest Book of Poker for Winners to be difficult to read due to stylistic decisions, typographic choices, and a general lack of focus. However, the book's greater shortcomings are a combination of providing advice that has been better covered in other books along with recommendations that have a very restricted utility or are simply bad advice. I really cannot recommend this book to anyone.
Note: I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this book.
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