Great poker read

I recently purchased and read "Harrington on Hold 'em, Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1" by Dan Harrington. I found it chock full of poker wisdom. It turns out that my apprenticeship on PokerStars laid a great foundation for truly appreciating his advice; I discovered that a lot of what he talks about I'd already discovered "on my own", as it were.

One of the most valuable parts of the book for me was his lucid explanation of pot odds, and emphasis on how important they are to calculate and use as a guide at every decision point. I realized I'd never formally calculated them, but had been going by gut feel alone. Sometimes, a call would just feel too expensive to me, but I never knew there was such a simple formula to give credence or put the lie to such feelings. Last night, I calculated pot odds for the first time; not at every decision point, mind you, but you have to crawl before you can walk!

Another extremely valuable part of the book for me was his explanation of how to use bets to buy information. It's all too easy to think of bets solely as attempts to win the pot; I confess I never formally came up with the concept of using bets to gain information. Last night, I consciously used bets in this fashion on four or five different hands, and ending up winning three of them.

Needless to say, I highly recommend Dan's book; I'm looking forward to reading Volume 2!

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 14 hands and saw flop:
- 1 out of 2 times while in big blind (50%)
- 1 out of 2 times while in small blind (50%)
- 8 out of 10 times in other positions (80%)
- a total of 10 out of 14 (71%)
Pots won at showdown - 3 of 5 (60%)
Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $20,600
balance: $1,261,910