Positively Fifth Street by James McManus
A poker book that has received rave reviews.
In 2000, Jim went to Las Vegas to do an article for Harper's
Magazine on the World Series of Poker. He wanted more than a vicarious
experience so he planned to compete as well.
He used two of our poker programs, Turbo Texas Hold'em and Tournament
Texas Hold'em,
to help him prepare for the tournament. He finished fifth in the
big event and won $247,760.
His experiences are chronicled in the book.
Excerpt from Positively Fifth Street:
To supplement the floodtide of primers {books on poker}, software
designers like Bob Wilson have written games designed to give
you the feel of a live-action tournament. His Turbo programs dispense
with the gimmicks on Masque: no plane rides or chauffeurs, no
cartoon Jack McClelland or brusque topless blondes. Wilson's preprogrammed
antagonists do sport ironically pokeresque nicknames-Gentle Ben,
Bonnie Parker, Honest Abby, Seymour
Cards-but what makes them worthwhile is the stiff competition
they offer. Dial up their level to "tough" and they'll dropkick
your ass good and proper. Beginners can set it on "average" or
"above average," but even these require virtually the same betting
decisions you'd make in a $10,000 tournament. What takes four
days to settle at Binion's goes by in an hour at home-assuming
you weren't eliminated in the first seven hands, in which case
you start over.
Bonnie Parker and Co. checkraise you, bluff, make adjustments
for position and number of players in the pot, and alter their
strategy based on your previous action. You can design
(and name) other opponents, making them less or more aggressive,
extracognizant of
pot odds and whether you've bet or checked on the flop; you can
even bestow upon them the ability to sense when you're on tilt-when
you've "come unglued," as Peter Alson puts it-after losing a couple
of pots. Very few flesh-and-blood players consistently cover all
these bases
at once.
You can also ask the Wilson program for advice, not a wise move
in the middle of a
live-action hand. When the board pairs on fourth street, making
a full house a distinct
possibility (but by no means a lock), should you reraise or fold
with your flush? What are the exact odds of filling a straight
with one card to come? The best way to learn, of course, is to
come up with an answer on your own, then check it against Mr.
Wilson's. You can also
request to be warned when attempting inadvisable plays. Click
on "stats" and the program evaluates your overall play, pinpointing
weaknesses and offering tips for improvement.
You can also hone skills interactively. The "stack the deck" option
makes the program deal
you calling or raising hands exclusively, so you waste less time
folding the obvious garbage. (Cloutier calls foldworthy hole cards
"toilet paper," but whether we call them garbage or Charmin, we
should all take advantage of Louis Palazzo's household wisdom
by flushing
those Q-10's and suited K-9's down the toilet.) With Cloutier,
Brunson, and Sklansky open in your lap, you can play A-Q offsuit
from the small blind, for example, against 250 different
random hands in a row and see how you do. No waiting while opponents
spend three
minutes studying their options, for the dealer to push the pot
and reshuffle; you simply
"zip" to the next hand of the exercise. It would take decades
of live action, in which the
number of hands per hour averages less than twenty, to get this
much experience with
a crucial no-limit predicament. You can also run high-speed simulations
in which the
computer plays a specific hand five thousand times for you against
a random sequence
of hands, then lets you know to the penny how much you would have
won or lost with it.
At eighty bucks per CD-ROM, the cost of such programs is an infinitesimal
fraction of the bankroll required to play uninformed big-bet poker
for even a couple of minutes. Perhaps the best proof of their
usefulness turned up in December 1999, when Sonja Camenzind
out-lasted a field of 220 in a no-limit hold'em tournament in
Amsterdam, winning 55,202 guilders. It was the first tournament
Camenzind had entered in her life, her only no-limit experience
having come on Wilson Turbo. (I emphasized this fact to Lewis
while pitching him the story, of course.) At least a third of
the players I've talked to at Binion's now claim-or
admit- they use Wilson programs to practice, and my guess is that
the percentage is about
to go up. The winner of this year's $1,500 limit Omaha event,
Ivo Donev, had been playing
poker for less than two years, having spent the previous twenty
as a chess pro. But he
devoted eight months to soaking up Sklansky and practicing on
Bob Wilson's programs,
and he's just earned himself $85,800 and a World Series bracelet.
No doubt the best way to learn is still to play high-stakes poker every night
against experts.
But until you move to a serious poker town and boost your bankroll
well into five-figure territory-"high society," as Matt Damon
calls it in Rounders-you can put on your Bellagio
visor and bifocal shades and keep a few primers open in your lap
as you challenge
some digital surrogates. Just don't checkraise Ben unless you're
holding the nuts.
He's not gentle.
Jim McManus is the author of multiple books and magazine articles.
He also teaches
courses on literature and the science of poker.
Note from Wilson Software:
Jim McManus used both Turbo Texas Hold'em and Tournament Texas Hold'em. In
his book,
he does not distinguish between them and this may be confusing
to those interested in the programs.
To clarify, Turbo Texas Hold'em gives advice as you play, gives exact odds,
evaluates your play, has statistics and let you do testing. (You
can even assign specific cards to specific players if you like.)
You set the limits and the number of players (2-10) and what type
of game you want
to play in (loose, tight, average, etc.). You can even make your
own players. All games are
limit play and it does not include tournament play.
Tournament Texas Hold'em plays tournaments; limit, pot-limit
or no-limit. You choose from
1-500 tables, rebuys or not, how quickly the blinds increase and
level of competition:
average, above average or loose. It includes the format for the
2004 World Series of Poker
big event. The Turbo features listed above are not in the tournament.
In summary, Turbo helps improve your play for both regular and tournament play while the Tournament program adds the ability to practice the timing and money management skills needed for tournament play.
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