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Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold’em Review

Rating: 4/10

Cost:  $19.77

The Nuts:  Different opinions from two top players

The Muck:  Shallow analysis

Recommended For:  Beginning players 

TJ Cloutier is an old school throwback to days when poker was played in smoke filled backrooms rather than in front of television cameras. Gruff, but amiable, this former football player is regarded as one of the best tournament players alive. 

In 2004, Cloutier co wrote Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold’em along with 1983 WSOP main event winner, Tom McEvoy.  Touted on the cover as “the bible to winning hold’em tournaments and cash games,” it’s anything but.  And TJ should know better.  Everyone knows that Doyle wrote the bible with Super System.  TJ’s book, unfortunately, is just one of many mediocre instructionals in an oversaturated market. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I like TJ. He’s a great player who has incredible natural instincts for the game.  Maybe it comes so easily to him that he has trouble explaining what he does to the beginner’s his book targets.   

Cloutier’s book begins with some generalized and somewhat random poker advice about player observation and analysis, dangerous starting hands, and the importance of keeping game notes that you can analyze later.  He then covers some basic situations like playing big pocket pairs, A-K, and suited connectors.  It’s here where having two players as co writers is advantageous, as McEvoy and Cloutier sometimes play hands in different ways.   

From here, the book is broken into two sections – one on Pot Limit Hold’em tournament play, the other on No Limit Hold’em tournaments. Cloutier then wraps up things with a few amusing poker anecdotes. 

Both the Pot Limit and No Limit sections include hand exercises in which Cloutier and McEvoy break down different situations, but they approach things in an amateurish way by not including information on table position, chip stacks, blinds, reads or anything else other than what each player holds in his hand and how much they bet on each street.  Sucky. Very sucky. 

What I hate most about Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold’em is that it makes no distinction whatsoever between tournament hold’em and cash games.  As a cash game player, I can tell you from experience that they are radically different.   

Cloutier and McEvoy spend all their time discussing tournament strategy, but the cover of the book calls it a guide to tournament AND cash games.  This is misleading at best.  There is no discussion at all of cash game strategy, yet new players will walk away from this book thinking that they can apply the concepts they learned to cash games.  A poker instructional should help players improve, not give them misleading information that can harm them. 

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