MORE Hold'em Excellence: A Winner for Life List Price:   $19.95 Paperback:   188 pages Date:   July 1, 1999 Publisher:   ConJelCo ISBN:   188607013 Order online from either ConJelco or Amazon:

When Lou Krieger wrote Hold'em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner , he aimed it squarely at beginners and low-limit Hold'em players. His goal was simple: To provide enough information for them to beat typical low-limit games found in card casinos all across America.

This book, MORE Hold'em Excellence: A Winner for Life , goes a few steps further. Of course there's ample information for beginning players too. The chapters entitled What's Important In Winning Poker, Solid Foundations, An Absolute Beginner's Guide, and At the Starting Line offer a wealth of information to guide newcomers from kitchen table card games to poker as it is played in card casinos. He's even included an updated Start-Chart, a unique tool that simplifies deciding which of your two-card starting combinations are playable, and which should be discarded. Since the Start-Chat is probably the single most important Hold'em learning tool to be released in years, he's included it here, too, this time in an easy-to-read four-color format.

But MORE Hold'em Excellence goes beyond the basics: it takes you into the mind and decision-making processes of professional poker players by providing solid information and advice on a broad spectrum of sophisticated topics.

Read this book and you'll learn about the most common mistakes made by Hold'em players, and how you can take advantage of them. You'll learn how to play in loose, aggressive games - the kind you'll find at lower limits in most card casinos. You'll learn why taking what they give you is often more important than trying to impose your will on the opposition.

You'll learn why aggressive play is absolutely essential for winning, as well as why it is equally important to temper your aggression with selectivity . Passive players are losing players. It's that simple. So are maniacs , those ram-it, jam-it players who fling their chips at the pot with equal vigor - never mind whether they have good hands, bad hands, or anything in between - until they have no chips left to fire. Many players are apprehensive when there are maniacs at their tables. But you'll learn how to take advantage of their wild play and win more money in the process.

You'll learn about tells , those nonverbal declarations of hand strength that your opponents toss your way all the time. All you have to do is learn to recognize the signs and interpret them. You'll also learn when the game you select is critical to your chances of winning. So is choosing the right seat. There are players you'd prefer to have on your right, so they have to act before you do, and others you'd rather have on your left. You'll learn how seat selection can increase your winnings.

If you want to become a winner for life, you'll have to learn to monitor your own play, to correct problems - and to capitalize on opportunities found along the way. Learn about luck, and developing, maintaining, and communicating an image at the poker table. There are suggestions aimed at helping you decide whether becoming a professional poker player is right for you.

This book is packed with money-making tips and skill-building tools. But underlying all of this is a much more important concept: the lessons of poker are the lessons of life. It's not without reason that poker occupies an almost mythical position at the core of the American character. Self-reliant, creative, iconoclastic, disciplined, striving, honest, fun-loving, strong, resolute, and achievement-oriented: We the people like to think of ourselves as possessed with all these qualities.