plo

Short book review:Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha: Small-Ball and Short-Handed Play, by Jeff Hwang

Sure, I have more than held my own in PLO poker games. Yes I technically knew many of the concepts and strategies in this book, but until I had the chance to read “Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha: Small-Ball and Short-Handed Play,” by author Jeff Hwang I didn’t quite get all of it. As a matter of fact I had some of it all wrong.

This book put the skills required of a true PLO poker player into terms you can comprehend as well as remember when you are under fire in a game. Things I thought I knew about the odds of certain hands and the probability changes depending on the amount of players now fully make sense to me.

Jeff Hwang uses hundreds of actual examples and it is not hard to imagine different scenarios where you can face the situations he lays out. While this isn’t the first book by Hwang, it is definitely his best. His first, “Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy,” which came out in 2008, taught the basics and changed the way I looked at PLO. If you already have that basic understanding, “Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha” will turn you into a player that no one will want to mess with.

There are many interesting tricks, from how to bluff better, to more strategic moves such as playing based on a stack to pot ratio. While the book may seem a little bit long to some of you (over five hundred pages!) you wont regret a second of the time you spent reading it. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee you will re-read at least parts of it multiple times.

I am a fan of Hwang’s so slightly biased when I say this is by far the best PLO book ever written. For those of you who are skeptical, take my word for it, you wont be disappointed. Hwang has a way of making even the most confusing of concepts easy to understand. By talking in relatable terms and using specific examples, there is no way you will come away from “Advanced PLO” without grasping the different twists and turns that could take place with the turn of any card. I like the fact that Hwang has no issue pointing out when he has made a mistake. Even the pros goof up and if you are ready to take some chances and give it your all, then I suggest giving this book a go. The best thing I can say is that if I play poker with you I hope you have not read Hwang’s latest book!