Book Review: "Practical Poker Math" by Pat Dittmar

Not a good one:

http://stickspoker.blogspot.com/2009...th-by-pat.html

Just read your review. I haven't read the book but I agree that to be a successful poker play you don't need to "show your work" as they used to say in school. If you memorize the situational odds, that's probably good enough.

I'm kind of a wannabe math nerd so I like to think about this stuff though. I agree that these kinds of books are probably not good for beginner's necessarily, being that the thinking is so thick.

However, I can see some value of understanding the roots of why the odds are what they are. "Killer Poker by the Numbers" is another book like this. Super heavy in math (actually pretty fun read if you're a math junky, as there are many problems to work out at the end of each chapter).

Killer poker by the numbers is not for the beginner. The math can get very confusing if you do not have a solid background in statistics.. If you do have the back ground this book is fun but I am not sure it would be my first choice.

Oh well. Looks like the best way to get a decent amount of discussion here lately is to talk about what was for dinner.

THanks, I'll leave this one of 'the list' (I'm a huge poker book junkie, having read tons of them). I hadn't actually heard of this one before but have read some reviews on some other poker books that had 'math' in the title (that one book...can't think of the author's name offhand... I think it's Chen?.. he was on PokerAfterDark's 'math week') was supposedly ok but have also read reviews on it saying it was 'not ok', lol.

BTW... last night I had 2 burritos, some broccoli & a banana for dinner (it's one of my mainstay quick-easy-fix poker meals..... the other is turkey sandwiches.... and lastly 'oatmeal with yoghurt on it & some trail mix on the side').

I'd be interested in reading other book reviews by you.

Oh yah... back to the book. I'm actually a former math junkie but with poker I'm not overly interested in going through a bunch of (what I consider) unecessary calculations. I think once one becomes familiarized with different scenarios you kinda just committ it to memory anyways.

[quote=Poker Orifice;1319166]THanks, I'll leave this one of 'the list' (I'm a huge poker book junkie, having read tons of them). I hadn't actually heard of this one before but have read some reviews on some other poker books that had 'math' in the title (that one book...can't think of the author's name offhand... I think it's Chen?.. he was on PokerAfterDark's 'math week') was supposedly ok but have also read reviews on it saying it was 'not ok', lol.



The book your refering to is "The mathematics of poker" by Bill Chen

It is a very intense math lesson and for die hard math geeks imo

I think it has alot of good info,but if math isn't your strong suit,it may be over the top.



Snow

I resemble that remark.

Good. I truly envy your tremendous thread-topic-choosing ability.

Cool, thanks. That review is 1 of 9 that I currently have on my blog.
http://stickspoker.blogspot.com/
Scroll down the blog and look in the right-side margin for the rest.

Nope and I sure wasn't saying it was good for beginners

Personally I have found Sticks book reviews quite useful, but since all his recipes include home grown herbs, can't recommend the food section of his blog.

I am not a huge fan of math induced books...maybe cause i hate it. LOL. I do like statistics though....weird. I will def keep this book off the list of poker books to read. Thanks for the advice!