Raiser's Edge vs. Harrington on Hold'em Vol.2

I just won a small tournament at my local game and an buying both books today. I've been playing poker for about 4yrs now and feel Ivhave made great improvements to my game. Obviously I've read prequels to both these books and just about every sklansky book out there.

Anyway I'm interested in hearing what people think about the two while I feel new style of play is great aggressive and commanding what I've also found is that when I play I gather a large amount of chips control the table only to have violent swings in my stack when people call me way behind because they just can't take it anymore. Wouldn't care if they didn't hit at times.

I feel new style may open you up to too many high variance plays in large MTT but great for smaller venues like SitnGo's. How do you all feel by the way calls or shoves are most often made by what I would call beginner style players though they've been playing for years.

Basically I have violent swings in my chip stack and although I cash often I hate being sucked out on multiple times in a tourney.

I'll just stick to answering the question in the title of your thread.

If you haven't read HOH Vol.2, read it! It'll help as a foundation.

Raiser's Edge is a far more advanced book for NLHE MTT play. And btw, it doesn't focus/suggest taking higher variance lines so am not sure where you got that from?

imo, you'd likely do well to read the tournament series > "Winning Poker Tournaments - One Hand At A Time Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 (I didn't really like Vol.3 that much) 'before' reading Raiser's Edge. I would highly recommend them (I also really like Raisers Edge.... but just sayin' you might want to check out the WPT mtt books first).

Countmein said:

I hate being sucked out on multiple times in a tourney.

Click to expand...

Don't play tournaments then... although eventually you get used to it & just accept it.
Get to know/understand variance.

The next step >> "Embrace variance"

An interesting book for (advanced) math freaks, is Bill Chen's book on the math of poker. That will give you a way of looking at poker you won't find anywhere else

(warning: by advanced, I mean grad school level math students

The reason I say higher variance plays is because of the amount of hands I play in a tourney is between %30&40. I did get HoH vol.2 and like it so far but also got Matthew Janda's Applications of No-Limit Hold'em. I can't put it down, probably read HoH after.

Thanks Akorps I'll check out the Chen book as I am a math guy. Meaning I studied it in college although I dropped out to pursue other things senior year.

The bookstore was sold out of raiser's edge. And was interested in Janda's book anyway after reading a few 2+2 threads.

Raiser's Edge

I read HoHE 1-3 back in 2006 and really enjoyed them and felt they were a great foundation.

I read Raiser's Edge a couple of weeks ago and have really seen an improvement in my tournament places since. I'm probably just on a tear but I've made 4/9 final tables in tournaments since reading the book.

Really like Negraneau's small ball bit in his new book too.