A Few Thoughts

Easily my favorite of the series so far. Excellent work.

When it comes to getting stronger, this one doesn't hold a candle to masterpieces like [b:Starting Strength|15746753|Starting Strength|Mark Rippetoe|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1350664231s/15746753.jpg|2104162], but this is a good overview of a lot of important concepts and it's written in an engaging way.

It also serves a market of people who aren't necessarily after getting stronger (perhaps they just want to look strong or lose fat). I would argue that being actually strong helps with either of those goals, but that hardly negates the book itself.

An enjoyable read.

This is not a beginner's book. It ends up being a kind of manual for program design and development. It does an excellent job giving you a variety of things to consider when approaching the construction of your own program as well as a fair number of exercises and variations on each to suit your particular goals.

It's not a first read for people new to kettlebells, but it's a great read for those who have been around for a bit and want to freestyle their own programming.

I want the time I spent reading this back. By far the worst book I've read in the last few years.

Pretty much just a day by day routine. Don't expect a lot of chit chat in this one.

A nice reference to have around though only occasionally useful.

I suppose bodybuilders might spend a great deal of time with this.

This happens to me sometimes with Pavel's work: it starts out feeling like he's piled on a few shiny items to his other work and called it new, then as I get further on, I begin to see the unique ideas that only he brings to the table.

Halfway through this one, I was ready to call it two-three stars and feel generous. By the end, I just couldn't justify that low of score.

I certainly wouldn't recommend this one as a first run at his kettlebell work, but it's a good one for a more experienced girevik who's looking for a new challenge, especially if hypertrophy is an appealing goal in your kettlebell work.

A good super-basic primer.

The man behind Coaching Kristy (still probably the best Novice Player level video series ever made on the game) finally got around to collecting these thoughts into one volume. It's not the most advanced theory work you'll ever encounter, but it's solid info and depending on where your game stands, you'll either find a wealth of good reminders or some sharp new angles for approaching the game.

In my opinion, this is one of the few truly essential books on the game to read. It's not for beginners but if you're past the basics, you're apt to find something useful here.

Basically, this one is [b:The Dirt: Confessions Of The World's Most Notorious Rock Band|25378|The Dirt Confessions Of The World's Most Notorious Rock Band|Tommy Lee|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348978271s/25378.jpg|26119], only instead of being about rock stars, it's about poker stars. It's fine as far as it goes, but nothing special.

Having spent years playing, I already knew a lot of these stories and basically all of these players, but I can see the appeal to a certain sleazy glance into what happens when people who are very young suddenly find themselves making absurd amounts of money.

The book never really does the job it sets out to do when it comes to suggesting that they "grow up" eventually, but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying it. It's an odd fault to have, since they did and most of them lead fairly normal lives now.

[The reality is that I probably wouldn't have bothered with a review if it weren't for the fact that all the reviews on the first page here were by a bunch of people so busy moralizing that they hardly had time to insert their brags about getting this book for free or how important they are to have the publisher send it to them. Seriously, some people shouldn't be allowed to review books unless it's for their sunday school indoctrination class or clearly marked as a thinly-veiled attempt to brag about something no one is impressed by.]

The one real complaint I have about the book itself is that you don't come away with even a cursory understanding of just how radical some of these guys were as poker thinkers. Sure, you get a bunch of stories about strippers and booze, but you miss out on the fact that several of them have created theories about the game that are so profound that you can barely consider yourself a player anymore unless you have the concept down. Galfond's (Jman) contributions to the game with "gBucks" is such an important concept in the game that you can literally divide players into the category of those who know and it and apply it properly and those who don't (hint: if you don't know what it is, you're probably in way over your head in anything but a home game). But then, combinatorics don't generally make for a very thrilling read, do they?

I mean, really, who wants to hear about applied statistics and equity evaluation formulas when you could be reading about people doing lines of blow off a table in the middle of a game at a casino?

A good book for people who have their feet wet, but don't know a lot about anything more advanced. If you have a feel for the absolute basics like starting hands and position, but not much beyond that, this one's worth a look.

Otherwise, not a bad read just to remind yourself of some of the basics.

One of the turning points in the evolution of the modern style of play, this book was originally priced at nearly $2000 and still sells for nearly $1000.

It can be a little hard to read because of the grammatical errors that come along with early self-publishing, but it's a good read if you're still playing and thinking in the antiquated styles of Brunson, Sklansky, or Hellmuth and need to grow out of it. It's also a good read just for the special place it holds in documenting a game that was changing so fast that most players never saw it happen.

Easily the best book on basic PLO on the market.

To be honest, I'm kind of glad to be near the end of this series (what's come out so far) because despite a few good moments and ideas, it's all become unbearably self-indulgent. Martin's endless desire to be "edgy" was boring by two books in and his constant obsession with being "full of dark surprises" limits not only the ability to re-read the series, but even the ability to think about it. These are books you read and throw away. Fun while it lasts, but there's no substance here. Reading them is a like a diet of ice cream. It tastes good going in but it's not actually food.

I'll finish it because I've come this far and because there are some good characters and a few good plots still going, but any decent writer and his editor could have turned this book and the last into one fairly short book and done far more with far less.

I only hope I change my mind.

Update: I didn't. What a waste.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

As a fan of this series, I should point out that this book is the best example of why these types of series tend to run on so much longer than planned. Authors like to claim that it "just gets away from them", but this book is an example that proves such claims false. The reality, I suspect, is that it's very hard to write a successful series and once you've got one, you want to stretch it out as long as possible to make the most money you can on it. There's not a thing wrong with that (assuming the story stays good, which in this book, it has not) but I don't want to hear any whining (as Martin is prone to) about how it just keeps "making itself longer".

Here we are introduced to many new characters and see little of the previous ones. While I don't doubt that some of these characters will lead interesting directions eventually, I weary of the stall tactic. Nearly everything important to wrapping up the story from the previous books in the series that appears in this book could have been put together in a chapter or two added to the previous book or the next one.

The whole book reads like exactly what it is: the author trying to stretch the series into more books than needed. Martin has many talents as a writer (interesting characters and good descriptions, for example), but he would do well to remember that sometimes more is not better. Sometimes it's just more.

Easily the best in the series so far.