My I first start by saying that this is my personal opinion. I have read most of this book and maybe had some unfounded preconceptions. I will say however that this is quoted as "The Bible of Poker" and maybe this fuelled my imagination and expectations.

I do stand by my comments though and am willing to discuss others views! As of typing I have not read the last chapter on Holdem and will read this in due course. The following comments are on what I have read so far.

The book itself is big and bulky at 672 pages long and therefore kept at home in my house as I don't have enough room in my rucksack for my daily commute to London. My train journey is the usual place I can sit undisturbed by the family!

The book is shown as 22.95 GBP, but with a bit of searching around I found it for 19.95 GBP. You can get this price at WH Smiths and Amazon.

It starts with a very long introduction and Doyles Story if almost 40 pages. All very well but if you didn?t know about Doyle Brunson before buying the book then here are 2 questions:-

1. Why are you buying this book if you don't know its provenance?
2. How have you survived this long in Poker without knowing anything about The Legend himself?

I feel that self promotion is a small part of this read. All experts do have a small life biography at the start of their chapter and I see no harm in this, Although Doyle mentions his Internet poker room more than enough times throughout his pieces. In fact a whole 20 page chapter titled "Online Poker" near the beginning of the book positively hard sells it!

The first real chapter (and this is where I felt most disappointed!) is written by Mike Caro who runs a "University of Poker" in Las Vegas. Overall it seems just a big Cut and paste of one of his Power Point presentations. Still, I suppose if you feel it works then why not?

I just can't help thinking that this is lazy. Mike could have presented it in a different way rather than just copy.

His advice in some parts strikes me as dubious to say the least, for instance " If you make a big profit by calling, then you're not calling enough" Now maybe there's some academic way to understand this but it eludes us normal people. As far as I am concerned If you're calling a lot then you are chasing and that can't be good play! Everybody knows a Calling station when the see one. Surely you mix up your game depending on what you think you opponents have. You will raise, if you feel your opponent is on is good draw, in order to get him off his hand and protect yours. If you chase, you're surely working against the odds.

I bit later he shows a slide entitled "Pokers stupidest question". And this is: "Why didn't you quit when you were $17,000 ahead?" He goes onto explain that He doesn't quit because he is ahead and he doesn't quit when he is winning. I am sorry but when I feel that I have made enough I leave. This surely is encouragement to lose.

Although the following is not my style the advice "Never criticise weak plays for bad plays" doesn't work for 2 of our biggest players Mike Matusow and Phil Helmuth. They are constantly berating people for making bad decisions. They do this as a strategy to get under the skin of their opponents. They then take advantage of opponents when they steam or tilt. I have to say that I respect them for this, It takes a lot of guts to make some of the plays. It is especially important to Mike Matusow who makes most of his stack from these plays.

And lastly telling us to make a bully beg for mercy by:

• Calling more often
• Raise less often
• Seldom value bet

I don't agree at all. I will almost always tighten up and wait for position along with a good hand to start back at the bully. I will bully him or slow play the winning hand to the river sometimes then place a very large but not massive bet at the end. If you call more often and you are tight in style when you don't hit the flops (which lets face it is most times) you are likely to fold on the flop or turn bet. Most bullies will play aggressively with medium hands and I find it really hard to put them on a hand post flop. I would rather slow play the nuts on him every now and again than get involved and let him dominate the game. I let the bullies bully others.

Moving on:

I did however enjoy Lyle Bermans Pot Limit Omaha High chapter. But only to confirm what I always had an inkling was right.

The general advice about this game was very good at explaining the major differences with this game against Hold em. A great way to start is by comparing the two as we mostly all started with Hold em.

The fact that in Omaha we are much more likely to see bigger hands than in hold em is the first thing I would say to a "Newbie". How many people do you see on the Omaha Tables on the net making massive River bets with a Low straight or Underfull full house and losing a massive pot.

Starting hands was explained well and from this we learnt that good hole cards are usually all linked in some way such as AsAdQsKd. With this hand we can look at least 7 different hands we could hit or draw. Straight flushes through to plain old Trips. If we held 2dTcKs7h what are we looking at? Not a lot I would guess!

I feel that this is the best chapter in the book and has got me playing Omaha almost all the time now.

I have yet to enjoy the Hold em chapter and await that eagerly. I also note that the last 40 pages are about the World Poker Tour. Is this more promotion and if not what can we as Poker Players learn from this?

I leave you all to decide! Oh and my marks out of Ten. I would say 6.5 !