Making the Final Table

At first glance, Making the Final Table, part of a series of books in the World Poker Tour line, seems like a worthless book. It's a thin volume (albeit one about half the price of thicker books with double the list price), with some of those pages taken up by worthless and quickly outdated tables of World Poker Tour stats in the appendix. Nevertheless, this no-limit hold em tournament poker book is solid. Authored by Erick Lindgren (alongside his co-writer/ghost-writer Matt Matros, who adds some essays on poker math in the appendix), this book is the one to go to if you're looking for insight into the "smallball" style of tournament play (which may make it less than ideal if you primarily play in small on-line tournaments with rapidly escalating blinds).

On page 20, the book sums up its approach in one sentence: "tournament poker is not about survival; tournament poker is about accumulating chips." From there, Lindgren wanders through topics such as his penchant for minimum raises under the gun to how he likes to see flops against weak opponents to how there are no rules in heads-up play.

It is a well-written book (probably because Matros has a MFA from Sarah Lawrence, where he attended the fiction writing program, in addition to his undergrad degree from Yale in math). It does read dryly like a textbook because it's not one. It's not a book about deep strategies and fancy trick plays that one might employ, but it is a book that describes the poker mindset and psychology of playing a deep-stacked tournament. There are several useful concepts given a sentence here or a paragraph there (such as "you don't need the best hand to be plus-EV") which could be explained in greater depth, but for which greater explanation is not necessary to drive home the point. The book reads well in part because the authors have done a good job of mixing in anecdotes (mostly taken from World Poker Tour events, naturally) to illustrate points. Lindgren walks the reader through a few hands to bring several concepts together. The book caps off with a chapter on how not to be an idiot after making a big score and has an appendix with two useful essays by Matt Matros on poker math and inducing bluffs.

Overall, the book describes a style which many players often can't play, either because of a lack of ability or a lack of opportunity to play in sufficiently deep-stacked tournaments. Nevertheless, it is a good book, partly because it describes well a significantly looser style than other no-limit hold em tournament books and serves to complement other literature on the subject.