Review on Master Poker Basics with 'Poker for Dummies' by Sam Hawj

Chris Moneymaker hosts Poker for Dummies, a DVD literally made for dummies who want to play poker. In terms of presentation, this is in many ways the best production I've seen in a poker video. Is it worth just looking at beautiful graphics, music and the right editing? There are two types of poker books and/or videos: those genuinely interested in the theories and possibilities of how and why the game works, which I call inspirational poker works, and those who don't care, uninspired ( ie cash in poker mode) ). To me, and I know I shouldn't have gone to the "For Dummies" series expecting something enlightening, this DVD is about 45 minutes of useless boring Thrash plus a few commercials at the end. To be honest, the filmmakers set their sights low and it was clear from the start that the work was aimed at complete beginners who have absolutely never played poker. After a few minutes of introductory talk, they start the video content with a long section on poker basics covering how to win hands, poker chips, hand ranks, bets and poker etiquette. The hand ranking section is a harrowing 4 minute explanation of every possible hand from high card to royal flush. This is something you can learn for free at any poker site and I can't imagine anyone reading a hand ranking chart for like 4 minutes. At the end of this section, 1/5 of the video is already done. After the poker basics section comes the Texas Hold'em section. Meet Barry Shulman, owner and publisher of Card Player, as he walks Moneymaker through the sequence of events in Hold'em. The two swap storytelling duties in this section, which quite often mentions the possibility of checking, raising, calling, or folding at the table for preflop, flop, turn, and river betting rounds. Strategy is not mentioned at all in this section; it only goes through a mere succession of events. This section is ten minutes long and we're about halfway through the video now. We learned that you can check, bet, call or fold, and now the hand is evaluated. The next section of strategy looks at position strength, preflop standards, multiway vs heads up, blind play, flop play. , turn and river. This section is a little under 7 minutes long, so it only introduces the various concepts I've listed and doesn't really provide any information about the strategy. In this video, hand wrestling is given almost as much time as all strategies combined. The next section on bluffs and tells is much more structured and can be a decent introduction to these concepts for beginners. Moneymaker gives some basic bluffing concepts and Shulman lists common gestures. This is the best part of the video so far. After Moneymaker's Ten Secrets of the World Series, there are several minutes of other games like Omaha, 7 Card Stud, and 5 Card Draw. Apart from these brief introductions and the following commercials, this video contains about 35 minutes of real poker content and the usefulness of this content is highly questionable. restless and uneasy at various points in the video, while his lines sound comfortable and well rehearsed. Somehow comparing a comfortable narrative with its squirming hand movements and clumsy head movements is far more repulsive than if it were just plain uncomfortable. That made me nervous! Conclusion: This video is not even worth watching if you already know the hand rankings and order of play in Texas Hold'em. Even if you don't know these things, I recommend you not to buy this one. Nobody could watch it more than once. This is a rental at its finest.