Play Poker Like Johnny Chan

by Johnny Chan

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Reviewer: pjensen

No one can deny that Johnny Chan is one of the best poker players in the world. He has won ten World Series bracelets (including two Main Event championships), has won countless other major tournaments, and made millions of dollars in cash games. He started at the bottom, playing for small stakes, and slowly worked his way to the top of the ladder.

Play Poker Like Johnny Chan goes into each of the most popular forms of poker – limit holdem, no-limit holdem, 7-card stud, stud hi/low, Omaha, and Omaha high/low. There is also a chapter about what to expect when you visit a casino, and some tips on various other topics like money/bankroll management, bluffing, and tournaments. The presentation is outstanding, with glossy paper and full-color photographs.

The section for each game has the same similar topics, such as starting hand selection, position, and how to play each betting round. The sections on holdem and Omaha have some great examples of reading the flop, and what sorts of flops are good or bad for a particular hand. That’s where the full-color pictures come in handy – they make it much easier to understand.

The chapter on no-limit holdem is probably the best of the bunch, since it goes beyond basic strategy and goes into Chan’s head on how he plays the game (and the other players). He does a good job of telling how he determines his bet sizes, and when/how he sets up his bluffs.

If you’ve read a ton of other poker instruction books, you probably won’t learn much new stuff here. That is the unfortunate circumstance of teaching a half-dozen different games in only 250 pages. But it does a good job of taking you from the beginner to intermediate stage in each of those games. If you are still a relatively new player, this book is worth checking out – not only is there some good instruction here for beginners, the book itself is beautiful. Maybe it’s just a sub-conscious effect, but the full-color cards in the examples really help to drive the points home. However, if you are a more advanced player, you probably won’t learn much here and you might want to skip it.

Play Poker Like Johnny Chan is intended to be the first in a series, with future books devoted to one specific game at a time (the next book in the series will be 100 pages longer, and will cover limit holdem exclusively). If those future books are as high-quality as this one, and at the same time have more in-depth and advanced instruction, they will definitely be worth checking out.

3/5 

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