 “Action Dan” is quite the funny nickname for someone who plays such a tight aggressive style. “Action” Dan Harrington has been one of the top competitors in poker since he has stepped into the scene. He made the final table in the 1987 World Series of Poker, won the main event in 1995, and also made the top four two years in a row against the biggest fields to play at the event in 2003 and 2004.
In Harrington on Hold’em Volume 1 Dan Harrington goes over the basics that a player would need to know in order to place well in a multi table tournament. He goes over the different ways to build your stack up in the early stages, how to survive the middle stages when the blinds start to build bigger compared to your stack size, and how to coast right into a good finish with tight aggressive play in the later stages of these tournaments.
There is a large section of the book that is dedicated to theoretical aspects of Texas Hold’em. He writes about each street and how the player should react with these hands in order for the player to maximize gains and minimize losses. He goes over a few real life situations that nearly every player will encounter and not only writes what to do, but explains why you would do so in order for the player to understand the theory as a whole. The way Harrington explains these situations helps the player better prepare to apply what they have learned to other situations that are very similar.
There are a few spots in the literature that could be explained a bit better. Harrington could definitely go into more detail over some of the more advanced ideas that he talks about so that new players would have a better understanding, but for the most part is crisp and clear. Everything is written in a normal flow so that the reader can understand it. Harrington does an excellent job in keeping it simple so that the reader isn’t overwhelmed with too many statistics and/or equations and doesn’t retain the information that is provided.
Harrington on Hold’em Volume 1 is written about tournament play and will benefit tournament players the most. The great thing about this book is that it works great for no limit Hold’em cash players as well. Not only does the book teach about playing in tournaments, but it explains what tight aggressive winning play is and also explains why playing in this manner will benefit the most in the long run. Harrington on Hold’em Volume 1 is a must read for any player who is thinking about taking the game of poker to the next level. This piece of poker literature should be in every serious collection of books.
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