When I read Will Tipton’s first installment of Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’Em, I was basically a heads-up greenhorn. I knew very little about the format’s strategies outside of the most basic tactics and whatever I could use from my database of other structures and games.
In fact, I figured adjusting to a heads-up match was just a continuation of adjusting from a full ring to a short-handed game. After a few pages I realized I was an absolute fish in a heads-up match. But by the time I finished Volume 1 of Experts Heads Up No Limit Holdem I felt I could hold my own.
I was now armed with information I felt was important in a heads-up match, and felt like my poker acumen had been raised exponentially.
Now Tipton and D&B Publishing are back with Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’Em Volume 2, which picks up where Volume 1 left off.
You can buy Volume 2 of Expert Heads Up No Limit Holdem at Amazon.com.
Unsurprisingly, Volume 1 covered pre-flop play but it also threw me a curveball as it skipped over flop and turn play and instead focused on River decisions, as Tipton broke the text up into streets based on the general level of difficulty.
In Volume 2 you’ll find the all important Flop and Turn play, as well as more information pre-flop and River play, as he continues to drill home his decision tree based strategies, and how to make optimal decisions and adjust to the pace of a heads-up match.
Tipton also combines it all together, teaching you how to formulate a plan of attack across multiple streets.
What you’ll also find in Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’Em Volume 2 are strategies on how to deal with skilled opponents (where unlike in a full ring game you can’t avoid tough players in a heads-up match) which is a break from the norm of poker books, as was the overall content Tipton chose to focus on.
As Tipton explained to me, “… specific advice about particular spots goes out of date pretty quickly, or it depends strongly on your player pool… When I started writing, it was largely because I didn’t think there was any resource available that taught game theoretical ideas in a way that was correct and made them accessible to poker players. I wouldn’t have bothered to write a book if it was only to rehash the standard sort of advice that was already out there.”
Narrow focus means in-depth coverage
Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’Em is a very focused book, it’s for heads-up No Limit Hold’Em players!
This focus allows Tipton to go into far greater detail than the normal strategy primer which has to deal with different positions, your different opponents and their positions, multi-way pots and so on. With heads-up poker a lot of this goes out the window, and the analysis can be and is much deeper. Each situation is just you and your opponent and each situation can be fleshed out to its fullest.
For a comparison, Imagine you’re interested in car engines, one book is 500 pages and goes over the whole engine, but you’re also particularly interested n carburetors, and another book is 750 pages and focuses solely on carburetors; if your goal was to do nothing but build carburetors which book would you buy, and which book do you think would increase your knowledge base more?
If you know you’re going to play heads-up no limit holdem than this is the book you should be reading.
The good news with these more focused books is you’ll learn more, the bad news is the book will likely be very technical and not for the rank amateur.
Still, I feel Tipton has come up with a way to deal with this: Chapters broken up into short headers (that can be read and re-read easily) and bulleted points at the end of each detailing the main concepts you should have taken away from each chapter.
Who is this book for?
Let me start off by saying this series isn’t for everybody.
This is for serious students of the game who have a good foundation in poker and understand how to do “poker math.” Greener players will definitely have to trudge through this book at a very slow pace as it’s far more complex than your standard strategy book.
If you’re like me and are an already experienced player looking for a book to help you learn heads-up play this is where you should start and finish your search. Between the two volumes you’re looking at some 750 pages of serious poker talk (there isn’t any filler in Tipton’s duology) on heads-up play.
That being said, if you’re relatively new to poker but have a passion for heads-up play, you’d be foolish not to add these two books to your poker library, even if you struggle through on your first reading.
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