My One Minute Recommendation:
Harrington on Cash Games Volume One scores a 5/10. Players who are new to NLHE cash games will find it initially helpful, especially if they are interested in full ring play. Those who are already moderately successful at cash games will find little of use, especially if they are trying to improve at short-handed online games.

Free 2-day shipping on qualified orders over $35. Buy Harrington on Online Cash Games: 6-Max No-Limit Hold 'em at Walmart.com. Harrington on Online Cash Games 6-max No-limit Hold 'em (Book): Harrington, Dan: No-Limit hold 'em was once a game played almost exclusively in casinos. But during the last decade, the game's growth has been fueled in part by the easy availability of online playing sites where participants can play cash games and tournaments 24 hours a day, every day. In Harrington on Online Cash Games, Dan Harrington shows you the key ideas and skills that will let you master the online poker world which differs in some significant ways from the world of casino games. You ll learn how to handle different stack sizes, how to play at 6-max tables, how to deal with increased levels of aggression, and how to.

Overview

The original Harrington on Hold ‘Em revolutionized tournament poker, introducing tens of thousands of amateur players to what were then advanced moves and concepts: the continuation bet, the squeeze play, and M, the now-famous ratio of a player’s stack to the blinds and antes. This legacy created unrivaled anticipation for the Harrington on Cash Games (HOC) series, the first two volumes of which were released simultaneously last week.

So are they worth the hype? As with so many questions in no-limit hold ’em (NLHE), the answer is, “It depends.” Players who are new to NLHE cash games will have the most to gain, especially if they are interested in full ring play. Those who are already moderately successful at cash games will find few springboards to improvement, especially if they are interested in short-handed online games.

The books are wisely geared towards fans of tournament books who want to venture into no-limit cash games. Harrington writes primarily about full ring (i.e. 9- or 10-handed) games, and though his examples sometimes suggest otherwise, his advice is most applicable in smaller stakes, passive live games. Again, this makes sense given the implicitly intended audience, but it ought to have been made more clear.

Reading HOC Volume 1 should certainly make cash game novices safer and more confident at the tables. Harrington’s advice steers them clear of common and expensive pitfalls, particularly the perils of playing out of position and overvaluing one-pair hands. Armed with this advice, new players will be able to protect their bankrolls and avoid hemorrhaging money while they learn from the best teacher of all: experience.

This is a double-edged sword, however. Because so much of the advice in HOC Volume I borders on the formulaic and overly cautious, it carries the very real danger of delaying, if not stunting, the growth of advanced no-limit hold ’em skills. Reading an opponent’s hand and manipulating his range, which even 2+2’s David Sklansky has acknowledged as the most important and profitable NLHE skills, are not only lacking from but positively devalued by HOC Volume I.

The result is a manual that, though very good for turning a new player into a reasonably good player, may actually delay that same player’s transition to becoming very good or great. More experienced, higher stakes players, particularly those accustomed to more aggressive short-handed online games, will find little of use, at least in the first volume of the series.

Concepts and Theory

Harrington gets a lot of tricky bits of poker theory right, explaining them concisely but clearly and convincingly. He suggests some analogies and thought experiments that should be very helpful to players who lack a clear understanding of metagame, implied odds, equity, and the way stack sizes affect proper play. Reading these sections of HOC Volume I before starting a session could easily double or triple the educational value of the experience accumulated during that session.

Unfortunately, it will be necessary for the player to supply the experience himself, because Harrington’s practical advice and examples, though numerous, are often misleading and sometimes painfully bad. In his Introduction, for instance, the author analyzes a hand from High Stakes Poker where the players brutally bungle nearly every key decision point. They even violate Harrington’s oft-repeated warnings against overvaluing one pair, not giving opponents enough credit in multi-way pots, and bloating the pot from out of position. Despite all of this, the author concludes that, “This was a great hand, with a lot of excellent decisions by the three main players.”

Part of the problem stems from the fact that Harrington seems confused about the central objectives of the NLHE cash game player and how they differ from those of the tournament player. In the Introduction, he nonsensically asserts that, “in tournament poker, your time horizon is very limited. You need to seize every opportunity as it presents itself or risk getting blinded away. Cash games don’t have that same kind of pressure. They’re much more a game of patience. You don’t need to swing at balls that just graze the strike zone; you can wait for the fat ones that you can blast out of the park.”

To the extent that there’s any truth to this claim, it is owing to the deeper stacks generally found in cash game play, not to any kind of time limitation. A tournament player can gladly felt an overpair in many situations simply because the money already in the pot is so large relative to the money remaining in his stack, not because he won’t have time to find a better opportunity. A cash game player with a similar stack would have no reason to pass on this opportunity, and a deep-stacked tournament player would need to be more cautious with all of his chips that have not yet been wagered.

In the very next section, Harrington offers a much more helpful summary of the key principles at work in NLHE cash games, which he calls “The Strength Principle” (bet strong hands, check middling ones, fold or bluff weak ones), “The Aggression Principle” (betting and raising is generally better than checking and calling), “The Betting Principle” (most good bets will either force better hands to fold, weaker hands to call, or drawing hands to pay too high a price), and “The Deception Principle” (“Never do anything all of the time.”) This is a pretty good introduction to deep-stacked NLHE play, and only the fourth principle is a bit incomplete. After all, many good players manage to be very deceptive while always playing a certain hand the same way simply because they also play very different hands in an identical fashion.

Though Harrington does an admirable job with these “Basic Concepts”, his explorations of these key concepts is ultimately shallow and rudimentary. This is part of what makes it good for beginners, but it is also the reason why more advanced players will have little to gain from this volume. Implied odds, for instance, are absolutely critical to NLHE and ripe for in-depth analysis, but HOC Volume I never gets beyond the elementary definition of ‘how much you stand to win if you hit your hand.’

But implied odds are about more than winning additional bets. They are about equity that can be accumulated on later streets, whether from value betting, bluffing, or all around out-playing an opponent because of a certain card that flopped, turned, or rivered Yet Harrington has little to say about how factors like position and bluff outs can influence the calculation of pot odds.

The second major part of the book focuses on “The Elements of No-Limit Hold ‘Em Cash”, topics like hand selection, pot commitment, and hand reading. Once again, Harrington explains these quite well and occasionally even rises to the level of insightful. A few of his gems may enlighten even some relatively knowledeable readers, as when he rather succintly states that, “By playing a mix of hands, you’re actually reducing your opponent’s implied odds on his speculative hands” or when he says, “you need to be sure that any betting action by you is capable of multiple interpretations by an observant opponent.”

The Tight-Aggressive Strategy

The bulk of the book outlines what Harrington names his “Tight-Aggressive Strategy”. Harrington’s emphasis on practical advice was a much-appreciated hallmark of his tournament series, but there is a reason why the better cash game books of late have focused on theory and principles. Even played full ring, deep-stack NLHE allows for a huge amount of flexibility in the play of any given hand. Nebulous factors such as history, table image, and meta-game can swing a call into a fold or a fold into a raise, but they are notoriously difficult to encapsulate in a playbook.

Harrington is on the right track by introducing a coherent strategy that demonstrates a possible mix of hand ranges in the situations he examines. However, readers rarely get more than a glimpse of the reasoning behind the particular frequencies and combinations he recommends. The author himself admits the haphazard nature of his strategy when he resorts to justifying a certain mix of checks and bets because it “feels about right.” Granted this is not going to be an exact science, but without a much more thorough explanation of how various plays and hands complement each other, the reader gets a recipe rather than a learning tool.

When Harrington does share his reasoning, it’s often disappointing. The fundamental problem is that he rarely argues in terms of equity. He prefers instead to talk about information, pot control, and “taking down the pot”, all of which ought to be subordinate to manipulating an opponent’s range so as to maximize your equity. Presumably hand-reading and equity analysis lie somewhere below the surface when the author indicates that a bet “smells like a bluff” or that it is “too soon to give up”, but he never reveals the warrants for his extra-sensory perceptions.

This flawed reasoning is evident when the author says things like, “A pot-sized bet is large enough to accomplish anything that a bigger bet could accomplish.” Although an overbet may provide as much information as a pot-sized bet and charge draws a good price, the one thing it does not accomplish as well ought to be obvious: putting more money into the pot when you have the best hand! Similarly, there is no intrinsic need to take a moderate but likely best hand to showdown. A bet that exposes you to a raise is not a liability if only hands that have you crushed will make that raise.

Harrington’s reasoning also tends to rely on assumptions about his opponents that will ring false to most players. They are people who fold AQ to a single raise on dry Ace-high flops and let the first person to bet at a paired board take it down, no matter how implausible his line.

As for the strategy itself, it isn’t bad. Pre-flop, Harrington makes some good points about how and why to diversify your ranges. His central premise, that NLHE is about seeing a lot of cheap flops, can’t be true for everyone at the table, but it’s true enough if you’re one of the best. This section also debunks some common myths about pot odds and what hands should be played out of position for a discount.

The section on flop play in heads up pots is the longest in the book, and undeservedly so. Flop play has at least as much to do with how the board texture fits your opponent’s pre-flop range as it does with your own hand, yet Harrington’s analysis always proceeds from the latter. And despite its length, this section barely scratches the surface of possible flop situations. It’s an admirable attempt, but offering practical advice for every situation is simply impossible. Explanation of the decision-making process, which is so much more important, is the inevitable casualty.

This isn’t to say that there is no explanation of the decision-making process- quite the contrary. But as explained above, a lot of important stuff is left out. Covering those details would have been much more useful than a engaging in a precise and minute analysis of a few select flop situations from every angle.

The section on flop play in multi-way pots is both shorter and better. Rather than analyzing examples ad nauseum, Harrington concentrates on the big picture. He repeatedly hammers home his central thesis that play generally should and will be more straight-forward. For this reason, position is especially valuable. And despite what Harrington says, your bets should often be smaller, since the mere act of betting will command more respect.

Conclusion

Harrington reserves turn and river play for Volume II, which severely limits the stand-alone value of this book. Tournament converts will need the most help on these streets, and the fact that these sections complete the Tight-Aggressive strategy, HOC Volume I does not contain a fully playable strategy, even though the outlining of such occupies the bulk of the book.

Ultimately, the author’s preference for practical advice over theoretical discussion makes Harrington on Cash Volume I something of a crutch for beginning players, with all of the good and bad that that implies. It will surely plug some common leaks and keep them out of trouble, which means that smaller stakes games will probably start to get a bit tougher. Because the material on winning NLHE thought processes is so sporadic and flawed, however, this book may actually stunt a reader’s growth at some point and will certainly be of little use to experienced players seeking to improve or to short-handed players of any stripe. They might do well to read it anyway, however, simply to be up on the latest formulaic play likely to invade the NLHE scene.

For those of you who are interested in exactly what this book contains, please find below a preliminary Table of Contents. The reason I say preliminary is that we are still working on the text itself meaning it is not completely finalized, and that the page numbers given below are from our initial draft and won’t be accurate when the book is published. In fact, we expect this text to be close to 600 pages. Also, we have not yet set the retail price.

Table of Contents

About Dan Harrington................................................................................................................ vii

About Bill Robertie.................................................................................................................... viii

Introduction1

Organization of the Book..................................................................................................... 3

Part One: Basic No-Limit Hold ’em Concepts........................................................................... 5

Introduction........................................................................................................................ 6

Structure: Full Ring versus 6-Max

Seat Names.......................................................................................................... 11

Style: Tight and Loose, Aggressive and Passive

Straightforward Players and Tricky Players

Ranges.............................................................................................................................. 17

Position.............................................................................................................................. 19

The Four Basic Principles of No-Limit Hold ’em

No. 1: The Strength Principle................................................................................... 21

No. 2: The Aggression Principle.............................................................................. 22

No. 3: The Betting Principle.................................................................................... 22

No. 4: The Deception Principle................................................................................ 23

Opening Hand Ranges........................................................................................................ 25

Opening from Later Positions.................................................................................. 28

Bet Sizing for Opening Raises.................................................................................. 31

Varying Your Raise Sizes........................................................................................ 33

Preflop Limping................................................................................................................... 35

3-Betting and 4-Betting Preflop............................................................................................. 36

Flop: Heads-Up or Multiway................................................................................................. 39

Heads-Up on the Flop............................................................................................... 39

Multiway on the Flop................................................................................................ 41

Types of Bets on the Flop.................................................................................................. 44

Value Bets............................................................................................................... 44

Bluffs...................................................................................................................... 45

Semi-Bluffs............................................................................................................. 46

Continuation Bet.................................................................................................... 47

Donk Bet................................................................................................................ 47

Information Bet...................................................................................................... 48

Understanding Flop Texture................................................................................................ 49

Bet Sizing on the Flop and Later Streets

Playing the Turn................................................................................................................. 57

Betting the Turn..................................................................................................... 58

Checking the Turn.................................................................................................. 62

Playing the River................................................................................................................ 64

Expectation and Expected Value......................................................................................... 69

Pot Odds............................................................................................................................. 72

Expressed and Implied Odds................................................................................................ 73

Reverse Implied Odds.......................................................................................................... 75

Stack Sizes.......................................................................................................................... 77

Short Stacks............................................................................................................ 77

Medium Stacks........................................................................................................ 79

Full Stacks............................................................................................................... 79

Deep Stacks............................................................................................................ 79

Tailoring Your Strategy to the Stack Size

Implied Odds............................................................................................................ 82

Hand Strength and Pot Size.................................................................................................. 84

Pot Commitment.................................................................................................................. 87

Stack to Pot Ratio................................................................................................................ 88

Part Two: Playing Online.............................................................................................................. 90

Introduction......................................................................................................................... 91

Online Play versus Live Play................................................................................................ 93

Stakes..................................................................................................................... 93

Multi-Tabling........................................................................................................... 94

Physical Reads........................................................................................................ 95

Buy-Ins................................................................................................................... 95

Summary................................................................................................................. 96

Databases............................................................................................................................ 98

Heads-Up Displays (HUDs)..................................................................................... 98

Understanding Poker Tracker Data

Basic Information.................................................................................................... 100

The Classics........................................................................................................... 102

Other Useful Preflop Statistics................................................................................. 107

Post-Flop Action Statistics....................................................................................... 110

Post-Flop Summary Statistics................................................................................... 117

Constructing Your HUD...................................................................................................... 120

A Minimal HUD..................................................................................................... 120

A More Useful HUD.............................................................................................. 121

A Very Detailed HUD............................................................................................ 122

Conserving Space................................................................................................... 123

Drawing Inferences............................................................................................................ 125

Sample HUD No. 1................................................................................................ 125

Our Game Plan.......................................................................................... 127

Sample HUD No. 2................................................................................................ 128

Our Game Plan.......................................................................................... 130

Sample HUD No. 3................................................................................................ 131

Our Game Plan.......................................................................................... 133

Monitoring Our Own HUD..................................................................................... 133

Other HUD Statistics......................................................................................................... 135

Taking Notes..................................................................................................................... 138

Structuring Our Notes............................................................................................ 140

Notes Unrelated to Specific Hands

Preflop Notes........................................................................................................ 144

General Post-Flop Notes........................................................................................ 145

Flop Notes............................................................................................................ 148

Harrington On Online Cash Games Pdf

Turn Notes........................................................................................................... 152

River Notes.......................................................................................................... 153

Some Examples of Note-Taking............................................................................. 153

Sample Hand No. 1................................................................................... 153

Sample Hand No. 2................................................................................... 156

Sample Hand No. 3................................................................................... 158

Making Notes after a Session................................................................................ 160

First All-in Hand....................................................................................... 164

Second All-in Hand................................................................................... 165

Conclusions.............................................................................................. 166

Final Thoughts...................................................................................................... 167

Multi-Tabling.................................................................................................................... 168

Last Thought on Multi-Tabling............................................................................... 174

Selecting Sites, Tables, and Seats

Selecting a Site...................................................................................................... 177

Big or Small, New or Old?..................................................................................... 177

Database Support?................................................................................................ 178

Datamining?......................................................................................................... 178

Honesty?.............................................................................................................. 179

Player Strength?.................................................................................................... 180

Rake and Rakeback?............................................................................................. 181

Rakebacks and Bonuses?....................................................................................... 182

Selecting a Table............................................................................................................... 184

Evaluating Your Seat......................................................................................................... 186

Part Three: Ranges and Distributions.................................................................................... 194

Introduction: The Old Way of Seeing

What is a Range?.............................................................................................................. 199

Playing Against a Tight Range.......................................................................................... 200

Playing Against Looser Opening Ranges

Estimating Calling Ranges................................................................................................. 213

What is a Distribution?..................................................................................................... 218

Calculating Distributions....................................................................................... 223

Distributions Against a 12 Percent Range

Distributions Against a 25 Percent Range

Studying Hands.................................................................................................................. 234

Summary............................................................................................................... 250

Part Four: Beating Micro-Stakes Games................................................................................ 253

Introduction: How Micro-Stakes Players Play

Offense and Defense in Poker........................................................................................... 255

General Advice for Beating Micro-Stakes Games

Starting Hand Guide for Micro-Stakes 6-Max Games

Strategy No. 1: Playing Tight............................................................................... 267

Strategy No. 2: Loosening Up............................................................................... 270

Blind-Stealing.................................................................................................................... 273

Bet Sizing in Micro-Stakes Games

Attacking Limpers with Isolation Raises

Limping and Calling.......................................................................................................... 284

3-Betting and 4-Betting in Micro-Stakes Games

The Johnny All-in Move.................................................................................................. 293

Playing with Ace-King...................................................................................................... 298

Value Betting at Micro-Stakes........................................................................................... 300

Semi-Bluffing at Micro-Stakes........................................................................................... 305

Trapping........................................................................................................................... 308

Dealing with Strong Bets Post-Flop

Looking Forward............................................................................................................... 321

The Problems................................................................................................................... 322

Part Five: Beating Small Stakes Games................................................................................. 371

Introduction: Moving Up.................................................................................................. 372

Adapting to Small Stakes................................................................................................... 374

Player Types........................................................................................................ 374

HUD Statistics...................................................................................................... 376

Table Selection..................................................................................................... 378

Preflop Ranges and Actions.................................................................................. 378

General Post-Flop Tendencies............................................................................... 380

Flop Play.............................................................................................................. 380

Turn Play............................................................................................................. 381

River Play............................................................................................................. 381

Fancy Plays Start to Matter.................................................................................. 382

Defense Starts to Matter....................................................................................... 383

Good Hand Reading is Now Important

Playing Against Short Stacks................................................................................. 385

Preflop Starting Hands.......................................................................................... 387

Blind Stealing and Blind Defense

Blind Defense........................................................................................................ 396

3-Betting and 4-Betting.................................................................................................... 400

Responding to an Opening Raise........................................................................... 401

A Sample Situation................................................................................................ 402

A Second Example................................................................................................ 411

Attacking Weak Raisers........................................................................................ 414

Responding to a 3-bet........................................................................................... 414

Flop Tactics at Small Stakes.............................................................................................. 420

You Were the Aggressor Preflop........................................................................... 420

Playing Big Hands................................................................................................. 420

Playing Top Pair Top Kicker/Overpair Hands

Playing Draws....................................................................................................... 426

Playing Weak Hands or Nothing Hands

Defending Against a Continuation Bet

Value Betting in Small Stakes Games

Trouble on the River............................................................................................. 437

Extracting Value with Bigger Hands

The Problems................................................................................................................... 449

Glossary509

Index521

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