Review: Harrington on Hold'em Vol III: The Workbook

Each month I will take some time to talk about a poker related products and voice my opinion about it, for the good or for the bad. In this review I would like to talk about Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 3: The Workbook.

Harrington on Hold'em Volume 3, known as 'HoH3' through out the rest of this review, is written by none other than Dan Harrington himself along with Bill Robertie and is published by Two-Plus-Two Publishing. This is the third of his three volume set and focuses on the following main topics:

• Evaluating Your Play
• Playing After the Flop
• Playing The Bubble

When you first look at HOH3 you will assume that the book is not very much different than it's predecessors, you'd be terribly wrong. HOH3 breaks from his typical design of "Lesson" then "Practice" and puts you right into the thick of the problem. Take HOH3 as a test of your knowledge. Imagine, if you will, that HOH1 & 2 was the class and HOH3 is the test.

HOH3 features 50 real life hands that were played by some of the very best players in the world. In these hands you ride shotgun with a selected pro and are presented with a multiple list of choices of actions you can make before every action the professional player actually made. Each hand, or situation, is presented with information that might be important in making the correct multiple choice answer (if a player has been loose, betting patterns known, your image at the table, etc.). Record all your answers and compare them with what the pro actually did - then read Harrington's comments on the play! Believe it or not, Harrington doesn't always take sides on what the pro did, and some hands are introduced in this book that were played completely wrong but Harrington wants to test you to ensure that you would have made the right play and not just marking off every move that the pro did (cheater!).

Answering the problem correctly gains you points. The tougher the answer, the greater the points. In the end you can tally up your points and compare them to his chart, almost like a grade.

200 points or less, you're a beginning player
200 or more, you need a lot of work in many key areas
300 or more, you have a solid base of skills to build upon
400 or more, you're a very good player who should show profits in big tournaments
500 or more, you're a world class player

The maximum one can earn is 591 points. But the point system is not all that's valuable in this book. Marking off which questions you did not score the maximum amount of points can be matched to another chart to inform you where you need to focus to strengthen your game. Whether it's your preflop action, betting for value, or the dozen or so other area's of focus, Harrington will hopefully guide you into the right direction on what part of your game you need to focus on.

This book should be apart of every true poker player's line up. It's not only a very insightful book, but a book that literary challenges your skills and abilities - and rates them. I did find myself time to time arguing with what Harrington would claim as the best answer to a particular problem, but then I guess that's why he is the Pro and I am not. The point is, this book gets you thinking and puts your plays, moves, calls, or whatever you want to call them, to the test. I recommend if you haven't already read HOH 1 & 2, to take the test first. Do not read Harrington's solutions to the problem since that will spoil the correct answer. Then read his previous two books and take the test again. Score both of them and see how much you gained from his previous books. I believe that you will be impressed with the results and feel that this book was well worth it's $29.95 price tag.

My verdict: Buy it

Oh, and my score was a 416. Good luck!