This week I would like to review Annie Duke’s Advanced Texas Hold ‘Em Secrets - How to Beat the Big Boys. Wednesday’s will be be review day as much as possible here.

Annie Duke’s Wikipedia page

Annie Duke’s Official Web Page

The DVD is produced by The Masters of Poker which as far as I know also produces Phil Hellmuth’s DVD series.

Annie starts the video by explaining that this is geared towards the advanced player. By advanced she means you’ve read poker books, watched other DVDs, and understand poker terminology. At first I felt the the movie had some promise as it was produced a little better than other movies I’ve watched by The Masters of Poker.

One of the finer points of hold’em is to make sure you don’t put your self in tough choices constantly, a very simple concept. She briefly touches on slow playing a hand on a dry board verses a draw heavy board where it would be wrong to slow play. This point to me is not so advanced and really should be common sense to her target audience here. Themes like this are stressed through out the video, but I still think even the top level advanced player can walk away with a few tips.

The DVD seems to focus heavily on tells and profiling as this is repeated in later chapters. These are very important concepts to understand if you’re trying to move up from a level one thinking. I found one of the tells discussed to be new to me and that was blink rate. I also though it was a good reminder to stress the importance of talking to your opponents about everyday things that relate to their life so you can read body language about things that they are comfortable with and not so comfortable with, such as; dogs, kids, work, ect.

Bluffing, Semi-Bluffing, trapping, implied odds, and controlling pot odds are covered in the middle chapters of the DVD. A few examples of how to execute bluffs are given and for the most part this section is covered well. I like that in this section she mentions 9-2 off is slightly more than a 2-1 dog to AK.

Playing against maniacs, emotional control, and money management are covered at the tail end. While the maniac section is covered very well, the latter two seem to just be filler and should really be covered more in depth.

The bonus features are really not worth taking a look at. They start out with different levels of thinking but only get 3 levels deep. The levels are well discussed through out the DVD though they aren’t addressed specifically as “levels”. A lame endorsement for Commerce Casino is in the bonus features as well.

Overall I think it was a 2 and a half star DVD. The only reason it’s slightly above 2 stars is the fact that it reminded me of a few things I had forgotten and was decently produced. I discussed things I liked in my review but here are a few things I did not like. She talks too much with her hands and says literally too much. Some of the concepts are geared towards the beginner and not the advanced player. Each section could have been discussed more in depth and different variations on hand examples should have been given. If we’re calling DVD’s like this “for the advanced player” then I really can’t wait until a DVD comes out for the “expert” player.

Enjoy!

Share This!