Looking to play "killer poker?" John Vorhaus will help you, but not in the conventional way.

First and foremost, Killer Poker is in no way a strategically-oriented book. The most technical this book gets is a bunch of regurgitated charts of standard odds. How often does a flush draw come in? A straight draw? What are the odds of flopping a set? All of these can be found in other poker books, where they are explained in far greater detail and much more eloquently.

So why buy and more importantly, invest time reading Killer Poker? Vorhaus states it quite well in the Afterword on page 243.

"Be honest."

This page, and the following should have been placed at the immediate beginning of the book. Killer Poker serves as a workbook for analyzing the personal and mental side of your game.

The book is divided into 6 sections. The sections I found that contributed the most to my game are:

Sections #1,2,4: What is Killer Poker?, Fixing the Holes, and The Poker Self respectively. These sections contain the meat of the book. They discuss a lot of flaws that players either have unknowingly or deny having in the mental aspect of their poker game.

However, I would strongly advise to avoid Section 3: Cards in Context like the plague, or at least read it with a microscopic filter. Killer Poker, in my opinion, is not a beginner's poker book. Beginners reading this section could destroy their game. Ironically, this section completely ignores the "context" or situations in poker that make it a game of "it depends." Beginners should return to this book after they have a solid foundation in their game of choice.

John Vorhaus, this book, and the entire Killer Poker series have received a largely negative reputation. I, on the other hand, beg to differ. The $15 cover price is easily made up for a thousand fold simply by taking the time to answer Vorhaus' questions honestly.