Bad Advice

Sometimes I wonder about Card Player magazine.

Do the authors know how to play poker? Do the editors?

In the recent Card Player with Jennifer Harmon on the cover, a column by Barry Tanenbaum called "Two No-Limit Hold'em Lesson Hands" has some awful advice. Click here to read the full column.

This is the paragraph that is terrible:

The player with the Ahearts Jhearts had a different sort of problem. With a royal-flush draw and a gutshot-straight draw, this player had 12 pure outs. Generally, though, the bet was too large for even that draw to be getting the correct pot odds to call. If he called and missed, another pot-sized bet would again be offering him the wrong price to call. In no-limit, however, there is always an interesting alternative to calling: raising. In limit poker, a raise here, while you sometimes see it, is normally self-defeating. The raiser typically gets called down and has to make his hand. Plus, in limit, any big draw almost always sees the proper odds to draw.

Just awful. If I have a nut flush draw, a gutshot straight draw and overcard outs, I'm going to raise it every single time.

Does Barry Tanenbaum know anything at all about limit poker? If not, he should stop writing about it like he's an authority.

I see this kind of crap in Card Player all too frequently. I like reading the magazine, but when it comes to strategy articles, I'm starting to think it's better to just skip over them unless I trust the author.

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