Howard Lederer "Tells" All

So I promised a review of this DVD, and here it is.

First off, when you look at the product description for this DVD on Howard's site, you can see that it's intended as a basic overview for people who have not purchased his other DVDs. So let's take it for what it is... a basic-level DVD.

Howard is wearing a blue checkered shirt through the presentation. It doesn't seem like he spent too much time rehearsing... in fact, I'm not even sure that the DVD was scripted, because it looks like he's thinking about how to explain certain concepts through the program. He looks down at the table a lot when he's going through a hand, and he says the occasional "umm". The lighting isn't that great. The sound is kind of cheesy. But let's get to the point... we're not watching the DVD because we think Howard is pretty to look at, or because we want to hear some quality sound effects. The simple fact is that this man is one of the brilliant poker players of our day, and surely has tons to offer.

The first part of the DVD starts off pretty strong. He goes over a few tells, including the "fast call" and the "staredown". He has a few people (I'm assuming actors?) playing out the hands and demonstrating certain tells. He goes over about eight or so tells (about 15 minutes) before moving on.

The next section is how to play. Goes over what the button is, what the blinds are, etc. etc. Boring stuff. It started off so strong with the tells and I was hoping that it would keep going strong, but this was definitely a setback. The "how to play" section lasts about ten minutes. He has nine of the actors sitting around kind of laughing goofy from time to time. Favorite quote : "Holdem is a game of match-ups... you'll see what I mean later."

Next is playing pre-flop. He has a little strategy chart that he included in the DVD which basically re-iterates the kind of stuff that you see in Sklansky's book. What to open with, what to call with... raise with pocket KKs, fold KJo because it's not on the list. He goes on for about 15 minutes talking about how AQ is going to dominate Q8. He brings out an odds chart (which WASN'T included in my DVD) which shows how much of a dog you are if you have 2 outs, 4 outs, 9 outs, etc. Again, this all lasts about fifteen minutes. Favorite quote : "I couldn't give you all the odds down to the exact percentage... it's not important." Amen to that.

After pre-flop comes play on the flop. He says, "In Holdem, if you have the second best hand that is nearly as good as your opponent's hand, then you are in big trouble." I think it was in this section that he talked about the importance of having live outs. He used an example of a flop TT7 where you have 89. Often times your opponent is going to have a hand like JT, where you'll only have 4 outs instead of 8 for the straight. Ok.

Next is the turn. He talks about bluffing when a scare card comes. Uses an example of a flop Th7c3h with a turn 6h. In the example, the first player bets on the flop with KTo, then checks the turn. The second player has called the flop with KQ of diamonds (not sure why), then bets when the 6 of hearts comes. Decent example. The whole point being you try to get in your opponents head, figuring out what hands he could put you on, and playing accordingly. If you call his bet on the flop, he can easily put you on a flush draw, straight draw, even a set... scare cards are the shit in NL Holdem. Ok. So then he talks about how important it is to make your opponents pay for their drawing hands, and how the right amount to make them pay is usually a pot-size bet. Ok. Got it.

Finally, the river. This is the only part of the DVD since the beginning when he goes over tells that I thought was worthwhile. Here he talks a little bit about why betting on the river is different than betting on any other street, and why you should usually just check your mediocre hands rather than bet them, thereby inducing bluffs from hands that would fold if you bet. It's a pretty important concept (maybe one of the most important concepts) and he very briefly touches on it... but he does address it.

So what are my final thoughts on this DVD? Well, for under $10, you can't really go wrong. It has enough quality stuff in the first fifteen minutes and the last five minutes to make it worth the pick-up. But it doesn't really begin to "tell all". I was really hoping that this DVD would be the one that delves deep into the crevices that other teachers can't or won't go into. Instead, it's just another beginner DVD with a few nuggets thrown in to appease the people who already know how to play.

So a little disappointed in this one. I picked up his Secrets of NL Holdem, and I'll review that one soon. Hopefully, he won't spend half the DVD going over the rules and basic pre-flop strategy. But for nine bucks? Come on... it's worth it.

When I was preparing for my review of this title, I went to Howard's website and learned a lot more about poker from reading his articles on the site then from this DVD. It's actually a pretty impressive site.

Final Score : 4/10


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