Exploitative Play in Live Poker

How to Manipulate Your Opponents into Making Mistakes

By: Alexander Fitzgerald

Narrated by: Alexander Fitzgerald

Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's Summary

Many poker players can make good decisions at the table with a reasonable frequency. Nevertheless, there are numerous situations where even very experienced players behave in predictable ways. These deeply-ingrained habits lead them to make mistakes. The problem is that these situations won't often arise at the table by chance - you have to make them happen. Exploitative Play in Live Poker is a ground-breaking work that teaches you how to create the circumstances where your opponents will be likely to blunder and how to exploit them when they do. 

To achieve this you will need to put to one side starting-hand charts, balance, and GTO (Game Theory Optimal) play. Instead you will incorporate new concepts that may well place you outside your comfort zone. However, your style will now be forcing the other players at the table outside of their comfort zone and, unlike you, they won't know how to adapt. 

Learn how to:

• Counter the auto-continuation-bettor
• Develop a powerful donk-betting strategy
• Use the overbet, the check-raise, and the three-barrel effectively

As well as being a highly successful player, Alex Fitzgerald runs a poker consultancy that serves more than 1,000 professional poker players in 60 countries. As part of this work, he has very likely trawled through more hand history databases than anyone else. This gives him a unique insight into how players really play, especially when placed under pressure and forced into unfamiliar situations. 

©2018 D&B Publishing (P)2019 D&B Publishing

Thank you! Alex

“You do it for the love of the game. If the way you play doesn’t allow you to love the greatest game on earth than your doing it wrong.” Alex Fitzgerald

Mr. Fitzgerald’s book is inspiring, insightful, and ingenious. His grasp of exploitive play has infused my win rate with higher percentages. He explains ranges and basic poker math that finally clears up some of my fog. His shark like mentality: “...take their chips... take them to the river and drown them...” is a blast to listen to. The audible version of the book is definitely approachable in the car, but his magnum opus (The Myth of Poker Talent) requires careful plodding. I like Jonathan Little’s books and brought one for a friend of mine that I often play against. I just hope he doesn’t find Alex. I find myself hearing his challenge when I’m playing. “Poker players don’t experiment enough.” So I try some weird reraise that I never would have had the guts to try before. I want to play in a way that I love the game. Thank you Alex for helping me do that. I’m 56 and I hope you will forgive me but if I ever see you I’m going to have to ring your hand off and just say thanks again.

Raymond Hernandez IV
[e-mail]

Good Content

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. The author has a unique, data-driven perspective on the game.
My only complaint is his pronunciation of the word button. Instead of the common pronunciation, "but'n", Alex says, "budden." If you heard someone say budden in a casual conversation, you wouldn't give it a second thought. However, this is a poker book, so you hear it a couple of hundred times. It got so that every time he said it my brain would derail for a minute or two and I'd lose focus on the discussion. Aaaagh!
Even so, I still recommend the book. His personal perspective on poker and life at the end of the book are interesting and sound more like a biography than the usual condescending garbage that we get from most poker book authors.

Change your game!

Over the last 15+ years I’ve read books by Doyle, Helmuth, Harrington, Gordon, Cairo, Little etc. the list goes on. This book goes beyond hand ranges and tells. If you’re a student of the game and don’t want to get left in the dust as the game evolves, then this is a MUST read/listen. Alex also sends daily emails that keep you and your game in check!

Perfect for audio format, for intended audience.

This is NOT a beginners book. If you've been playing less than a year or two, there are better books. This is for intermediate players, I'd say.

This is primarily geared toward the tournament player. But, being a cash player myself I can say a good amount applies to these games too.

This is a great book. It would be a great read. Where it really stands out is that it is fully digestible on audio. This is VERY rare for a poker book. It is written in a conversational style and choked full of humor and poker lingo with a fair amount of profanity. I LOVE IT.

It's like listening to a lifetime pro go on and on about how people could easily beat this game if they just knew that.......I LOVE IT.

The content is high level thinking distilled down to actionable and understandable injunctions to play like this in this spot.

I will probably listen several more times.

If you are playing a lot of live tournament poker this book is a MUST. If you play live cash, like me, this book is better than most. If you play online, not for you.

Lastly, read by the author with suck authenticity and passion. 6 stars for the performance.

Overall best book I have LISTENED TO. Though it might be number 5 or 10 if I had read it.

Fantastic book

It's like Billy Eichner is reading you a really, really great poker book. So awesome...

Useful Strategies

Best book I’ve read/heard in 10 years. I’ve read most everything available, too from Theory of Poker to Super System to Harrington’s to Jonathan Little to psychology and tells. Useful concepts.

Excellent book!

One of the best poker books I’ve read. Alex is always entertaining and his insights into the game are priceless, don’t miss out on this book.

Great book

Thanks for your hard work and the info you put together. Really insightful and has already motivated me to change up some of my plays.

great book.

Alex Fitzgerald is an excellent coach. throughout the book it is evident that the success of the reader is a priority and this book is well worth the money. I look forward to learning more from Assasinato in his other book The Myth of Poker Talent, which he describes in this book as a more in depth look at the broad strokes approaches recommended here.

What I was looking for.

Baseline, simple concepts, but awesome all the same. Good flow and enjoyable to listen to. Will probably read his other book.

Useful tips

Some useful tips to remind yourself of in here.

I find it hard to follow hand quizzes without the info written down but once you listen to a few of them you get the hand of it.

You have to take it all as Alex’s learnings and find a way of using the info in your own game. That’s why I like it. He’s providing tools and ideas but you still have to make your own moves.

It’s a good read that I’ll listen to again to keep refreshing it over and over.

Usefull, refreshing angles and brutal honesty

Enjoyed how the author from the get go has a clear message and a strong voice. As a reader I found it refreshing and made listening easier and more enjoyable.

Assasinato at his best

I've listened to Alex since his first appearance on a local podcast and love his passion, knowledge and enthusiasm.

highly recommended listen. as soon as I finished it, I just hit play again.

wish I could give it one star ⭐

Only because what I have learned will make me a fortune . how many 50+ year olds do you think have listened carefully to this and understood most of it. that combined with a little gto study should win me the main event 😜😜going to listen to it again now thank Alex.

Not for very begginers and online players

Great book, listened audible at first, but because it is not really easy to understand for more or less begginers , bought paperback copy. At one point just ended up rewinding audio multiple times to fully understand what was told on recording. Don't get me wrong, book is written very well, issue is only if you are new to the game or you have been playing online for example , you will struggle with all poker terms which sometimes is thrown out one by one. Other thing is online, but that is even mentioned in book few times (at least once) , that this book is for live not online really. Because online is very hard to apply same strategy as book provides, as you still get called in many cases and people play just so much wider. Let's say on flop you bluff (you have overcards and flop is dry), and then end up fire on all 3 streets just to find out that villain had bottom pair and not even good kicker T and lower. Otherwise book really gives a lot of information, and a lot of ideas how to think and play your game, when you read (listen) it you have in most cases inside voice telling "Yeah, that make sense" "Omg, thats me actually, I'm *spoiler* fallen hero". Great book, would recomend anyone who is activly or want to play live tournament. Im currently reading it as preperation for first live game.

Great words of wisdom

Great words of wisdom from someone who has devoted themselves to better understanding the game of poker and those who play it. Thank you.

excellent

well written well delivered and with some extraordinary ideas. A great read for even a 20 years player

Best book out there since Harrington on Holdem !

High level content for every non high roller out there. Easy to read, understand and apply.
Worth my 1st review ever on audible.