Note: This review appeared in Card Player on November 7, 2007.

Professional No-Limit Hold'em: Volume I by Matt Flynn, Sunny Mehta, and Ed Miller (Two Plus Two Publishing; $29.95)

A lot of amateur players seem to believe that no-limit hold'em is a game dominated by feel and aggression instead of mathematical rigor and brutal rationality, but this powerful new book dispels that notion in no uncertain terms. "It's not the one gut-wrenching decision for all the chips that counts most," the authors write. "It's the thousands of small strategic decisions that the pros get right and the amateurs don't."

Don't misunderstand. Feel and aggression are critical to success in no-limit hold'em. But the most consistent winners use analytical skill to complement their decision making, and in no-limit hold'em, the math is a lot more difficult than it is in the limit game. In limit, you're playing for one or two or three more bets; in no-limit, your entire stack may be on the line in every hand. And that makes the analytical aspects of no-limit hold'em a lot more complicated.

No surprise, then, that the book includes a lengthy discussion of stack sizes, which "are critical to most no-limit decisions." Stack size effectively determines your risk/reward possibilities, and that idea prompts a long and very valuable analysis of "commitment." "'Am I committed?' is the first question you should ask yourself on every street," write Flynn, Mehta, and Miller. If you understand the concepts in this book, you'll know how to answer that crucial question. But here's the real challenge: You have to make the all-in decision before you play a large pot. You must know if you're at the "commitment threshold" and how you're going to respond if you're facing an all-in bet. Those are the situations than can build—or destroy—your bankroll, and you have to be prepared for them.

The book is primarily about the analytical (i.e., mathematical) aspects of no-limit hold'em, but Flynn et al. do a good job of illuminating topics like hand reading. It's not mystical (unless your name is Kenny Tran), but it's not purely rational or logical either. In particular, the book points out the folly of putting someone on a specific hand instead of range of hands. And that leads directly into the meatiest concept of the book, "the REM Process": "Range, Equity, Maximize."

Range, of course, refers to the spectrum of hands your opponents could have (we all know players who only raise with AA or KK, but most raisers have a much wider range of potential hands). Observation of showdowns will help you assign a range to a specific player, and of course you'll add physical tells and intangibles (is someone on tilt? stuck big-time? flush with chips?) to your analysis.

Equity is the value of your hand compared to the range of hands your opponent has (Harrington fans will recognize this concept in his "Structured Hand Analysis" in Harrington on Hold'em, Volume II). Only a savant could perform these calculations at the table, but you'll learn some shortcuts to getting there.

Finally, maximize "means choosing the action or series of actions that makes you the most money in the long run." What's the optimum size of a value bet (which of course depends on the size of the pot and the size of the stacks behind)? Of a bluff?

If this makes no-limit hold'em sound complex, well, that's the reality. Get used to it or get used to going broke. The mantra of this book is "Plan your hands." But you can't plan effectively if you don't understand REM, if you don't understand the concept of relative stack sizes and the stack-to-pot ratio, if you don't understand when you've reached the commitment threshold. And that's why you need Professional No-Limit Hold'em—and the tenacity to learn what it has to offer.