Harrington on Hold’em Volume III: The Workbook

Dan Harrington is a hallowed name in the poker world, renowned for being one of the best tournament players the game has seen in its brief but turbulent history. Not only has he won the World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event, he reached the final table in consecutive years in 2003 and 2004, beating fields of 839 and 2,576 respectively. This is often cited as one of the most significant achievements in WSOP history, perhaps only beaten by Johnny Chan’s 1987-1989 main event run where he placed 1st, 1st and 2nd, (although this was with much smaller entry pools).

WSOP main event winner "Action" Dan Harrington

“Action” Dan, an ironic nod to his generally conservative style, has since written a trio of books outlining tournament strategy for advanced players. The first two volumes of the set, Strategic Play and The Endgame, are generally considered must-reads for any player looking to progress from a beginner level to an intermediate/advanced level, although some feel Harrington’s style is slightly too tight for some of the aggressive developments seen in poker over the last few years, both online and in live play.

Personally, I think Harrington is an absolute hero and everyone should read these books if they are looking to improve their game, particularly at micro- and low-stakes games where a conservative approach is much more successful. I’ve read both cover to cover several times and still refer back to them if I feel I need a refresher, much more than I do other poker books in my collection, even Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky – another must-have classic.

However, less revered is the third book in the Harrington series, The Workbook. Often overlooked, I think this volume is definitely a worthy follow-up to its predecessors, despite being shorter on theory and strategies.

Harrington's Workbook

The book uses a format familiar to any of you who have ever picked up one of those trite lifestyle magazines that form the backbone of any doctors’ waiting room reading selections. In these mags you’ll inevitably find a quiz entitled “Find your perfect man” where you will be asked a series of questions with answers of A), B), C) or D) depending on your preference. Each answer is designated a certain points score and you tot them all up at the end to find out your perfect match. Normally a load of horseshit, in other words.

Well, Harrington employs this structure in a poker context, with much better effect, and readers are encouraged to work through 50 poker problems, being asked at separate stages what they would do at certain phases of a hand. This usually comes in the form of betting, raising, checking or folding. You write down all your choices and then Harrington goes through the solution to each problem, dishing out different points for how he thinks you played the hand.

Despite having had the book for about 3 years, I only actually went through it this week. Overall, I thought it was a good challenge, which definitely does a good job of encouraging you to accumulate the knowledge you have learned from the other two volumes and bring it together to solve “real-life” situations. When answering the questions I tried to do it quickly in order to emulate the kind of time pressures I would be under online (I’m pretty sure 99% of decent players could solve most poker odds problems with infinite time, a calculator and multiple choices!).

Once you’ve finished, you tot up all the points and calculate your final score out of 591, which Harrington stratifies as:

• 500 or more: World Class. Probably already making a fine living out of the game
• 400 or more: A very good player who should show a solid profit in big tournaments
• 300 or more: A player with a solid base of skills to build upon
• 200 or more: A player whose game needs work in many key areas
• 100 or more: A novice or beginner-level player

So how did I do? Well, before I started I would have been happy to get 300 or more. However, after adding my total up twice I managed to achieve a rather surprising 506 points. World class!! However, halfway through packing my bag for Vegas and next year’s WSOP I realised that the score is flattering in more ways than one.

1. I guessed on a few questions. When I was truly stuck on how to act in a hand (usually whether I should check or bet), I tended to check, knowing this would probably score higher with Harrington’s conservative approach
2. While it’s easy to make the right choice with plenty of time and background knowledge, making the same moves in the heat of battle, so to speak, is a lot more difficult and I would be hard-pressed to say I always make the optimum plays when under pressure
3. The book is around 5 years old now and Harrington is extremely tight, so even if I was world-class by his standards, it can be argued that standards have changed in recent years
4. Some of the questions are pretty leading. For example, one is called “Smelling the threat”. Obviously, you are inclined to take the cautious approach in this problem on the understanding that your opponent clearly has a monster
5. I’m not world class, so it’s clearly wrong. Duh

I suck then? Well, there were a few positives to take away from the exercise. I got almost all of the pot odds problems correct without really spending too much time calculating them properly (on instinct mostly). I also got 99% of the bet sizes right. Furthermore, the problems where I dropped points were marginal rather than blatant mistakes. For example, I tended to take a more aggressive line in some hands, which is obviously frowned upon by Harrington, but can’t really be faulted in some circumstances (incidentally, the hands where I took this approach I would have “won” by pushing people off draws, as results-orientated as that sounds).

All in all, I think this is a nice little book to work through and a lot of the information, particularly the mathematical calculations, are still relevant to anyone looking to improve their game. It does have a few faults – my biggest gripe was that “good” answers were often given a mark of say 4, while all other answers would be given 0, despite some being obviously worse options than others. While this is supposed to encourage you to make the optimal play (in his opinion) each time  I think it could discourage some players by having their slightly sub-optimal play being ranked alongside ridiculous donk moves – such as pushing into three overcards on a drawy board with an underpair.

Despite this, I think it serves as an excellent companion to Volumes I and II of Harrington on Hold’em, albeit a less well-thumbed one.