Have you been wondering what Phil Gordon has been doing since leaving Celebrity Poker Showdown? And where has he been since The Little Green Book became a best selling poker book that provided juicy tournament strategy and a lot of poker-love between its cute little covers? Ok, maybe not, but when Phil Gordon isn't writing, it really is our collective loss, so I do tend to keep track.

As if we didn't know, Phil Gordon has been playing poker. Only in preparation for The Little Blue Book, Phil was kind enough to take notes. The result of those notes is a compilation of lessons and hand scrutiny specifically played out in No Limit Hold'em games where Phil was the key player, usually faced with a major decision.

As you may be aware, Phil Gordon has a very entertaining style of describing NL Poker hands. What could easily be a boring lecture of odds, position, stack, profiling etc. Gordon plays a hand out like theatre, allowing you to feel the participant?s stress, the gratification of making a critical call, and the anger and depression of being drawn out. Even better, in several of these hands Phil shows you where he went wrong, clearly making a less-than-stellar play, and then explaining how you can avoid such situations yourself.

The situations range from online tournaments, qualifying tournaments, major buy-in tournaments, online NL cash games, and live NL cash games in some of the nicest casinos in the world. The cash games bring a new angle to Gordon?s writing as he has up until now focused his writing talents on NL tournaments. And these hands are very interesting. In one live casino game, he was way ahead and got his opponent to commit about $15,000 to of his chips to the pot, only to be dealt runner-runner diamond sickout. Ouch. Pot was $30,000!

All of the hands come with a simple, easy-to-read table view with no distracting, contrasting graphics. Phil then goes on to explain the necessary details and brings us through his thinking process as the hand develops. Phil?s humility is always welcome here as he applies it with a humorous twist and lets us all know that he too can be horrified in the face of aggression from an intimidating opponent.

Some of these exciting hands involve Phil Hellmuth, Phil Laak, Mike Matusow, Jennifer Harmon, Chris Ferguson, Chris Moneymaker and DevilFish Ulliot. In essence you get into some really high stakes games here, and feel the aggression dead on.

Although The Little Blue Book isn't as captivating as The Little Green Book, to Gordon?s credit, that is some act to follow. Still, well worth the 25 bucks as it is an easy, enjoyable read with thought provoking, game advancing advice and would make a great gift for your poker love as well.

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