Rating: 
Summary: not a "manual"
Review: Most of the negative reviews below come from LIMIT players who have probably read Sklansky's books and expect a lot of "if A then do B or C" and a lot of specific advice.
Big bet poker is a bit different in that it would be foolish to give such specific advice. You're going to cost yourself a lot of money (profit or just lose money) if you play cookie cutter poker.
Ciaffone and Reuben's book is good in that it teaches you about how to take into consideration your stack size, your opponent's stack size, and the pot size before acting among other important concepts. That alone is worth the cost of the book.Regarding the review below: They recommending betting a set on the flop more in potlimit than in no-limit. Checking a set (when you have a pocket pair) in potlimit is going to limit your profits because if everyone checks behind you can only bet/raise the size of the pot on the turn. In nolimit, you can bet whatever you want whenever so checking isn't as costly. Also how does flopping a set when you have a pocket pair automatically imply there is a dangerous flop. In anycase, I ramble. Go to the twoplustwo.com forums to find other positive reviews of this book by MANY bigbet poker players.
Mason Malmuth also HIGHLY recommends this book for you sklansky and malmuth fans.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Big Bet Poker book to date
Review: Much better than the Cloutier/McEvoy book. Really introduces you to the basic concepts of big bet poker. Teaches you what to think about when playing big bet. Clearly written. Definitely recommend it. Either beginner or advanced.
Rating:
Summary: Great definitive guide for big-bet poker!
Review: Pot-Limit & No-Limit Poker is currently the best book on big bet pot-limit and no-limit poker. The big bet involves a lot of human elements (intimidation, trickery, bluffing, etc.) that the more technical limit game does not. It's very easy to master the limit game with expert play, but it's much harder to apply the same techniques and expert formulas to the big-bet game. If no-limit or pot-limit is your game, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: The Best book on Big Bet Poker
Review: Reuben and Ciaffone are well known in big poker circles. Both are tenacious winning players who are well respected by their peers. Ciaffone is well known for his seminal work on Omaha, Omaha Holdem Poker, and Reuben has been writing poker columns off and on since the '60s. Both have a great deal to teach us about high stakes poker. This becomes apparent immediately in the first section, titled "Big-Bet Poker Concepts" which provides the best introduction to the basic concepts of pot-limit and no-limit play, and how this differs from limit games. Before entering a big bet tournament or a ring game for the first time, anyone would be well served to read through this section carefully.
The second section is on specific poker forms, including no-limit Hold'em, pot-limit Omaha (high), Stud Hi-Lo, etc.. Almost every game section is followed by a quiz on the material covered. Most of the quiz questions are quite good, but I don't think that the scoring system used should be given that much credence. Not that the answers given are incorrect by any means, just that I would expect that one's point total, and therefore "rank" by the author's estimation, may not always correlate well with one's true abilities. Some of the games discussed in this section, like London Lowball and five and six card Omaha aren't familiar to me, and I doubt I'd play them. Similarly, I don't think it's likely that I'd play Strip Deck Poker or big bet Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo. I also don't think all of these games are especially illustrative of important poker concepts, but these sections don't take up a whole lot of space, so there's certainly no harm done in including them here, even if the reader's main interests are in Hold'em and Omaha. Further, if I ever expect to play London Lowball, I'll now know what I need to read in order to have a chance. The third section is titled "Special Situations" and has two short chapters on tournament and shorthanded play. I found these sections to be a little bit lacking. Fortunately, Cloutier covers tournament situations fairly well in his book, but there is a lot more that could be said about shorthanded poker. The fourth section is titled "General Information" and covers a brief history of the game of poker, pot-limit rules, ethical considerations, and cheating. This information is good and most of it should be understood before sitting in on a big bet game.
Finally, we end with some information on calculating odds and tables of probabilities of certain events occurring. This information is similar to information found in other books, but these are things the skilled poker player needs to know.
In any case, the authors do a great job of teaching big bet poker, and this book belongs on the shelves of every serious student of the game. If you are a new poker player and would like to start playing poker online at www.partypoker.com - make sure you use the bonus code: "AMAZON25" and you will receive $25 free on your first purchase at www.PartyPoker.com. You can also use the Bonus Code "AMAZON100" and you will receive a 20% bonus up to $100! If you already play at PartyPoker, you can also play at www.Pokerroom.com. Use the promotion code "100BONUS" and you will receive 20% up to $100.
Rating:
Summary: Cheesy cover, great book
Review: This book gives great information on big bet poker and will need to be read and re-read in order for it all to sink in. Though the tournament discussion is limited, the big bet ring game information is plentiful. Reuben and Ciaffone are old school but they definitely know big bet poker.
Rating: 
Summary: Short Stack
Review: This book is comprised mainly of short, 2 to 3 page articles that read as short snippets of advice or comment from the author. The information is not very detailed and felt more like reading a succession of magazine articles versus a thought out book of strategy. The organization of the book was too piecemeal for my taste. I would have preferred to have the book broken up by preflop play, flop play, turn, river, etc. By contrast, Ciaffone's book on "Middle Limit Holdem" is organized this way and is an excellent read. Here's a breakdown of the contents: Part 1: BIG-BET POKER CONCEPTS
1 WHY PLAY POT-LIMIT? page 1
2)COMPARING POT-LIMIT TO LIMIT page 4
3)POKER'S TEN COMMANDMENTS page 7
4)YOUR PLAYING STYLE page 13
5)HOW DEEP ARE YOU? page 15
6)HOW MUCH TO BET page 20
7)TAKING THE INITIATIVE page 24
8)DRAWING HANDS page 27
9)PSYCHOLOGY page 31
10)READING THE OPPONENT page 36
11)THE ART OF BLUFFING page 42
12 BEATING THE BULLY page 45
13)NO-LIMIT PLAY page 50
14)ALL-IN COUPS page 55 As you can see, the "chapters" are very short snippets. Also, keep in mind that most of the advice is geared towards ring games---not tournaments. And as you'll see in the next part of the book, this book is about "big bet poker" whether it be hold 'em, stud, or omaha. But I think most people these days are interested in Texas Hold 'Em. Part 2: SPECIFIC POKER FORMS
15) USING THE MATERIAL page 58
16) POT-LIMIT & NO-LIMIT HOLD'EM page 59
17) BIG-BET HOLD'EM QUIZ page 75
18) POT-LIMIT OMAHA page 84
19) POT-LIMIT OMAHA QUIZ page 97
20) SEVEN-CARD STUD page 105
21) SEVEN-CARD STUD QUIZ page 119
22) LOWBALL DRAW page 123
23) LOWBALL DRAW QUIZ page 129
24) LONDON LOWBALL page 135
25) KEY POT-LIMIT CONCEPTS page 145
26) LONDON LOWBALL QUIZ page 149
27) HIGH-LOW SPLIT page 152
28) HIGH-LOW SPLIT QUIZ page 155
29) STRIP DECK POKER page 160 Okay, how many of us are playing pot-limit or no-limit lowball, or high-low split? There's one more part to the book but to me it delves even further into obscure and unuseful information for today's player. What I was looking for (and I think most people are looking for) is for a book full of material related to no-limit Texas hold 'em. You have to question why one reviewer would say "ignore this review". What were his motives? I found that there was too much information in here that I didn't want and didn't apply to no-limit hold 'em. What was there was too short and not nearly as in-depth as I would have liked. And the tournament information is very, very small. If these are things you are expecting than I cannot recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: In the middle of theory and strategy.
Review: This is definitely a thinking man's book. It discusses a lot of theoretical aspects of big-bet poker rather than specific hands or situations. This is similar to Sklansky's tournament book in general, but the advice presented here is far more specific and actually is geared towards No-limit cash ring games. However, the suggestions can obviously be applied to NL tournaments. The book addresses some problem situations that a lot of people find themselves in during No Limit play, such as playing draws, beating a bully, reading opponents, and how deep the money is. The second section addresses specific games, but it still does not give you specific advice on how to play specific hands. It simply applies the concepts to various situations.
I would like to address 2DollaBets review. Obviously, this guy bought the book solely for it's NL Hold'em section, which is NOT why you should buy this book. You should buy TJ Cloutier's book for specific advice on Hold'em. He also doesn't seem to understand any of the concepts being put forth by Ciaffone. The quotes he brings up are describing a situation in which you may want to make a play at a pot without having value. He does not recommend bluffing at JJ3 with nothing regularly. Nor does he recommend moving in on a flush draw regularly. However, he brings up the fact that a flop like JJ3 unsuited can only be won by one or two hands (JJ, J3, or 33). You will probably see your next birthday before you find yourself looking at JJ3 without a made hand and having outs. So, there are times when you can make a play and get a fold. As for moving in with a flush draw, Ciaffone only suggests this when you have to act first. Why? Because, if your opponent suspects you are drawing, and a blank comes on the turn, you are totally out of position and are going to get put all-in with only one card to come. If you put it all in on the flop, position is taken out of the equation and you have a strong chance to hit your flush. Additionally, only very strong hands will call you, meaning most of the time you will make your opponent fold.
As for the quote about going all in as a dog, this happens far more frequently than going all in as a favorite. The reason for moving all in as a dog is that skill has now been removed from the equation. You are now going to get to see all of the cards (which is what you want), and you will win a huge pot if you hit your draw. If you only play Hold'em to show down the best hand, then limit is probably a better game for you than No Limit.
In general, though, the concepts provided in this book are very strong, and apply to every form of poker, not just Hold'em. There are specific sections for Omaha, Stud, Lowball, and Hi/Lo split. If you read this book and then want more specific information about Hold'em, get TJ's book.
Rating:
Summary: Very good enjoyable book ¿ Now Get to Playin
Review: This was a very Enjoyable Book. It provided important and useful concepts about the game of Poker. I learned new concepts, which identified some leaks in my game. Leaks in your game can come from anywhere!!! Leaks can originate from lack of aggression, overcalling raises, misreading opponents and any other number of ways. So this book helps. Many people look at poker the wrong way. They think to win they need to do all of this super fancy plays and mindblowing stunts. Well folks...there are not that many options in poker...you fold, call or raise. So its really hard to do thinks that will just fool your opponents all the time. To win at poker it is mostly limiting your mistakes and getting all that you can from winning hands and minimizing losses on losing hands...that's it Ive been playing for about 5 years now and love the game. Ive read many poker books and found this one to be very good. So I would suggest you buy this book and maybe a couple others and get to playing. There's really no excuse anymore - since anyone can access the internet. If you are a new poker player and would like to start playing poker online at www.partypoker.com - make sure you use the bonus code: "AMAZON25" and you will receive $25 free on your first purchase at www.PartyPoker.com. You can also use the Bonus Code "AMAZON100" and you will receive a 20% bonus up to $100! If you already play at PartyPoker, you can also play at www.Pokerroom.com. Use the promotion code "100BONUS" and you will receive 20% up to $100
Rating:
Summary: The best poker book I have read yet!!!
Review: Thise is a great book for any one who wants to win money. I keep reading and reveiwing their book over and over. I have read many poker books and this one is easaly the best. Stewart and Bob's book has enable me to make thousands of dollors from the table by studing thier book.
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