king yao question

[smbruin22]

i've read king yao's book and i like it. but i have one comment about an oversight (maybe someone can correct me)

it has great starting hand section for early, middle, late but nothing on the blinds (other than stealing and defending).

if you play tight/aggressive, then so much of your play is either from late or from the blinds.

it just seems like the blinds are where i'm making probably the majority of my tougher pre-flop decisions (Early to mid is pretty straight-forward)

i have noticed that most poor players play from the blinds quite loosely in the face of a raise. and most of the expert advice is much, much tighter (SB - don't play much more than early position, BB - a few more hands too)

curious what king yao thinks, and i've searched the book a few times (wonder if it's half a page or something - like i said, i see the blind stealing/protecting, but once there are 3-4 people in pot you aren't protecting your blinds)

any thoughts??

[MacGuyV]

I dunno, sorry for the hijack OP.
I would like to hear some more general opinions on this book. I play 3/6 Short online and feel like my game has hit a wall. Sounds like this might be a good read for me. However, I'm a little skeptical since I did not get a ton out of ITPM, HEFAP or TOP, which everyone else seems to love. Maybe I'm just not goot at applying stuff I read? Seemed to me like TOP was a less specific/useful version of SSHE because it wasn't a Hold 'em book, and ITPM was stuff I knew already. I feel like SSHE is the only book that's really helped me.

[Gelford]

Yao is a nice book, but one of the things I like about it is, that it is well structured. It has chapthers about shorthanded play, that are highly regarded, but I wasn't that impressed (a short chapther with some general concepts and a short chapter called the biggest mistakes of shorthanded play) .. If you are experienced at shorthanded play I might have a feeling that it will not give you much. (but I guess that many will disagree)


I haven't read it .. waiting for amazon.co.uk to have it in stock .. but the Matt Maroon has gotten some nice reviews (lots of typos, but good stuff with sections on shorthanded play)

[King Yao]

Mason Malmuth has a review in the Feb edition of the Two Plus Two Internet magazine. I think the review may be good for someone like you because he states explicitly what he doesn't like about my book (although he does give it a nice rating :-) ) and a couple of things he disagrees with. Of course I'm biased since I wrote it, so that's why I am referring you to read someone else's review.

[King Yao]

I'm not sure if you saw it or not, but I address the blind issue on pp 176-180 (in the second printing). Maybe you were looking for more than that. I did not explicity have a starting hand chart for the blinds and gave more general advice instead.

[Gelford]

We are looking forward to your next book King, hope you haven't quit the noted poker author business ... (How about some of that Tommy Angelo style heavely people oriented (short handed) play, that you mentioned having learned a lot from in a earlier post ... Share) /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[smbruin22]

king, thanks for the response!.... i really like your book and recommend it highly. and i'd say the shorthanded section is really good (especially going thru the texture of each level S/H i.e. 2 handed, 4 handed and 6 handed are completely different.

i'll check your book tonight for the blinds section. i think blinds play is so important because it has to be 50%+ of the times i play, but then some people play out of the blinds no matter (big, big leak as far as i'm concerned)

i'll check on the blinds. i would have loved a chart (as some know, i love charts)

i would be interested in your sports betting book, although i'm trying to get rid of some habits.... have you thought of writing a sports betting newsletter? as the problem i find is that to find good bets is tons and tons of work. rather someone did the work for me (along the lines of phil steele or twominutewarning.com).

thought of doing a small stakes NL/SNG/"quick blinds" tournament book??/

again, thanks for the response!

[King Yao]

"i would be interested in your sports betting book"

I wrote an article for 2+2's magazine, and am hoping to continue to have one article per month on sports. We'll see how that goes. As for newsletters where I give advice on what to bet - I doubt that will happen. But who knows?

"thought of doing a small stakes NL/SNG/"quick blinds" tournament book??"

Probably not. Tournaments are too long and grueling for me. I am a 80 year old man trapped in a 34 year-old body. Or is it the opposite? Anyway, I just don't have the stamina or interest in long tourneys. SNGs, which I think lasts about an hour, may be something of interest though. If I start playing SNGs, I'll post stuff on it in my blog.

[smbruin22]

thanks king! i found the article and i'll have a look.

you'll helped twoplustwo in my case as i didn't even though there was a magazine (or i knew and i forgot).

[NSchandler]

I really enjoyed King Yao's book.

I think it's a great book to read after SSHE. It does a lot of grunt work for situations that SSHE talks about generally but doesn't elaborate on. For example, SSHE will say something like "you should reraise against a loose raiser and fold against a tight raiser" - Yao's book will go into hand ranges of different types of players, and show you equity, etc for the exact same situation.

[MicroBob]

Off to read Mason's review now.

But we've had several threads where many 2+2'ers have praised King's book. and i am in the group. I thought it was very good.


you can choose not to implement the DIPO stuff if you so choose.


will be interested to go check out Mason's criticisms. I suspect that the DIPO thing is among them.

but I do know that Mason posted that he did like the book overall which I think is pretty much all you need to know regarding whether you should give it a try or not.



One other non 2+2 book that I think will help with some players' games is How Good is Your Limit Holdem by Bryan Jacobs (although Mason had some criticisms of this book too...but did recommend it overall).


I think different players respond differently to the various ideas being presented one way or another.
If you are having a tough time getting something out of one book you should:
1. Try again just to make sure
2. Look at other books and see if that 'voice' speaks to you a bit more effectively.

[MacGuyV]

Thanks I guess I'll check it out. What the hell, I'm playing 3/6 now. $20 is like 3 bets.