Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[APatterson]

Am I the only one disappointed with this book?

The discussion of REM, for what it covers, is good, but it is hardly used again through out the rest of the book.
When I heard about REM in the book I kind of expected a discussion of hand ranges for your opponents and for yourself. So for every action you are representing a range of hands yourself to which your opponent is trying to maximise his equity against. I was expecting a discussion of how to make your own strategy hard to exploit, while maximising profit.

How many players following this book are going to be raising big with TPTK type hands, raising medium amounts with drawing hands and keeping the pot small otherwise? Surely that can't be a good strategy, as it is exploitable. The book basically promotes a preflop bet that is proportional to hand strength. I don't think a passing comment to mix it up or bluff sometimes cuts it. How to mix it up and when to bluff are critical parts of good strategy that are hardly covered at all.

It seems to me that the discussion of stack to pot ratios is just implied odds, whether you are giving them or receiving them. Why use different terminology to that we already use to?

[Sunny Mehta]

Hi APatterson,

1) It sounds like you were expecting a much more advanced book - which PNLV1 is not. More advanced range discussion about REM (particularly things like exploitation, line balance, etc.) will be in future volumes.

2) The point of SPR is not "preflop raise size". If that's the only point you took from that entire section, I'm not really sure what to say. Check out some of the discussion throughout the forum on the subject.

3) As far as implied odds, while they are related, SPR is not simply a "renaming" of them. Implied odds are generally considered as "call x to win y", which in our opinion is not nearly as valuable in NL as the system of effective odds which SPR presents - looking at how money is likely to go into the pot from the very beginning of a hand til the very end.

Thanks for the comments.

-Sunny

[APatterson]

Hi Sunny,
Thanks for replying so quickly. As is so often the case in discussion threads, I only posted critical comments and not all the good things I like about the book.

I certainly did not take SPR to mean exactly preflop raise size. Only that by following a lot of the advice directly players would be very readable by virtue of the fact they are raising preflop to obtain a certain SPR. Hence SPR = hand strength, approximately.

As for the terminology, odds are a ratio, call x to win y, bet x to win y, risk x to win y. For me, these are all expressed as odds, so it mystifies me why you use the term SPR when effective odds, or implied odds, are what most people are used to.

I also think that REM and betting odds (SPR) are closely related but they are not discussed together in the text. If anything the M of REM should be the SPR chapters on betting. Everything would then come together cleanly by analysing every players hand range, calculating equity, then betting appropriately based on the effective odds over the entire hand.

Thanks for the reply,
Regards,
Alan

[m3dude]

its cool to see sunny and matt still following this thread and answering users questions. gives readers every chance to properly understand the concepts they are trying to teach

[Sounded Simple]

I have a question regarding how to avoid being exploited when using SPR by setminers.

Pre-flop
- You are on the button with 100BB.
- BB is a setminer (although this is unknown to you since you have only played 20 hands) and also has 100BB
- You have AA and would like an SPR of <10 so you raise to 6bb (assume this is online so you cant easily raise more)
- SB folds and BB calls so there is 13BB and your stack is 94BB.
- Your SPR is 7.2 and you decide to commit provided no obvious draws come in.

Post Flop -
- The flop comes Jh 6d 3c, you decide to commit and set about getting the money in the middle
- BB checks, you bet the pot, BB calls, Pot = 39bb, stacks are now 81bb
- Turn and river are safe and it all goes in on the river.
- BB shows 66 for a set.

So how do we prevent "unknown" setminers from exploiting us when we use SPR for 1 pair hands?
We are giving them the two pieces of information they need
(a) We most likely will have TP on the flop.
(b) We WILL stack off with it.

Some of my initial thoughts are -
- Raise even more pre-flop (say 10bb) to deny them odds to hit their set.
(Problem with this is you wont get any action at all from these guys or even anyone else online)

- Dont commit with TP against these guys, steal pots with all sorts of hands (including trash) and get out if they look like they want to get the stacks in.
(Problem here is that you need a solid read on them that they will only stack off with a set or better - that takes time but if they know you use SPR then they have a read on you pretty quick)

- Mix it up against them. Similar to their last point just vary the raises and steal lots.
(Again the problem is that we need the read!)


So to summarise my question.
SPR is intended to simplify decisions for us against unknowns. How do we stop it from simplifying decisions for the unknowns against us?

BTW - This is not a criticism of the concept, Im just trying to get this right.

[Sunny Mehta]

Hi Sounded Simple,

Thank you for the well organized post.

First off, poker is a game of gathering information, and if by "unknown" you are trying to imply that you have very little to no information about your opponent, your decision making is inherently going to be more difficult and less accurate than if you know even some tendencies of your opponent. SPR and REM can help, but remember that integral parts of both equations involve knowing things about your opponents' ranges and tendencies.

Secondly, you go on to mention playing against a "setminer." Perhaps if your regular game features a decent amount of these, that immensely helps make him less unknown. Even just knowing that he's a setminer tells you some important things about his range and tendencies. You know that he's probably very tight preflop and also fairly tight-passive postflop.

Start with your preflop raise. When you raise to 6bb, what range do you expect to get called by? How much of that range includes worse hands on this flop? Can he have KK or QQ or AJ or even TT? Or will he never stack off with those hands? It would be very hard for me to believe that he'd never commit with a hand worse than AA, but if indeed it is true, you simply need to realize that your target SPR against this player is very small with one pair hands.

Since you are well above your target SPR, even with a pfr to 6bb, you should play more carefully postflop and perhaps try and exercise pot control. To actually get your target SPR against this player heads up, you might have to raise to an obscene amount pf, which is simply not practical. However, that doesn't mean that raising to an amount that doesn't achieve your target SPR is unprofitable.

Remember ranges!

You are not going to always have AA when you raise to 6bb, and he is not always going to have 66 and flop a set. What will he do with hands like KQ when you raise to 6bb? If he'll call then you get his stack when he flops top pair. If he'll fold pf, then you can rob him blind by making a 6bb raise with a very wide range of hands. What if he calls pf but then check-folds everytime he doesn't have a set or strong top pair or overpair? You can rob him blind by raising to 6bb preflop and then betting the flop a high percentage of the time. The combined steal equity as well as pot equity that you have in this situation makes it highly positive-EV.

You also don't have to raise to 6bb. If he'll fold the same range preflop, you can get away with making a smaller raise so that you keep the same pf steal equity but can manage the pot easier postflop. But if he'll call more liberally preflop but check/fold a lot postflop, then you actually make more by stealing when you raise to 6bb.

This is just a start on how to tackle these types of situations. Now that we have laid out the groundwork for how we negotiate these "equations" - (by using REM and SPR!) - we will have much more to say in future volumes on adjusting to specific situations and filling in the specific "variables".


Thanks for reading,

Sunny

[Sounded Simple]

Hi Sunny,

Thanks for the reply.
First I should have probably been more specific about this kind of opponent. The "setminer" type Im refering to is to be found on online Full Ring micro-small stakes.
Few people have the patience to do this live and in 6-max they get eaten by blinds.
They are fairly common from what I have seen.

Your answer has cleared a few things up for me but a final question would be -

If our opponents tendancies are truly unknown to us (or we do not know what kind of "mistakes" he makes) when we are planning SPRs and commitment. Is it usually better to plan for a small pot with TP hands?

[m3dude]

losing 1 buyin to an unknown who hits a set against your aa on a flop where he could have other hands to pay off rly isnt anything to focus on. your going going to get stacked sometimes.

[Sunny Mehta]

Hi Sounded Simple,

[ QUOTE ]

If our opponents tendancies are truly unknown to us (or we do not know what kind of "mistakes" he makes) when we are planning SPRs and commitment. Is it usually better to plan for a small pot with TP hands?

[/ QUOTE ]

I know you're looking for a cut and dried "yes" or "no" here, but I just think in reality it's not the norm to be completely in the dark on at least some game/player information, so knowing the answer to this hypothetical is less helpful than just observing the table for a round or two. However, I'll say this. Playing a "small pot" (i.e. - a high SPR) versus a big pot with ANY hand is beneficial to the better player because having to play more streets means more information, more room for hand reading, more room for maneuvering, making moves, using experience, controlling your opponent - all the stuff that makes someone a good poker player. So yes, if I had the hypothetical choice of always playing with SPR 3 or SPR 30 against a random unknown opponent, of course I would rather choose 30 because I like to play postflop poker and I'm good at it. But again, I don't think that answer (or the question) is as meaningful as you might think.

thanks...

-S

[Sunny Mehta]

[ QUOTE ]
losing 1 buyin to an unknown who hits a set against your aa on a flop where he could have other hands to pay off rly isnt anything to focus on. your going going to get stacked sometimes.

[/ QUOTE ]

this is the cliff notes for my post - thanks m3dude!....