Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

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nate, specifically your $5 to $1000 bankroll in a week thread was amazing... should make that into at least a major magazine article, if not more...

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Can someone post this link. I've searched and searched and have come up blank...

Thanks

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jase--

Vain of me to reply so quickly? Eh, whatever.

Hope you enjoy.

The funny thing is that I was playing some $3 turbo MTT SNGs the other day (teaching a friend) and a dude at a final table recognized me from this thread.

--Nate

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

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I think the book is pretty bad fwiw.

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drsavage - I would particularly interested in why you think this. If you wanted to just PM some of your reasoning to me I would be cool with that but I'm sure others on here would be curious as well.

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I dunno, there was a lot of stuff that i didn't like. Some logical thinking is backwards and inconsistent, some advice is not based or backed up by anything, some advice i think is wrong, meaningless PT stats occupy a lot of space, some EV calculations are wrong (stox was called out on that in some MHSH post i think). I cannot go into the details as i read it long time ago and don't remember what exactly i thought was wrong and everything i said is just my opinion. The book didn't make me a better player, if there are people who improved after reading it, good for them.

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

thanks for the response. I'll try to find that thread in MHSH.

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

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I think the book is "good". But it's not the most readable book in the world. Some may read that and say "well it's difficult, not everyone can handle it, multiple readings will be rewarded, blah blah blah." But I'm not letting the authors off that easy :-)

I do think it's a technically good book, but it could have benefitted from the "Miller treatment" (to paraphrase what I heard another 2+2er say recently.) All the technical information needs to be there, but the book could have been improved by melding the examples and stats with better prose that explains the concepts and principles and overall approach better.

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jeffnc--

Careful, bud.

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Explain?

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

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I think the book is "good". But it's not the most readable book in the world. Some may read that and say "well it's difficult, not everyone can handle it, multiple readings will be rewarded, blah blah blah." But I'm not letting the authors off that easy :-)

I do think it's a technically good book, but it could have benefitted from the "Miller treatment" (to paraphrase what I heard another 2+2er say recently.) All the technical information needs to be there, but the book could have been improved by melding the examples and stats with better prose that explains the concepts and principles and overall approach better.

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jeffnc--

Careful, bud.

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Explain?

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Try doing a search on Nate's posts in the books forum over the last couple of months (or maybe slightly more). [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

jeffnc - you don't want to get banned by Mason for criticizng the book's editing.

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

SSH provided me with the basics and WITHG opened up my mind. I learnt heaps more about Limit Holdem from this book than any other books including SSH.
WITHG and SSH are by far the best Limit Holdem Books on the market.

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

It's not just for tough games, but for tough players. I often find myself in good games that have a couple of ery tough and aggressive players and I find myself going out of my way to avoid them. Thus I might be avoiding situations that could be+EV if I could improve my play against this type of player. This is, if I take it correctly, Mason's point in his OP.

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

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...the shorthanded postflop situations. This is basically the only skill set that's unique to LHE.*

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Could you expand on this, please? Are you referring to limit hold em as opposed to other formats of hold em, or as opposed to other forms of limit poker? (Or both?)

Do you mean broad strategic concepts or specific tactical situations?

Thanks,

Mack

Re: Winning in Tough Hold \'em Games
 

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...the shorthanded postflop situations. This is basically the only skill set that's unique to LHE.*

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Could you expand on this, please? Are you referring to limit hold em as opposed to other formats of hold em, or as opposed to other forms of limit poker? (Or both?)

Do you mean broad strategic concepts or specific tactical situations?

Thanks,

Mack

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Mack--

No problem. And let me preface all of this by saying both that it's possibly controversial and that it's largely matters of degree.

What I think is that tough postflop hold'em situations in multiway pots are not that unlike tough situations in Stud. For stud you need some different skills: you need to analyze upcards, you need some basic combinatorics, you need to know hand ranges. If you can do it in stud you can do it in hold'em, and even multiway pots in razz aren't all that different.

In theory the same thing should apply to heads-up situations on the flop: you're just enumerating stuff and accounting for tendencies and acting accordingly. But on a practical level the skill set is pretty unique. Like when you have bottom pair and you're using some sort of counting technique to figure out your equity: the whole real-time estimation of the prior possibilities of playing paired vs. unpaired hands, and then discounting pocket pairs for Bayesian reasons, etc. etc. Mostly I think it's because you're using so many conditional probabilities for things that aren't ~completely~ independent (whereas in stud, often a guy will play Q(Qx) no matter what and you just have to straight quantify over all possible x's). Which (again, totally in a quantitative and not qualitative way) is weird when it's heads-up to the flop and both guys probably missed. There's really not much like it in poker. In stud you're always counting but both guys usually have something like a pair. (Actually the closest thing to this in stud is on late streets, in situations when guys are more likely to have folded if they hadn't picked up some sort of draw, so you have to start weighting the side-card ranges, and also there are more cards that aren't one of their likely pair cards [if they're likely to have started with a pair] to create the number of variables you face on a flop in hold'em.

So I guess what I'm talking about the process of enumerating when you're considering a handful of cards out of wide ranges that are interdependent somewhat more than they are in totally uniform distributions. I realize that this hasn't been totally clear, and I apologize for that. Mostly I'm just trying to put in mathematical language a set of feelings that I experience as a player. It's the middle ground where you have to rely on a ton of combinatorics but remember to adjust moderately for conditional stuff. Sort of the way a football team might be used to perfectly clear weather, and also have prepared for extremely foul weather, but not know what to do when things are just a little soggy.

--Nate