[well named]

My copy of PNL arrived from amazon.com on Tuesday. By way of background, and to frame my comments, i'm a poker n00b playing the micro-est of the micro limits on PokerStars whilst trying to learn and improve. PNL is my 5th poker book, after HOH vol.1, NLH:TAP, and Phil Gordon's green and blue books, and I would characterize myself as a weak player with a decent theoretical understanding but little experience, and little of the practical skills that experience brings. It would also be fair to say that i'm not reading the book primarily with the goal of making money -- i'm not a pro and probably never will be -- but that my interest is more recreational. Although I like to win, of course.

SPR, as a framework for evaluating decisions, is one of those ideas which, after you hear it, seems completely obvious, and every book on NL covers the idea of commitment in some fashion. Yet, I think the treatment in this book is phenomenal simply because it provides a metric that can be very easily incorporated into your decision making in practice. SPR does for commitment what the 2/4 rule for outs on the turn and river does for pot odds, IMO.

There has been some criticism earlier in the thread that too much of the discussion on playing top-pair/overpair hands was too concrete and inflexible. Personally, I disagree with that assessment, it seemed like for every rule of thumb presented there was a thoughtful exception in the footnotes, and it was stated quite a number of times how plays could change based on particular reads or the character of the table. I don't think the authors could be faulted if someone decided to read PNL as a cookbook only. It seemed very clear to me that SPR is intended to be a tool, not a strategy-in-a-box.

As far as the rest of the book, I think the first two sections do a good job of covering the basic topics, and are organized a little better than in NLH:TAP. My one regret is I wish there was a way to calculate equity against a range that is as easy to do as SPR. This is probably something I will get quicker at with experience, I hope.

All-in-all, i've enjoyed this book, I feel like i've learned some useful new tools to play with, and i'm awaiting volume two with baited breath. Thanks guys.