[mvdgaag]

Although I have really enjoyed this book and think it's one of the best books on NLHE cashgames, I feel I have to put some critiques as well, especially to the SPR part... I have taken some time to let it all sink in and think the main point SPR makes is that you should be aware of stack sizes and commitment during a hand and plan your hands around this. Some of the conclusions are not very well agrumented though and sometimes I feel it is better to plan around other stuff.


1) The argument to plan around getting it allin is because these are the large pots that are supposed to have a large impact on your overall result. While this is true in fairly agressive games I think in more tight/passive games the large chunk of the winnings come from stealing small pots while the big allin pots are made by monster hands and not so much top pair hands. IMO your goal should not be to commit with the best of it (what the book aims for), but to get away with stealing more than the rest.


2) I've been up against players where my top pair hands have triskaidekaphillia, instead of -phobia, because they'd lose their entire stack on a weak draw or TPNK. I have also been up against players where a decent raise nearly always means your TPTK is beat, so it would be triophobia?
The assumption that 3 pot sized bets(/raises), or 13 times the preflop pot, means your opponent has a hand that beats top pair is not very well argumented in the book. The example is clear, but annecdotal and not suited to justify triskaidekaphobia in general for TP hands.
The book says that your target SPR should be between 2 and 7 for TP hands, depending on your opponents. I like the range is this big, but it also shows the whole exercise a bit redundant. Why not just put it in one sentence: 'top pairs are hard to play with deep stacks.' or even better 'When you hold top pair and the pot is getting big you're often beat.'. This would be the same advice, I think, but just less mathematical and complicated. And since there is no good way to quantify the target SPR's there's no need to get mathematical IMO. Just stating that you might win a small pot or lose a big one with TP and big stacks is enough. One should know though, that the size of a pot should always be seen relative to the size of the stacks, because that determines the amount of normally(pot) sized bets/raises that might be made. This is something the book makes clear very nicely.


3) I think being aware of stack sizes and manipulating the size of the pot are both a MUST for playing winning no limit poker. Manipulating SPR's preflop (or on any street for that matter) could be a good thing, but promoting preflop bet sizing according to hand types requires to formulate it into a proper strategy, which it not really given in the book, except for 'mixing it up'. I hope this will be better discussed in part two. (reading the last posts here I believe this is so [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img])


4) When you can reasonably assume you are ahead often enough to profitably go allin you should always be willing to do so (or commit in a manner that will keep you willing to go allin, because a huge bet might influence your opponents calling range and you are not getting the best of it anymore and therefore not willing to go allin anymore).
When and how to commit are valuable lessons from the book and should be known to any serious NLHE player.
Deciding to commit to going allin before you had information that might change your decision is ignoring this very information and therefore bad play IMO. You should allow yourself the option not to lose any more on the hand when you realise you are not getting the proper chance to win this, even if it's the last 10% of your starting stack and you know you are beat more than the nineteen out of twenty times the pot is offering you. If this information comes late, it's a bummer, but in my opinion you should not ever make plays with less EV than a possible alternative as a default. And ignoring information leads to just this, sometimes.

Therefore deciding to commit, going beyond the treshold and still folding should always be an option, rendering the threshold to a mere quideline for the potsize at which to ask yourself: 'Can I play a pot this big and possibly even this much bigger and still get the best of it with this hand against this opponent?' The numerous exceptions of commiting after reaching the treshold also indicate it's more of a guideline than a treshold as well.



All in all the concepts discussed in the book are very important and should be basic knowledge to anyone serious about NL holdem, but they are brought like exact ratio's like the different SPR's and tresholds while I think in practise these ratio's are so hard to properly determine that a simpler general advice or guideline together with common sense would often do the job IMO.
I am really looking forward to the more complex and more practical stuff in volume two. Especially pot manipulation, SPR and the consequences to successfull play on the turn and river should prove to make very interresting reading.

I hope these points are clear and understood as an honest opinion and not as an offence.

Thanks for reading...