Why Great Players Often Like My Stuff More Than Good Players

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Regardless how good the books are, the easiest and safest way to become a very good player is to be the relative of a top player. They can teach you a highly effective approach that obviously cannot be found in the books, or everyone else would be just as good.

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Well according to Barry G's website, when Joe Sebok wanted to get started in poker he gave him some books to read first and later started giving him his own advice. Question is, which books were they?? Inquiring minds want to know...

[seemorenuts]

I have a hunch that to play at the highest levels that Barry describes has something to do with aggression, and switching between optimal play and exploitative play (I'd know better if I read more of Chen's book, I guess [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] or I'm proving that I have no idea what I just claimed).

Barry, any clues that aren't already in your book?

[Beavis68]

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It has to do with the fact that almost all poker plays combine your assumptions about your opponents possible hands

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How do they know what my assumptions are and who I am playing?

[maurile]

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I honestly can't think of a single really impressive poker player who is a strong enthusiast of 2+2 books.

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When Howard Lederer was teaching Annie Duke to play poker, the first thing he did was send several of Sklansky's books to her.

[PokerHorse]

Yes I read that book. I wasnt accussing. I was told along time ago, while Stu was alive , by someone fairly close to Doyle(who wont be mentioned) that they were getting backed or playing basically as a corporation. Since Barry is in this thread i thought Id take a shot and see what his thoughts were period.
Playing heads-up isnt the same as what I was refering to.
thanks for your answer barry, and good luck.

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I honestly can't think of a single really impressive poker player who is a strong enthusiast of 2+2 books.

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When Howard Lederer was teaching Annie Duke to play poker, the first thing he did was send several of Sklansky's books to her.

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When Howard was teaching Annie, 90% of the poker books available today weren't written, and 75% of today's players were in elementary school.

[7n7]

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I honestly can't think of a single really impressive poker player who is a strong enthusiast of 2+2 books.

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When Howard Lederer was teaching Annie Duke to play poker, the first thing he did was send several of Sklansky's books to her.

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When Howard was teaching Annie, 90% of the poker books available today weren't written, and 75% of today's players were in elementary school.

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Slight exaggeration. HEFAP, TOP, 7CSFAP, HiLo FAP, TPFAP, etc. existed in the 80s, early 90s. Not too shabby a library to get started with.

[barryg1]

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Yes I read that book. I wasnt accussing. I was told along time ago, while Stu was alive , by someone fairly close to Doyle(who wont be mentioned) that they were getting backed or playing basically as a corporation. Since Barry is in this thread i thought Id take a shot and see what his thoughts were period.
Playing heads-up isnt the same as what I was refering to.
thanks for your answer barry, and good luck.

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I mention in my book about how staking goes on in big games and how sometimes a player has a piece of another player. This happens because we don't have a big pool of players. For instance, sometimes a player doesn't want to play 2k-4k instead of 4k-8k, so one or two players will take the other half of him.

Obviously, there are ways this can be exploited to some degree. In a high stakes game, we can usually tell if something funny is going on, but our main protection is knowing who we are dealing with. I never like having to take a piece of another player in the game, since I will make sure not to make a questionable play that forces another player out of a pot. I always feel if hurts me, but I do it when it is necessary to build the game for a rich live one.

In his last few years of live game play, Stuey was almost always completely staked when he played in the big game. Sometimes by people in the game and sometimes not.

Barry

[barryg1]

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Well according to Barry G's website, when Joe Sebok wanted to get started in poker he gave him some books to read first and later started giving him his own advice. Question is, which books were they?? Inquiring minds want to know...

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He read all the obvious titles including some 2+2 books. I don't know if he has read TOP. I'm pretty sure he has read Sklansky's limit poker books, since he started playing limit.

By the way, I now regret that he started playing limit hold'em instead of no-limit. I never knew he would turn into a decent tournament player. Many times I feel he makes mistakes that limit players make:

1) calling normal sized bets with a draw on the turn.
2) calling on the river with an obvious calling hand in limit (top pair or better) but not realizing it's not worth the call against a solid no-limit player.

Barry

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Barry:

You wrote:

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Obviously, there are ways this can be exploited to some degree.

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Actually, I believe it can be exploited to a large degree.

Here's an example. Suppose you are playing limit hold 'em. On fourth street, there are two hearts and two spades on board. Furthermore, suppose one of the team members has two hearts in his hand, and the other has two spades.

Now if the two players were independent of each other you need 4-to-1 to call (assuming no further action). If they each have half of each other, the team only needs 3-to-2 since one of them will make a flush 40 percent of the time.

So when players trade pieces of each other they can profitably play looser as long as their hands are independent of each other. And, the larger the exchange of pieces, the looser they can play (as long as their hands don't overlap.)

Another example is that it could be easily right for one player with bottom pair to call, and his partner to also call with middle pair, where it would be wrong for either of them to call if they were playing independently.

Now what will happen is that these players will appear a little loose. I can't help but think that most of their opponents will think of them as desirable to be in the game instead of picking up on it.

Barry, I've always been bothered by this idea which is an example of how simple probability theory can run counter-intuitively to what seems natural. Do you have any thoughts on it that you might want to share?

best wishes,
Mason