What to buy? HOH vs Little Green vs NLHTAP - Any ideas?

[CasinoR7]

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Hm, i m thinking about reading it another time but i just hope the pro nlh new 2+2 book will be better so i dont have to read it again :P Really i dont like the style much.
I d go for the HoHs for sngs for sure!

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Before you get the new book in your hands, which will take a few weeks, you can re-read NLHETAP.

[OvrTheTop111]

I'd go with the HoH series first.

[jeffnc]

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I didn't learn anything in NLHTAP.

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Then you need to read it again.

Seriously, it took me three times through to "get" it.

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I "got it" the first time through. The problem is it doesn't say anything that isn't implicitly obvious. The book is good for bringing some thoughts to the forefront if they've been languishing in the back of your mind.

The book basically consists of examples like this. "You are on the river and have the nuts. How much should you bet? You should bet the amount that gets called most often. You should bet the amount the gives you the highest expected value. For example if you bet $20 and that gets called 50% of the time, and you bet all-in for $1,000,000 and that gets called 1% of the time, then you should go all-in."

OK, thanks. The book kind of lives up to its advertising - it tells you what things you should be thinking about when playing. The problem is, you probably already know those things. It doesn't help you make the decisions though. And if your response to that is "Well, you need experience to do that", then my question is "So why do I need this book again?"

[tcreast]

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I didn't learn anything in NLHTAP.

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Then you need to read it again.

Seriously, it took me three times through to "get" it.

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I "got it" the first time through. The problem is it doesn't say anything that isn't implicitly obvious. The book is good for bringing some thoughts to the forefront if they've been languishing in the back of your mind.

The book basically consists of examples like this. "You are on the river and have the nuts. How much should you bet? You should bet the amount that gets called most often. You should bet the amount the gives you the highest expected value. For example if you bet $20 and that gets called 50% of the time, and you bet all-in for $1,000,000 and that gets called 1% of the time, then you should go all-in."

OK, thanks. The book kind of lives up to its advertising - it tells you what things you should be thinking about when playing. The problem is, you probably already know those things. It doesn't help you make the decisions though. And if your response to that is "Well, you need experience to do that", then my question is "So why do I need this book again?"

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Yeah, I don't think it was a matter of understanding the book, it just didn't teach me much. I'm not at all trying to imply that I somehow know everything regarding NLHE. In fact, the opposite of that statement would be a lot closer to the truth. I just remember reading it and feeling like "meh, ok." After I read HOH 1+2 I felt like "Wow, I gotta go play cards to test out all these new ideas!"

[dyinginabubble]

It is hard for me to understand why you would think sizing your river bet to get the highest EV out of it is trivial. The book points out that making a bet that is very likely to be called is not necessarily the best bet. Making a very large bet that is unlikely to be called may have a larger EV. The book generally gives betting option from small, medium and large and combines them with the estimated likelihood that each bet will be called. I know this may seem obvious, but what really makes it revolutionary is the way it dissected so deeply that you can see it mathematically. This is done over and over again in the book, and it truly had a profound effect on the way I think about bet sizing. The bottom line is it has had a tremendous impact on my hourly rate.

[phydaux]

It's like saying "Don't play pots out of position."

To an inexperienced NL player that sounds like good advice, but it also sounds so BASIC.

"Yeah, OK, don't play OOP. Gotcha..."

But once you get several thousand hands under your belt, you really see how you win more when you win a hand in position, and you lose less when you lose a hand and have position.

And then things just click. And you have no idea who first told you not to play pots OOP, but you're fairly sure he was a genius and you don't know why it took so long for you to see it.

That's how all of NLH:T&P is. All very simple, all very self-evident, and if you ignore any of it, it will cost you chips.

[Ace-Ex]

The discussion of bet sizing and pot sizing in NLHTAP is absolute gold.

But my game probably saw the most improvement after going through the examples in HOH3. Gotta read 1 and 2 to appreciate it, though. Oh yeah and all of these books require multiple readings, probably months apart.

[bustedromo]

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I didn't learn anything in NLHTAP.

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Then you need to read it again.

Seriously, it took me three times through to "get" it.

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I "got it" the first time through. The problem is it doesn't say anything that isn't implicitly obvious. The book is good for bringing some thoughts to the forefront if they've been languishing in the back of your mind.

The book basically consists of examples like this. "You are on the river and have the nuts. How much should you bet? You should bet the amount that gets called most often. You should bet the amount the gives you the highest expected value. For example if you bet $20 and that gets called 50% of the time, and you bet all-in for $1,000,000 and that gets called 1% of the time, then you should go all-in."

OK, thanks. The book kind of lives up to its advertising - it tells you what things you should be thinking about when playing. The problem is, you probably already know those things. It doesn't help you make the decisions though. And if your response to that is "Well, you need experience to do that", then my question is "So why do I need this book again?"

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This is the biggest problem with overly relying on poker literature. There are plenty of people who have an intuition for poker, but lack the confidence in themselves to run with it. And so they buy poker books and begin adjusting their plays according to whether the self-proclaimed experts give it a stamp of approval.

This is dangerous because you are interfering with the natural ability of the mind to gradually adjust it's actions in response to adverse events. Over time (100s of 1000s of hands) the mind possesses the ability to act almost as a probability calculator without explicitly thinking in this manner. This is why the great players all tend to have have phenomenal memories.

If you interfere too much with this natural process by demanding that there be rules to apply to every situation, you lose ability.

I am not implying that you should play like a savant and abandon deterministic thinking. But the more you play, the more books should be treated only as creative inputs.

The danger is in trying to force your game to fit into boundaries established by rules learned in books.

The best poker book would have have lots of example hands, with the answer for each question on a the flip-side of the final page of the question. Thinking about the question is much more valuable to the mind than reading the answer.

If a concept of play is intuitively obvious to you, you are better off thinking in your own terms about why it makes sense, than adjusting your reasoning system to conform to that of a noted poker author.

To become good at poker, you must create an internal foundation of self-derived truth that allows for rapid decision making under financial pressure: this is known as confidence in intuition.

[icemanjmw]

NLHTP improved my game drstically. However as many have said that is because I was ignoring basic strategy up until that point. I mean I kept hearing position, position, position, but it didn't finally click in until I read T&P and understood why I shouldn't play out of position.

Also, I think that the part at the beginning, when it mentions overbetting all-in when you have the nuts on the river with deep stacks is many times the best play, that part alone has made me thousands of dollars. Maybe that was standard to a lot of you, but it sure as heck made the book pay for itself in my eyes.


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It's like saying "Don't play pots out of position."

To an inexperienced NL player that sounds like good advice, but it also sounds so BASIC.

"Yeah, OK, don't play OOP. Gotcha..."

But once you get several thousand hands under your belt, you really see how you win more when you win a hand in position, and you lose less when you lose a hand and have position.

And then things just click. And you have no idea who first told you not to play pots OOP, but you're fairly sure he was a genius and you don't know why it took so long for you to see it.

That's how all of NLH:T&P is. All very simple, all very self-evident, and if you ignore any of it, it will cost you chips.

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[Jurrr]

I've HOH, LGB and LBB and I'd say skip the Gordon's books; I couldn't help being amazed on how much poor advice he gives. It should have been labeled "mediocrity can win if your opponents are really bad and you flop enough monsters".

The HOH trilogy OTOH was an excellent introduction to the game (though it shouldn't really have been labeled "advanced"; it's really poker 101 if you want to play above micro stakes).