Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[Guitierez]

I LOLed hard at your other posts. Relax, Man.

I received my copy this week (thanks 2+2 bonus program) and I think after I'm done with it, I will convert from LHE for the monies. Great book!

[Shandrax]

I do not have the book yet, but judging from the excerpt in the 2+2 magazine I am wondering if the concept of "planning hands" by chosing a certain amount to raise pre-flop isn't giving away too much information. Basically a smart opponent who knows this book should be able to put me on a range based on the size of my raise. So how much info does the book contain about ballancing frequenzies?

[threads13]

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I do not have the book yet, but judging from the excerpt in the 2+2 magazine I am wondering if the concept of "planning hands" by chosing a certain amount to raise pre-flop isn't giving away too much information. Basically a smart opponent who knows this book should be able to put me on a range based on the size of my raise. So how much info does the book contain about ballancing frequenzies?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you were following the books applications you would be making all sorts of different sized raises.

There is some info on mixing it up to avoid being able to be read by good hand readers.

[Sounded Simple]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I do not have the book yet, but judging from the excerpt in the 2+2 magazine I am wondering if the concept of "planning hands" by chosing a certain amount to raise pre-flop isn't giving away too much information. Basically a smart opponent who knows this book should be able to put me on a range based on the size of my raise. So how much info does the book contain about ballancing frequenzies?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you were following the books applications you would be making all sorts of different sized raises.

There is some info on mixing it up to avoid being able to be read by good hand readers.

[/ QUOTE ]

When I first finished the book I thought this would be a problem too.
However the problem solves itself in a way as long as you let your stack size vary naturally.

Say you start with 100bb, you will make certain size raises with certain groups of hands to aim for your target SPR.
If your stack increases to 150bb (and you are playing other 150bb stacks) then the required raises for the same hands.
If your stack (or the effective stack) drops to 70bb then your raises vary accordingly.

Now thats not to say that clever oppponents wont realise the situation and interperet your raise correctly - I have not played enough with SPR to know if this happens.
At the same time to a random player who doesnt know what you are doing your raises will look random - even strange.

[Matt Flynn]

Sounded Simple thank you for the extended review and taking time to respond to bread!

bread, i understand your concerns and have no cure for them, there's just no way to know what your opponents will do. at least once you hit the flop you'll know what to expect, and you can nudge things in a good direction for your hands, even if all you do is fold, limp or make a fixed raise. you may like the ideas better when we flesh out other aspects in volume 2, like using SPR postflop and perhaps more important for the mid/high-stakes online crowd playing for and against commitment vs. playing for smallball. in practice SPR alone works fantastic in loose live games, but in tougher games you need to think about more than that. we're aware, we just didn't want to shoehorn the discussion into volume 1.

matt

[bread]

Matt,

Thank you for the reply. I am glad to see you point out that there is much more needed to handle all the other unknowns I mentioned and that what is in Volume 1 is not enough for bigger and tougher games. None of the posters here realize either.

I look forward to reading volume 2 when it comes out (publication date?).

[RacersEdge]

Question on basic concept the book preaches: the SPR = 13 danger zone for big pairs. This number was derived from 3 pot sized bets to give a stack size pre-flop of 1+3+9=13. But this assumes pot-sized bets on the flop, turn and river - which doesn't seem the norm, the norm being more like 2/3 - 3/4 the pot. So should the real number to avoid as far as SPR for big pairs be scaled to like 9 or 10?