Winning Texas Hold'em

[TChan]

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The one key point is that surprisingly your overall results won't change that much between playing 45 percent of the hands and 80 percent of the hands because these extra hands are about break even.


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If you are willing to play 45% of your hands against me in the BB heads-up, I would be willing to play against you and offer you a 10% rebate in the event I win. If you are right about the 46th to 80th percentile of hands being worth very little, then my 10% rebate should constitute a large edge for you.

I also remember David Sklansky posting on RGP a few years back that you don't play poker as high or as much as you could because the publishing business is worth more to you. Let me know at what limit it's worth it for you; I can go as high as 500/1000 online or 1000/2000 live. I *might* be able to go higher but I would need a backer. Please let me know.

[Mason Malmuth]

TChan:

First off, I want you to know that I'm very impressed with your bluster.

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If you are right about the 46th to 80th percentile of hands being worth very little, then my 10% rebate should constitute a large edge for you.


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First, you twisted our words, and second, you said something stupid. In our book we recommended calling over 40 percent of the time against an aggressive player. We weren't talking about a player who raises 100 percent of the time when he is on the button. Against such a player we would call even more. (Because hands like jack-six are now likely to contain one or even two overcards to his.) Against an aggressive player who doesn't always raise, that is he sometimes folds and sometimes calls, a 45 percent calling rate is only slightly too tight, and adding another 30 percent would involve adding hands with only very small positive equity if you play well.

However, this slight mistake of playing too tightly is more than enough to justify much greater then a 10 percent rebate over the course of a heads-up match if the rebater is a good player. So your implication that missing out on playing very slightly profitable hands would allow you to have the best of it taking a ten percent rebate shows that you are either trying to fool our readers who may not understand this concept, or you don't understand the math yourself.

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I also remember David Sklansky posting on RGP a few years back that you don't play poker as high or as much as you could because the publishing business is worth more to you.

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This is completely true. The incredible success of Two Plus Two Publishing LLC takes up a great deal of my time and for the past three years (and more) I have mainly been a social player. (As an example of our success, Amazon.com has just informed us that we have made their Top 100 Publishers list at #98. Unfortunately, this is a confidential list that they maintain so they won't tell us much more about it.)

By the way, and I want you to know this. When I say that Two Plus Two has been incredibly success, that success does not just stop with me. We believe in being very generous to our authors and pay royalty rates far higher than industry standard. (We also require that our authors work harder in getting their books as good as possible than virtually any other publisher. So while the rewards are great, it's not easy to become a member of our family.) Plus, since we have a reputation for putting out extremely good books, that alone increases sales and assures us ample shelf space at the major bookstores. What this means is that our authors probably make about triple than what they would with almost all other publishing companies. So the next time you bluster and make your challenges, keep in mind that something like this did not happen over night. It took a lot of effort and dedication (not just from me but from all of us involved with Two Plus Two.)

MM

[CrayZee]

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Amazon.com has just informed us that we have made their Top 100 Publishers list at #98.

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Congrats on the success that has followed all the hard work.

I find these forum high-noon showdown, gauntlet drops to be somewhat amusing. I can't exactly tell if people are actually serious when they post messages (or who they are).

"We meet at the clock tower by the rolling tumbleweeds. You play the top 45 to a pfr; I play the top 80. I will win the battle, give you 10% back, and 'prove' my strategy works over a small, relatively meaningless sample. QED in advance."

[J_V]

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By the way, and I want you to know this. When I say that Two Plus Two has been incredibly success, that success does not just stop with me. We believe in being very generous to our authors and pay royalty rates far higher than industry standard. (We also require that our authors work harder in getting their books as good as possible than virtually any other publisher. So while the rewards are great, it's not easy to become a member of our family.) Plus, since we have a reputation for putting out extremely good books, that alone increases sales and assures us ample shelf space at the major bookstores. What this means is that our authors probably make about triple than what they would with almost all other publishing companies. So the next time you bluster and make your challenges, keep in mind that something like this did not happen over night. It took a lot of effort and dedication (not just from me but from all of us involved with Two Plus Two.)

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Irrelevant and non sensical.

I'm not sure how 2+2 paying their authors has anything to do with this book's recommendation to fold to many hands. In fact, I might call your irrelevant boast the only "bluster" in the thread.