Grade the October Magazine

[PhatMango]

I am not competent to determine if the HU article was strategically correct, but I very much enjoyed the format. I like articles discussing specific hand series and how people think about them, both individually and holistically.

[Ghazban]

I appreciate your reply and agree that buying in short against a very aggressive opponent will lower one's variance. It will also lower one's winrate presuming the hyper-aggressive opponent is the inferior player. When you said "it is advantageous" to buy in short in this scenario, that reads to me that it is more profitable and, quite frankly, that is not true. If by "advantageous", you are referring to other things than pure EV (lower variance, easier decisions, etc.), I believe you need to explain that up front.

I should also state that, in a sense, the article provided exactly what it was advertised to-- namely, hand reading in HU NLHE. My main problems with their article were that I did not agree with a majority of the actions the author chose to take based on those reads. The reads themselves seemed very reasonable to me.

[jfk]

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Ever think of getting someone with some real high stakes HU NLHE experience rather than some 4-year old that is buying in for 25BBs ...

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...As an editor, why would you accept a *strategy* article that's written by someone playing $200 NL?

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This sort of criticism is extremely unfair. Playing level makes little or no difference. Either the author is making sound decisions or he's not.

This article was not among the bright lights of the October magazine but the focus should be on the decisions and assumptions rather than the dollar amount at play.

[BradleyT]

[ QUOTE ]
Dynasty,
the gray background of the articles blows hard and is more difficult to read. You can still change it.

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[Dynasty]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dynasty,
the gray background of the articles blows hard and is more difficult to read. You can still change it.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

I've contacted Chuck Weinstock about this and have requested he change it.

[BluffTHIS!]

Dynasty,

As I suggested before, you really need to try to get Chuck to give you FTP access to the site, and then use MS Frontpage or Dreamweaver along with a file transfer program so you can make quick changes yourself.

[RoundTower]

• Heads-up Limit Hold 'em: A Basic Strategy - well written, but I hope this is the start of a series because it felt too basic.

• Developing and Using Reads in Heads-up No-limit Hold 'em - I like the idea of explaining a player's thinking hand by hand but I felt the author's play and thinking was fundamentally unsound and this was a poor example of HU play to analyse.

• Counting Outs in Deuce-to-Seven Lowball - very good, one of the two best articles IMO although I rarely play this game.

• How to Win With Big Pairs in Stud Eight or Better - also very good

• Bankroll Requirements for Poker - well written and clear but I don't think it added much to what was written in the 1st article.

• Poker and Finance Part 3 - one of the highlights for me, well researched, discussed an important and often overlooked idea and provided useful resources for further reading (I assume useful, I haven't looked at them yet).

• Chips Changing Value in Tournaments - a certain amount of good theory but nothing I would find useful in practice.

• Using a Read to Delay a Raise - a good simple example of a slightly unusual play, well written.

• Classic Article: On Tilt - I disagree with the main point of this article but it is thoughtprovoking.

• Maximizing Value in Free Plays at Sportsbooks - well written and interesting general gambling reading, though of little practical use to me.

• Fantasy Football Part 2 - haven't read and doubt I will, I have no real interest in the subject.

• Editing/presentation - Mostly well edited. I'm reading this now on 4/10 and it looks fine to me, perhaps something has been changed since other posters complained? Problems with displaying punctuation etc seem to have disappeared.

• Mix of articles - good. I don't mind not having a full ring NL article or a "journalism" article and I think you can have a first class magazine which rarely features either topic.

Overall grade: B.