Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[Matt Flynn]

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1. Perhaps you can include a summary matrix that outlines what target SPRs should be for different hands in different positions?

For example, say I have AK with a 100 BB stack in MP. Assuming no limpers and no re=raisers, what should my preflop raise be for me to hit my target SPR.

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this is two separate questions. consider three target SPRs: do you want 2, 5 or 8? (or use 2, 4, 6 if that fits your game better.) then the tables on pp. 215-217 gives the relevant raise sizes.

obv you usually cannot hit those targets and still be against an opponent range that's profitable for you.


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2. I know this was already mentioned, but I would like to also see more Pokerstove Equity percentages in your examples of hands when narrowing opponents down to their range of hands.

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noted!


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I have a question. Let's say I'm in a pretty loose 10 handed live game and pick up 56 suited UTG. My stack size is about 200 BB. Say one of the loose players raises preflop provided and they have a deep stack as well (150+ BB). Assuming no other players re-raise preflop, would you advocate a limp-reraise here with this hand against this opponent? What if the opponent was a tighter player?

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how loose are we talking? if loose means he'll call preflop and call or raise the flop it's going to be hard for you to steal, plus you may run into a big hand. so no usually i wouldn't, unless you have a different idea of loose than this.

against a tight opponent, you have a better chance of stealing, provided his preflop raising range is wide enough. so a limp-reraise has a good chance of taking it down, and a c-bet also has a good chance of taking it down. collectively you must analyze his range to see if you'll take it enough times to make for those times you run into AA/KK/maybe QQ plus those times he hits the flop hard enough to dance. paging VanVeen.... if his raising range is fairly wide, say AA-22, AK-AT, KQ-KJ and suited connectors, it's a slam-dunk as long as you don't do it so often that he catches on and then profits from firing back randomly.

[Matt Flynn]

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Is any of this really "new", or is it a lot of concepts that decent players have known for a while that have just been given a label and presented in an organized way? Don't get me wrong, the book is very good and well-written,

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i really appreciate you saying that.


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I just found myself feeling like the book was aimed much more at beginners than I thought. I mean, if you even halfway understand the advantages of short-stacking, SPR theory isn't exactly ground-breaking.

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well, i agree. this book was very much aimed at beginners - or more like "2+2 beginners," people who have played some and know they're making mistakes but not really why or how. for example, everything up to REM is pretty close to how i was taught when i started in 2001, and it really helped me.

it's weird writing a book like PNL because the audience is so broad.

[IlPug]

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quick and belated question that might have already been addressed - what's international shipping like, cost/time wise, if i order from 2+2?

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i don't know. www.conjelco.com is 2+2's direct seller but i believe they charge full price. Mike from www.professionalpoker.com offers it for < $20, ships it quick and reads this forum, so that may be your best bet.

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Thanks for the reply matt, ill check it out!

[Galwegian]

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Got my copy a week ago and its great. Its nice to see a poker book that presents some genuinely new ideas and ways of thinking about the game. Thanks to Matt, Sunny and Ed.

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Is any of this really "new", or is it a lot of concepts that decent players have known for a while that have just been given a label and presented in an organized way? Don't get me wrong, the book is very good and well-written, I just found myself feeling like the book was aimed much more at beginners than I thought. I mean, if you even halfway understand the advantages of short-stacking, SPR theory isn't exactly ground-breaking.

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In a certain sense there is nothing new to discover about NL holdem (or any other form of poker). However this book presents new ideas in the sense of presenting ideas that have not been published before. Of course any thinking player is probably aware that the size of his stack relative to the pot is important, and doesn't need PNL to tell him that. However, PNL presents a more detailed and (most importantly) a quantitative analysis of SPR. I think that many people's understanding of SPR prior to reading PNL would be along the lines of "I want to play sets with deep stacks", "I want to play TPTK with not so deep stacks", etc ... What PNL does is tell you exactly how deep you should be, why you want it to be that deep, and how to go about achieving that. This level of analysis is certainly new in the poker literature. Of course, I'm sure that many good players had worked this out for themselves, but no one had previously written it in a book.

[SenecaJim]

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Is any of this really "new", or is it a lot of concepts that decent players have known for a while that have just been given a label and presented in an organized way? Don't get me wrong, the book is very good and well-written, I just found myself feeling like the book was aimed much more at beginners than I thought. I mean, if you even halfway understand the advantages of short-stacking, SPR theory isn't exactly ground-breaking.

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Maybe not ground-breaking, but then if you play your hand different than if you knew you opponents cards is bad and if he plays his hand different than if he knew your cards is good probably wasn't "ground-breaking" either. But the articulation and organization of the concept and subsequent conclusions from that concept were totally ground-breaking.

TOP was one book but DS put simple on the surface but deep and deeper as you think. And some very experienced and winning players read it and learned when it came out.This is where PNL is headed, just gonna take more than one book. PNL vol.1 might be for beginners but it is already working it's way up at the end.

These "non-ground-breaking" books are what our civilazation was built upon. A good thought as poker is what made the wild west so awesome, along with pussy and whiskey, of course. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[dubiousdrift]

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this book was very much aimed at beginners - or more like "2+2 beginners," people who have played some and know they're making mistakes but not really why or how. for example, everything up to REM is pretty close to how i was taught when i started in 2001, and it really helped me.


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Bingo - You hit this target audience squarely on the head. I tend to read a lot, so all the traditional topics were pretty familiar to me. I have read about all the basics topics, much of the fundamentals topics and even many of the REM topics in other texts. But still I was frustrated because, while I've read more than any of my home-game peers, I still was not able to crush my home game, and even worse - didn't understand why.

While I could understand these topics, I struggled to integrate them into my own game. This book, more than anything else, has given me a framework to for the concepts (REM), the tools to make it work (SPR), and the confidence to make the adjustments in a controlled manner (Hand Planning).

So much of what I have read in other places has come together here and something 'clicked'. I get pot size control now, I am more comfortable getting all in without the stone cold nuts (a big leak for me), I no longer have the compulsion to go broke with a hand that has triskaidekaphobia (another big leak). It doesn't do any good to understand the concepts if you can't apply them. For me, this book is about taking the information out of the theoretical realm and into the applied knowledge realm. I still have a lot to learn and plenty to practice, but my sincere thanks to the authors for shortening my journey.

As an aside, I got this note from a friend of mine who I regularly play against. He just got his copy after many delays at B&N:
"I'm up to the examples of applying the fundamentals. And I'll say this:
Its going to be VERY interesting the next time you and I get mixed up in a hand."

[WarhammerIIC]

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well, i agree. this book was very much aimed at beginners - or more like "2+2 beginners," people who have played some and know they're making mistakes but not really why or how. for example, everything up to REM is pretty close to how i was taught when i started in 2001, and it really helped me.

it's weird writing a book like PNL because the audience is so broad.

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I think I probably just misinterpreted the audience. I'll admit I wasn't really paying much attention to 2+2 before the book came out, so I don't know if it was made apparent that it was aimed at "beginners" or not.

I think the word "Professional" in the title, and the marketing of the book led me to believe it was aimed at a non-beginner audience. Particularly the comments like "if you don't know what X is, or what X is, you need this book", which implies that these are concepts you don't know, when in fact they might be concepts you do know that have just been given a name and presented in an organized way.

There is nothing wrong with this at all and, like someone said, this is the same thing Theory of Poker did. I just think I was approaching the book differently from how it should have been approached, which is my fault.

[ceire]

this book is mind blowing and ground breaking and any one saying it is not is an idiot this is how strongly i feel about it (it it great for beginers and experts) the stp ratio can change you from a marginal player to a pro. I cant remember the last time i read a poker book and the thought WOW. Alot of the stuff you will know but it is said if you can get one good thing out of a book it is a good investment.

[jeffnc]

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the stp ratio can change you from a marginal player to a pro.

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I'm curious how you know that.

[Ulkis]

I hope that for vol II authors and other people involved in making the book check for errors more carefully than for the vol I.