Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[thac]

Dunno if this has been posted yet as I haven't been up-to-date on this thread. But on page 282, "Blinds $50/$100"? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Someone forgot to change the template on the table image.

[Frank Zappy]

I probably don't play enough NL cash to fully Grok the essence of the recos in the book, but overall the SPR and Commitment Threshold concepts are clearly very thought provoking.

I found the "but what if you raised 6BB w/KK" advise to be not helpful and in clear violation of the FTP. I understand it was "an example" of how you might think things through, but let's be honest, people will do it and either: 1. get the table to fold, or 2. get called and then have to assume that villain made a set when there's action after the Flop on a ragged board. How do you continue with anything other than a set having advertised your hand by the 6BB bet? Do you throw in a 6BB raise with 78 to mix it up?

Overall, my sense of NLHE (again this is from a limited sample) is that you either Flop a set or a straight or you're done either by folding or going turtle by c/c if the action is not strong. I'm not discounting flushes, I've seen more people get stacked by overplaying overpair and TP and losing to sets and str8s than to higher flushes.

Big pocket pairs and even suited aces don't seem to play as well as do connectors, suited or not, or SPP on flopped sets. A three flush on board might get action from a set or smaller flush but suited Aces may not be the great hand that they are in loose limit HE games when it only costs Villain a bet or 2 and not potentially their whole stack.

The average NL pot on Stars looks like about 14-20BB. If by the Turn there are 8BB and we have a OESD or DBB, can't we call 4BB in the hopes of the 8/45 shot coming on the river and stacking Villain?

[jeffnc]

[ QUOTE ]
Overall, my sense of NLHE (again this is from a limited sample) is that you either Flop a set or a straight or you're done either by folding or going turtle by c/c if the action is not strong. I'm not discounting flushes, I've seen more people get stacked by overplaying overpair and TP and losing to sets and str8s than to higher flushes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your observations aren't consistent. If you've seen people get stacked by overplaying overpair and TP, then why wouldn't they get stacked just as easily if they lost to a bigger pair? To put it another way, you can still stack the guy with JJ overpair or TPTK with AQ on Qxx board, if you have KK, right?

[shyturtle27]

I don't know if it has been asked or not because I don't want to go through 7 pages of posts, but I have a question. I play heads-up SNGs and I want to know how much of PNL applies to heads-up play. HUSNGs play very much like a HU cash game would early on. You start at about 50BB and cEV is equal to $EV so many tournament concepts don't apply early on.

Can I effectively use SPR and the commitment threshold heads-up? I've played many of these and they at least feel like cash game play. Thanks.

[Matt Flynn]

[ QUOTE ]

Can I effectively use SPR and the commitment threshold heads-up? I've played many of these and they at least feel like cash game play. Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

hu depends a bit on your game. if you do a lot of stealing you'd be less concerned with SPRs but still use them to help with commitment decisions. if you don't steal often you might use them more. in either case, if your opponent is good you'd want to be quite careful about varying preflop raise sizes.

commitment threshold still applies. however, in an aggressive hu match you'd be making more big bluffs and semibluffs and getting all-in with weaker hands.

[shyturtle27]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Can I effectively use SPR and the commitment threshold heads-up? I've played many of these and they at least feel like cash game play. Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

hu depends a bit on your game. if you do a lot of stealing you'd be less concerned with SPRs but still use them to help with commitment decisions. if you don't steal often you might use them more. in either case, if your opponent is good you'd want to be quite careful about varying preflop raise sizes.

commitment threshold still applies. however, in an aggressive hu match you'd be making more big bluffs and semibluffs and getting all-in with weaker hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks, Matt. I figured the commitment threshold would hold up still. I find it is really effective so far and the only adjustment is that I commit with weaker hands like TPMK or something like that. Haven't tried SPR yet. It does get complicated later because when the blinds get to 25-50 with 1500 effective stacks a preflop raise puts you on or past the commitment threshold so I guess the concepts from the book are better suited for low blind play.

[threads13]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Can I effectively use SPR and the commitment threshold heads-up? I've played many of these and they at least feel like cash game play. Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

hu depends a bit on your game. if you do a lot of stealing you'd be less concerned with SPRs but still use them to help with commitment decisions. if you don't steal often you might use them more. in either case, if your opponent is good you'd want to be quite careful about varying preflop raise sizes.

commitment threshold still applies. however, in an aggressive hu match you'd be making more big bluffs and semibluffs and getting all-in with weaker hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks, Matt. I figured the commitment threshold would hold up still. I find it is really effective so far and the only adjustment is that I commit with weaker hands like TPMK or something like that. Haven't tried SPR yet. It does get complicated later because when the blinds get to 25-50 with 1500 effective stacks a preflop raise puts you on or past the commitment threshold so I guess the concepts from the book are better suited for low blind play.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think the last bit is necessarily true. You still can decide whether or not you are committed and make a commitment plan, it is just that your variables are different. All being committed implies is whether your will profit from getting all your chips in. If it is you make your commitment plan, which may just be moving AI, and go from there.

[1p0kerboy]

There is a problem I'm having with some of the SPR stuff.

While it's great that the idea is presented to manipulate the pot preflop to make it correct to stack off with our good "top-pair" type hands, nowhere does it discuss the adverse effects, or collateral damage, of doing so in certain spots. I'll give you an example.

On page 270 hand no.2. We have kings UTG+1. We want to get close to 10% of our stack in preflop to hit our SPR, and our effective stack size is 100bb. So we limp and then do a mini-reraise when the button raises to 4BB. We have achieved our correct SPR so everything is good, right? Wrong. While we were achieving this goal, we left a huge area to be exploited in the process. Namely, we:


[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] Gave out a ton of information about our hand.
[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] Made it profitable for our opponents to play against us.

Our astute opponents are going to really tear us up by playing this way.

Ignoring the fish in middle position who mistakenly called our reraise, the player on the button is now being offered 90bb in implied odds (the rest of our stack because we are committed to any non-ace flop) plus the 15bb that is already in the pot for a total of 105bb. It only costs him 6bb to call. With a pair he is being offered 17.5-1 to flop a set, which he will do 1 time out of every 8.5 flops. This great bet that he is being offered comes at our expense.

Sometimes manipulating the pot preflop is not as valuable as the information that we give out by doing so and the implied odds we thus offer allowing our opponents to profit at our expense.

[1p0kerboy]

In fact, in No Limit Hold 'Em Theory and Practice , it addresses this issue several times.

[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] p266 Concept No. 28: Don't raise an amount that both tells your opponent that you have a good hand AND offers them the right implied odds to try to beat you.
[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] p37 The more your opponents know about the exact nature of your hand, the more you have to bet immediately to avoid offering them too high implied odds.
[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] p39 The more accurately your opponents can read your hand, the more you have to bet in proportion to your stack to prevent them from calling profitably.

[Sunny Mehta]

[ QUOTE ]
There is a problem I'm having with some of the SPR stuff.

While it's great that the idea is presented to manipulate the pot preflop to make it correct to stack off with our good "top-pair" type hands, nowhere does it discuss the adverse effects, or collateral damage, of doing so in certain spots. I'll give you an example.

On page 270 hand no.2. We have kings UTG+1. We want to get close to 10% of our stack in preflop to hit our SPR, and our effective stack size is 100bb. So we limp and then do a mini-reraise when the button raises to 4BB. We have achieved our correct SPR so everything is good, right? Wrong. While we were achieving this goal, we left a huge area to be exploited in the process. Namely, we:


[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] Gave out a ton of information about our hand.
[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] Made it profitable for our opponents to play against us.

Our astute opponents are going to really tear us up by playing this way.

Ignoring the fish in middle position who mistakenly called our reraise, the player on the button is now being offered 90bb in implied odds (the rest of our stack because we are committed to any non-ace flop) plus the 15bb that is already in the pot for a total of 105bb. It only costs him 6bb to call. With a pair he is being offered 17.5-1 to flop a set, which he will do 1 time out of every 8.5 flops. This great bet that he is being offered comes at our expense.

Sometimes manipulating the pot preflop is not as valuable as the information that we give out by doing so and the implied odds we thus offer allowing our opponents to profit at our expense.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi 1pokerboy,

Thanks for the post and the analysis. While we didn't have room to go into detail about this in Volume One, your analysis is flawed for several reasons.

First off, the raise is not a min-raise. The button makes it $20 and we make it $50. Perhaps that's splitting hairs, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Next, your point about giving away "a ton of information about our hand" is flawed. What is our range for making this play? It's not just KK. It could be AA-JJ, AK-AJ, KQ, and all sorts of other hands that we plan on achieving a low SPR to either commit to top pair with or steal the pot.

Your next point that we "made it profitable for our opponents to play against us" by nature of the fact that they're "being offered 17.5-to-1" is also flawed. They are being offered 17.5-to-1 to flop a set ONLY if:

1) they call with pocket pairs and fold everything else,
2) we have big pairs and nothing else in our range, AND
3) we pay them off for our full stack everytime.

Taking those point by point....

1) Part of the reason for making a raise that doesn't blow them out of the water is that they will in fact call with a MUCH wider range than just pocket pairs. What do you think they will do with AQs? Fold? No sir. And what do they then do on a Q-high board with only two pot-sized bets left? Fold? No sir.

2) We don't always have the big pair we're repping. Even if they'll only call with pocket pairs, will they fold 99 on a 552 flop? If so, do you know how much equity that yields us when we have AQ/76s/etc?

3) They don't make 17.5-to-1 even when they do hit their set. What happens when we have AK and miss the flop and they hit their set? We fold. Heck, what happens when we have KK-JJ and they flop a set but there's an overcard out there? We fold. And even if they do happen to hit a set WHEN we have an overpair AND they get us all-in, don't forget that we still have almost 9 percent equity in the pot.

Bottom line...if you look at global ranges of both our hands and our opponent's hands, as well as ranges of possible flops and actions, the points you make about "information" as well as "implied odds" simply don't hold up.

Thanks a lot for the post though.

-Sunny