Thoughts on PNL?

[pineapple888]

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I really don't think that there are enough discussions about pot control, commitment, and how to bet to get your opponent all in on the river with betting on the flop and turn at the micro limits.

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Well, when you get right down to it, that's pretty much all we discuss here in this forum. I mean, how can you even really play poker at a decent level without understanding these concepts?

[Chargers In 07]

I see your point Pineapple. Guess I shouldn't disagree in the small stakes forum. This book is good for inexperienced players and people who play micros. Better?

[Nikachu]

Looks like there aren't many posters here who have peeked into a live casino. Fact of the matter is that online poker is far more evolved and advanced. The online players are superior because live players go to a casino to gamble. Players playing $1/2 to $5/10 at a live casino play exactly like the morons at micro stakes online.

I havn't read the book but it most definately must be useful for a live game player where players are clueless and double and triple up over the stupidest hands. When you and a moron are 3 stacks deep... you need a plan to get it all in. You wont get it all in if you just 3/4 pot it over and over.

What it comes down to is that this book does not teach you how to beat advanced players. It teaches you how to effectively destroy live fish (or nl $0.01/0.02 online). The internet in general is a whole different ballgame.

[Sean Fraley]

Pokey, I assume from this post that you haven't read the ridiculously long thread in Books & Publications. The authors have made it a point to answer queries and criticism about the book and some clarification of some of the issues discussed here can be found there.

[Speedlimits]

This is why we need a real online player to write a book instead of these live newbs that play 10 hands an hour.

[BobboFitos]

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This is why we need a real online player to write a book instead of these live newbs that play 10 hands an hour.

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fwiw, Matt Flynn is an incredible NL player, who has played big games online as well. I've played 10-20 NL live with him and he is an amazing player.

Sunny as well is an accomplished NL player who has played for some time and posted for a while. I am not sure if he's played much online but he's certainly a very solid player.

Ed Miller is a strong limit player who was brought on to help with the writing. He's obviously brilliant and can WRITE well.

I think the pedigree of the authors shouldn't be in question.

[atmstuck]

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This is why we need a real online player to write a book instead of these live newbs that play 10 hands an hour.

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fwiw, Matt Flynn is an incredible NL player, who has played big games online as well. I've played 10-20 NL live with him and he is an amazing player.

Sunny as well is an accomplished NL player who has played for some time and posted for a while. I am not sure if he's played much online but he's certainly a very solid player.

Ed Miller is a strong limit player who was brought on to help with the writing. He's obviously brilliant and can WRITE well.

I think the pedigree of the authors shouldn't be in question.

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A good player doesn't have to be a good author. I don't know if they try to get fancy on the book or else. I personally don't think the material helps the current online play much, unless you have just started

[sebbb]

What I learned in the book:

1) I now 3 bet AK preflop more than before and it makes my decision easier postflop (I think)

2) This is not really in the book, but I've given some thought about my opponents' commitment threshold and it makes it easier to bluff them off a pot

[BobboFitos]

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A few weeks ago I read Professional No-Limit Hold'Em Volume I. At the time, I honestly thought it was pretty bad in its advice. Since then I've had some time to reflect on the subject matter and I've come to the conclusion that I was right all along.


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It's BAD??? I disagree, I think PNL is the best NLH book that has been published. Not close here.

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Am I the only one who found this book reasonably unhelpful? I mean, who exactly are Matt, Sunny, and Ed playing against that let them get away with this crap? Sure, everybody limp-reraises KK from UTG on occasion -- when table conditions are perfect, when there's some aggro-monkey in LP who can't resist raising to punish limpers, etc. -- but as a general rule?? Where are these idiots who let you raise to 8 BBs with rockets and then don't turn around and recognize that something odd is going on when we minraise 87s?


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That isn't what they say. Those are some plays in certain circumstances which could work. Everything is contextual.

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The main theme of the book seems to be this whole Pot-to-Stack Ratio stuff. Yes, it's very nice and interesting and all, but stack decisions are such a small part of my typical game that I can't imagine building my strategy around them. Given that 99% of the time you are fighting for a smaller-than-all-in pot, shouldn't we be paying a great deal of attention to these other hands?


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THIS is a great point. Basically, they are all about the "big" pot, where most pots (not 99%, more like 70%) are small pots. And yes, those affect your earn incredibly. That said, constantly thinking about SPR is vital.

**Fwiw, I have a small amount of SPR stuff in my book. What's funny is before PNL was published I sent a chapter to Matt Flynn to read, and it was all about playing draws; and incidentally, I based it all upon SPR. So, we both wrote about the same thing and came to similar conclusions without ever referring to one another along these lines. Does go to show how vital it is, whether you know it or not.

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OK, I get the point -- "if it's all going into the middle, you should have a plan." Fine. But why are we designing strategies around my betting double-pot on the flop, pot-and-a-half on the turn, and then pot on the river? Do any of us play against opponents who will let us do that on a regular basis? I have a hard enough time getting the live ones to pay off pot-on-the-flop, pot-on-the-turn, let alone a river bet as well. Are your opponents so dazzlingly stupid that they won't notice that you've changed your usual "3/4ths-pot flop, 1/2-pot turn" into "double-pot flop, pot-and-a-half turn"? Mine don't seem to be.



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Yeah, this is fair. I think sometimes you can't aim to put your stack in there, but you should aim to get the pot as big as possible. ie, pot pot pot. if your opponents ARE dumb enough though, by all means charge them.

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Look, I'm all in favor of planning and I'm a big fan of extracting value, but we've also got to be realistic. In the games we play, we simply can't get away with most of these moves. Our opponents are not blind and not unthinking; they actually pay SOME attention to our behavior. I really want to get something useful out of this book; if you liked it or found it beneficial, please let me know what it was that helped you -- I want to share in the intellectual bounty!

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reread the REM part, I liked that the best.

[Pokey]

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It's BAD??? I disagree, I think PNL is the best NLH book that has been published. Not close here.


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*sigh*

I guess I'll be re-reading PNL soon -- too many good players have found at least SOMETHING that they like in it for me not to have missed something. I think I fell into the classic blunder that so many experienced 2+2'ers have done: I read a part that was jarringly incorrect for my games and I mostly stopped listening. Time to re-open my mind and try it again.

As soon as I finish re-reading Schoonmaker's Psychology of Poker. I promised myself I'd do that almost a year ago, and I've finally gotten around to it.

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The main theme of the book seems to be this whole Pot-to-Stack Ratio stuff. Yes, it's very nice and interesting and all, but stack decisions are such a small part of my typical game that I can't imagine building my strategy around them. Given that 99% of the time you are fighting for a smaller-than-all-in pot, shouldn't we be paying a great deal of attention to these other hands?


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THIS is a great point. Basically, they are all about the "big" pot, where most pots (not 99%, more like 70%) are small pots. And yes, those affect your earn incredibly. That said, constantly thinking about SPR is vital.

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OK; I trust that Matt, Sunny, and Ed will be tackling the small-pot stuff in Vol. 2, so I'll let that part of it go for now. As to the SPR stuff, it seems a bit stilted to me -- it looks like it's trying to quantify the "art" of poker. It's as if some art critic decided to "simplify" the process of judging art:

"What we do is we assign a score to brush technique from 0 to 10. Then we score the use of color from 0 to 10. Finally, we score the creativity from 0 to 20. Add these numbers and you have the overall painting quality, where 30+ is a high-quality painting and 35+ is a master work."

Does this description REALLY help us know good art when we see it? I find the SPR stuff equivalently vague but couched in equivalently mathematical ideas:

"SPR is the ratio of remaining stacks to the size of the pot on the flop. Now, determine how large a ratio of pot-to-remaining stacks could get into the pot while still making your postflop hand a favorite to win at showdown. This is the SPR you should aim for."

Did anybody else notice the vagueness in the middle? You've got 100 BB stacks, you're in the cutoff with QQ preflop and Isura is in the SB. How large should your PSR be to make sure that you're profitable at showdown if all the money goes into the middle and you've got an overpair? Do we really feel confident calculating this number with *ANY* degree of certainty? Even within a reasonable range? If we can't come up with a number for PSR then we can't make our estimates. Unfortunately, there's an even worse problem here: changing our PSR changes our target PSRs. When I make a huge raise, my opponent's calling range changes, both preflop and postflop. When I limp, it changes as well. By changing the PSR, my opponents become more aware of my hand and therefore they respond: I could always get a PSR of 2 with my 100 BB stacks by raising to 33 BBs preflop. Is that going to create a favorable all-in situation for my QQ? The act of manipulating the PSR changes the target PSR as well.

Also, some hands simply don't *work* with PSRs. If I've got JJ in the CO, this hand does not HAVE a "target PSR" with 100 BB stacks, because our most likely "good flop hand" is an overpair. There's no way to get 100 BBs into the middle with nothing but JJ unimproved and be a favorite against a typical opponent, regardless of the size of your PSR: if we limp we'll likely have the best hand preflop, but not if we're getting 30xPot into the middle postflop. Similarly, if we make a huge preflop raise, or we make or call a big three-bet, or we make or call a four-bet, we're either a coin-flip or a HUGE dog going into the flop, and we're definitely a huge dog if we get it all-in unimproved.

That does NOT mean that JJ is unplayable, but if it has *no* PSR, then how does this concept apply?

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OK, I get the point -- "if it's all going into the middle, you should have a plan." Fine. But why are we designing strategies around my betting double-pot on the flop, pot-and-a-half on the turn, and then pot on the river? Do any of us play against opponents who will let us do that on a regular basis? I have a hard enough time getting the live ones to pay off pot-on-the-flop, pot-on-the-turn, let alone a river bet as well. Are your opponents so dazzlingly stupid that they won't notice that you've changed your usual "3/4ths-pot flop, 1/2-pot turn" into "double-pot flop, pot-and-a-half turn"? Mine don't seem to be.



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Yeah, this is fair. I think sometimes you can't aim to put your stack in there, but you should aim to get the pot as big as possible. ie, pot pot pot. if your opponents ARE dumb enough though, by all means charge them.


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How does PSR help us if "getting it all in profitably" is IMPOSSIBLE regardless of our PSR? Are we saying that there are some hands that are inherently "small stack hands," and that any time we get all-in with them we've made a mistake? The PSR fails us with those hands? If so, why wasn't this mentioned in the book?

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reread the REM part, I liked that the best.

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I will. Thanks for the clarification, and I say that to everybody who has responded in this thread: I appreciate your comments.