Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[jimpo]

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I haven't read this thread or the book but I'm opinionated and arrogant: I'm pretty sure they don't recommend an exploitable pf strategy.

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Well, they do, with some hand-waving "of course you have to mix it up a bit" thrown in.

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jimpo,

the "point" of SPR is not preflop raise sizes. SPR is simply a good gauge to see how different hands my play out from beginning to end. if you play in tough games where it's not feasible to do anything but raise a standard fixed amount, fine, SPR can still help you plan. (but I do wonder how you "know" beyond a shadow of a doubt that you'd be so exploited if you mixed up your pf raises.) we'll cover more advanced material in Volume Two. suffice to say, Volume One is not geared for people who play in Brian Townsend's games. Also, the "whole book" is not about SPR. It's a major chapter, and we thought it'd be a good way of framing other ideas like planning, etc. Sorry you're so upset.

thanks for the comments,

Sunny

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I much appreciate that you can also listen to (ok, perhaps overly) negative feedback.

I do think SPR is an invaluable concept and the book does an amazing job covering new ground on that subject.

However when reading the book I feel like I am being conveyed the message "all you have to do is to make sure to have correct SPR, then flop TP or overpair and bet pot until you are all-in". That's a bit simplistic view about NLHE, is it not? Reading that kind of text (whether the message is explicitly written out or not) frustrates me to no end. The message about SPR is a bit overdone at places in my opinion.

I think I will remain sceptical until someone actually does a cardrunners style of video playing 4 tables of NL50 or something, using the SPR approach (like open raising to 7bb instead of 4bb with top pair hands, that is recommended in the book, after all). Until then I can't help feeling that it is nor practical for online multitabling.

[Matt Flynn]

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However when reading the book I feel like I am being conveyed the message "all you have to do is to make sure to have correct SPR, then flop TP or overpair and bet pot until you are all-in". That's a bit simplistic view about NLHE, is it not?

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we are quite explicit that if varying your preflop raises gives away too much of your range, you should not do it. it's in there several times. sounds like we didn't emphasize it enough.

[amplify]

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However when reading the book I feel like I am being conveyed the message "all you have to do is to make sure to have correct SPR, then flop TP or overpair and bet pot until you are all-in". That's a bit simplistic view about NLHE, is it not?

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we are quite explicit that if varying your preflop raises gives away too much of your range, you should not do it. it's in there several times. sounds like we didn't emphasize it enough.

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Matt, I think that the problem in this case is that the book has virtually no postflop recommendation other than "bet pot" and assumes that every hand will play out with pot-size bets on every street. So how do the SPRs work when every street is a 2/3 pot bet, or when the flop is checked? To what extent is obtaining a good SPR helpful if most hands are folded on the flop? What are we giving up or gaining in terms of preflop betting when we miss the flop?

I know some of the answers to these questions may be "volume 2" but it may not help foster better play at this time if SPR is sort of floating out there disconnected from overall approach.

[mvdgaag]

I think many of the SPR concepts are best presented in scenario's (as was done a couple of times in vol. I). The scenario's show that with proper bet sizing in earlyer streets we don't give our opponents opportunities to exploit us with big bets.

I think postflop betting should be for favorable SPR's on later streets as a default and other betsizes should be for an explicit reason, do you agree? In that case I also think it is good to emphasize that many accepted reasons/methods for betsizing are also explainable in SPR terminology, because favorable SPR's and favorable (reverse)implied odds are directly related to eachother. This would make it easyer to understand for the readers.

[Matt Flynn]

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[Matt Flynn]

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Matt, I think that the problem in this case is that the book has virtually no postflop recommendation other than "bet pot" and assumes that every hand will play out with pot-size bets on every street. So how do the SPRs work when every street is a 2/3 pot bet, or when the flop is checked? To what extent is obtaining a good SPR helpful if most hands are folded on the flop? What are we giving up or gaining in terms of preflop betting when we miss the flop?

I know some of the answers to these questions may be "volume 2" but it may not help foster better play at this time if SPR is sort of floating out there disconnected from overall approach.

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i think that it helps tremendously at lower stakes, but also that SPR is nowhere near enough for tougher games. we never intended it as a stand-alone strategy for tough games. rather, in tough games it helps you see where the hand might go and where the trouble spots are likely to be.

like you point out, we barely touch postflop. we haven't gotten to several preflop topics or a global preflop planning strategy yet. we also haven't discussed how to evaluate opponents or your own play, how to plan and anticipate postflop betting lines, and many other topics.

leaving SPR to stand alone in the late split between volumes 1 and 2 has caused us a lot of headache. yes, you can play to steal, and sometimes you don't play for commitment, and every hand really is a hybrid depending on how things go. believe me, we would reorder it if we could. :-)

to be fair to us, your average green no-limit player playing in loose live games and loose microstakes online stands to gain the most from thinking along SPR lines. those mistakes come up over and over again and are expensive. that's why we focused on it in PNL1.

once you get into tougher games you cannot survive without planning around hybrid strategies, whether you are conscious of that or found it through trial and error. there isn't an MSNL or HSNL player worth his salt who does not do that, although the nittier ones don't emphasize it as much. we know this, we play accordingly, and we've written about it. it just didn't get into PNL1.



adjusting for 2/3 pot bets is easy. the problem range is anything above what you think you'll want to put in with the hand should you hit. if that's an SPR of 5 than anything above 5 sucks for you -- at least until the SPRs get big enough to offer wiggle room.

matt

[Optisizer]

Matt, Sunny, Ed,
First, let me thank you for a fantasic book. Easily the best NLH book ever written and published. Great work!
A few questions on target SPRs for various hand types:

1) There's a category of hands I call late-position high-card hands, holding a bunch of off-suit hands such as A9, A8, KJ, KT, QJ, QT, TJ. At first thinking is seems like these hands should be played with low SPR targets, but in so doing they are likely to be up against hands (such as higher aces, kings and high pairs) that will benefit more from a low SPR than these hands. Likewise, these hands are likely to suffer if played with a high SPR against hands such as suited connectors or suited aces (such as A9s or A8s). This leaves the mid SPR territory for these hands, not because that might be the best range for these hands in their own right, but because that SPR range is where they give away the least to the other hand categories. Your thoughts???

2) I have noticed a lot of the nosebleed-level players like to reraise with suited connectors pushing the SPR to close to 4 or 5. Then if the flop grants them a decent draw, such as a straight draw with over cards, or a flush draw with a pair, they move all in (else they just abandon the hand having cost them only 12-16 BB). I did a little equity analysis using pokerstove on this type of play and it seems like, provided a relatively loose original raiser (which basically all the nosebleed-level players are), it is indeed +EV to reraise pre-flop and move in with a strong draw on the flop, if you have managed to get the pot to about 20-25% of your remaining effective stack. This play, then, advocates a low SPR for suited connectors, you write in your book that suited connectors prefer a high SPR and you are not mentioning this type of play at all. Your thoughts???

3) When you play a low SPR type hands such as AK or AQ and you manage to create a low SPR on the flop (say 5-6), but also misses the flop, and either C-bet yourself (as a semibluff in attempt to take down the hand right there) or just call a weakish bet (as a float play) and then hit one of your cards on the turn, while the SPR has gotten even lower, should you consider yourself as commited now as you intended to be earlier had you hit on the flop? When this have happended to me a few times it seems that the hands that call me are more likely to have me beat (sets usually, made on the flop). Infact, the whole play seems to have turned into a way ahead/way behind type situation where I´m bound to win a little or lose a lot. So am I generally better off abandon the commitment strategy in a situation like this and go for a check turn, check-call (maybe bet) river, or is it just my sample that are too small to allow me a correct analysis of the situation??? Your thoughts???

Thanks again for a fantastic book. On a side note, thinking in terms of SPR and commitment threshold levels have really helped my tourney game a lot too. Specifically I have become much better at balancing my risk/reward in a hand, trying to avoid risking more then 1/3 of my stack in any hand. Also knowing before hand where I have the 1/3 point of the effective stack I can drive the betting so that I put the implicit threat of a pending all in move on my opponent. Again, fantastic stuff!!!

[mvdgaag]

On point 2...

Sc's (when you get to see a flop) might be played profitable this way but never as profitable as with higher SPR's. This is because you lose money in the long run when the money goes in while you're behind, unless you can steal quite often on a later street, which can be tough and expensive in 3bet pots.

When playing this way you are playing to steal the preflop pot and you chose suited connectors to do this with, because they have the best equity against the postflop ranges of your opponents (big pairs, AK) if you're called.

[MiJ305]

meh the book is not as good as it was hyped up 2 be .yes , it's better than ken warren's books,but there's not much value that will teach you how to beat most short handed online games (which is probably the most popular version of NLHE,online) ...i will not be buying volume 2 and i hope i can sell my book on ebay , if not its going in the trash ....gg PNL

[eMbAh]

So 100bb stacks are a bad stacksize for top pair? Because even at the lowest limits NL10 it's still unusual to raise more than 4x so even when we get 2 callers it's still not commitment time, I don't know but alot of players think it's donkish to raise to 6x. What to do about it?