Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[Splossy]

Have the book now. I'm reading the Equity bit. It has a hand of 7s7h on a flop of 8d7c6d and you get raised all in. It says your equity against the straights is 35%. I'm sure this is obvious but how has that been derived?

One thing I'm a bit disappointed in in the Pot Control section is the lack of detail on more marginal hands. It's obvious when you have the examples given but in reality I struggle when I pick up more average hands and the opponent could have a wider range of hands.

[binions]

[ QUOTE ]
Have the book now. I'm reading the Equity bit. It has a hand of 7s7h on a flop of 8d7c6d and you get raised all in. It says your equity against the straights is 35%. I'm sure this is obvious but how has that been derived?


[/ QUOTE ]

You have 7 outs to pair the board and beat a straight on the turn, and if you miss, 10 outs on the river. The chance of the board not pairing is 38/45 * 34/44 or 65.25%. So, your chance of the board pairing at least once is 34.75%.

Note we use 45 and 44 unseen cards instead of 47 and 46 unseen cards in calculating equity against the straight because, by definition, if he has a straight on the flop, he can't have any of our outs (ie cards that pair the board) in his hand.

[Splossy]

Ahhh of course, the extra outs due to the extra card on the turn. Nice one thanks.

[dividius]

Just wanna say that I'm through Part 3 and I'm really diggin the book. I really like the thesis: "Plan your hands." The logical players are already doing that, but us instinctual players often need a blunt reminder that making decisions on the fly isn't always (ever?) the right way to do things. That's probably my biggest weakness: playing too much from street-to-street instead of having a cohesive plan for the entirety of the hand. A book like this was exactly what I needed.

Unfortunately, I got it right after picking up "The Mathematics of Poker," so I keep bouncing between the two. I'm spending more time with MoP due to the nature of the material, but PNLHE will get its due. Both of them are constantly reminding me how I need to think of hands in their entirety and not "one street at a time." I can already see my play on the turn improving dramatically. Thanks a lot, and good luck in the future.

[skillzilla]

has the book had any impact on the games yet?
a lot of people raising to different amounts preflop and betting 2/3 pot the rest of the way?

[threads13]

I am on my 3rd read of the book and it is starting to absorb more and more.

This book is going to end up being a major contributing to NL strategy. I believe an astute reader can take a lot of the concepts in here and expand upon them. I am already excited about volume 2 which I believe will really add a lot of the good stuff to this strategy.

[jeffnc]

[ QUOTE ]
has the book had any impact on the games yet?
a lot of people raising to different amounts preflop and betting 2/3 pot the rest of the way?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, if something radical like that ever happened, it would be glaringly obvious they are reading this book under the table [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[HustlerLA]

Last night in a live 2/5 game I was applying the SPR concepts and found them really beneficial. For example, one hand I coudn't reach a target SPR with JJ UTG+1 so I limped and then had a really good 3 bet situation that turned out great. In the past I would have played a multiway pot with JJ with a bad SPR OOP, not fun. There were standard examples where I used it to to get low SPR with TPTK type hands also.

I am having trouble with one hand in particular, deciding if I made a bad fold based off SPR or perhaps this was a situation that SPR doesnt apply. I say this because in the book and previous posts it was highlighted that in order for SPR concepts to apply, our hand must be ahead of villian's range. I doubted my hand to be but position and a dead $5 post influenced me to call preflop. I would really appreciate feedback.

This is the hand:
I missed my blind (bathroom) and posted 5 on the cutoff to get back in. EP raiser makes it 20, I have KJo, and decided with the discount and position I would call, but I dont think I had +EV against his range without adding stealing/position. SB and BB call. Pot 80. I cover all players. Flop is Jc3d4d. SB and BB check and dont look interested (no c/r likely) and villian leads for 90 and only has another 80 behind. Well, stealing is not an option now, and he seems comfortable and confident and I beleive from history that if he was c-betting a missed flop he would have led for 1/2 to 2/3 pot. I beleived that he wasnt bluffing and thought I would see AJ or QQ+ too often here. My SPR was only approx 2. And I still made a very tight fold to a flop bet. I felt I had a strong read that he wasnt bluffing. That being said, am I forced to call mathwise? Or does the SPR not matter becasue I was never ahead of his range? is this just a fold that I cannot make profitably even with a good read? He said he had 99 which I believe because I suspect after SB and BB checked he thought his 99 was good with only me left to act. This is a situation where I read strength (he's not bluffing), but assign to much strength to the opponents hand.