Professional No-Limit Hold 'em Volume 1 Review Thread

[Sunny Mehta]

great post Jeff


m3dude, of course you can post a hand - though it's probably better if you do it in one of the strat forums rather than in this thread.....

[m3dude]

well i would be posting the hand just to see if im understanding the book properly, not necessarily to get help with the hand

[Jeff76]

Thanks Sunny.

My problem, of course, is in the application of all this stuff [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Matt Flynn]

m3dude,

yeah i see what you're saying. kind of frustrating for me too because there is more to planning hands than what is in Volume 1. the biggest, which you're hitting on, is when you should ignore SPR concerns because other avenues of profit are worth more.

a couple hands skew towards commitment because that's what we're trying to teach.

not sure how you got weak tight? perhaps because the section emphasizes planning around commitment instead of stealing? or because we haven't discussed bluffing yet? weak-tight blows.


global concept: you win by making the best hand or by stealing.

SPR focused on make the best hand and provided a few examples about stealing. i.e., play for commitment or play against it. we lead with top pair b/c those are the hands that mess up beginner and intermediate players in 100bb games: when they hit, they still get screwed often enough that learning about managing implied odds helps the most. it also should be high in the thoughts of expert players playing top pair hands OOP against aggro opponents. that doesn't mean stealing isn't a big part of the game, nor does it mean that you automatically play for commitment OR against commitment. sometimes you have reasons to override planning around commitment and go with other strategies. for example, you might raise with AQ even thought it creates an SPR of 13 (or 8-10 if your de facto big bet is 2/3 pot instead of pot) if that raise makes you more money from stealing blinds or from stealing later in the hand than you lose from the bad commitment situation.

bottom line is do whatever you think will win the most money.

just not enough room in one book, and these concepts require careful explanation so less experienced players don't spew themselves into the poorhouse.

matt

[carddown]

Matt and Sunny, I enjoyed the new book quite a bit. I really like how you emphasize planning your hand before the cards are even dealt. Some of the bet structuring and pot sizing reminds me of what little I've read about pot limit, and I like the scientific approach to betting as opposed to just playing chicken with cards.

My grasp of SPRs in play is shaky and I definitely need some more study before trying to add this to my arsenal in a live game. I think I need to make a cheat sheet and practice, but practice how? Any suggestions on tuning up before going live?

[mvdgaag]

Fisished! Great book indeed. I'm really looking forward to more detailed plays, applications and consequences of the use of SPR.

What I think is missing a bit (it's not, but not very emphasized enough IMO) is that it is very important to state you have to be ahead of villains calling range whenever you choose to make a big raise to get to your target SPR. Max SPR is a very important number and I'd like to see more how it is properly estimated against different opponents. Im my experience often my max SPR is smaller than my target SPR and it is best to fold or try to steal instead of planning to get allin.

Also you have to be ahead of your opponents calling range when crossing the commitment treshold. Otherwise we could just put half our stack in with 42o and make a proper allin bet on the flop. This is a silly example, but the same logic applies when playing a marginal TP hand against a tight opponent.

In a lot of cases in online play against weaktight players this is also true for the TPTK hands IMO. There's no sense in playing TPTK hands more quickly preflop to loose it al to a set in an easy way through commitment instead of losing it after a tough decision when you were around SPR 13. It's both wrong, you lose the same. The lesson should be that you get it in while you have the best of it. If that's before your opponent had his set, than you are correct, but you have to know you are ahead of your opponent when getting it in.

I think SPR is very helpfull against your standard TAG and loose players though. I have always been aware that I could get myself in an awkwars situation with too much behind, but the rules of thumb will keep me out of a lot of trouble in the future, thanks!

[checkmate36]

I just picked up the book today and Im almost half way through my first read.

I think its great the authors are taking the time to discuss the book in this forum. Im looking forward to following the discussion now that I finally have the book.

[El_Hombre_Grande]

Great Book. I am going to re-organize the way I think about no limit hands. FWIW, I think the value of the book is in the analytical framework it sets up for the decision making process. I play in both tight on line games and live limpfests and I think the framework and related concepts are equally applicable.

I am not sure how someone could come to the conclusion that the book advocates weak-tight play, or will only be useful against weak opposition. At all times, it is the players responsibility to determine the likely preflop range of his opponents and postflop calling/betting ranges and tendencies, so.....if you are constantly making bad assumptions about your opponents ranges and potential reactions to your bets or raises that's hardly the authors' fault.

I look forward to Vol 2.

[Wilco23]

Admittedly, I'm probably an intermediate casual player at best. I've really enjoyed the book. I played live this weekend at a nearby casino and found that I could focus on the hand reading and SPR initially, but it becomes more and more difficult as the night runs on due to the speed of play, the loose/horrible players in the game, etc. I play $1-2NL.

I have a question for Matt and Sunny. It seems like the book is mainly about commitment, which clearly is the crucial consideration given that an all-in move puts one's stack in jeopardy at any moment. I struggle more at the outset with hand reading. While I understand the the REM process, it seems like whenever I play live the pace moves too fast or there just are terrible players that are hard to read. Then I have to resort to playing tight and hoping to get paid off whenever I'm fortunate enough to have a big hand. I've read the "range" portion of the REM process several times. I haven't played enough to get hand reading down yet since I don't play online and haven't played thousands of hands as a result. It seems like I should be starting with questions like: who's in the pot, what position are they in, what did they do (call/raise), are they tight/loose/aggressive/passive, what is their stack size? It's the part of actually thinking, well this person could have AA-TT, non-paired big cards, suited connectors, etc., that I struggle with. So, I guess I'm wondering if there will be more of that sort of analysis. I know there is a lot of it in the book, but it seems secondary to me in that the SPR is the crux of our play, and SPR assumes we have a sound REM basis for our decisions. I'm sure the answer is probably "play more hands". That's what I'm thinking at this point.

Am I better off getting better at hand reading first before I begin seriously studying and applying the SPR and commitment concepts? Would it benefit me more to focus on hand reading and SPR together at the outset, knowing that I'm not the best hand reader, or should I really focus on hand reading and get comfortable with it first?

I've really enjoyed this book and found that my struggle is more with keeping track of the math, not understanding the rationale behind it. I had asked Matt in another thread about what concepts he was saying hadn't been in print before, and upon opening this book, I was smacked in the face with several of them. Maybe I'm to the point where my game is starting to click a little bit for me, but I really think this is going to be my favorite of all the NL books I've read, including HOH1 and HOH2 (albeit for tourneys, those are great, informative books and simple to read). While the math is complicated in PNL, the reading is not. Contrasted to NLT&P, which I felt read like a statistics book at times, I don't get off point with this book.

Thanks for any comments, and thanks for writing a great book. I'm looking forward to another volume or six.

[Sunny Mehta]

Hi Wilco23,

Thanks for the kind words. Your assumption is pretty accurate that, really, the best way to get better at hand reading is to "play more hands." Particularly since it sounds like you are now asking the right questions in terms of how to improve your hand reading, I think you'll find yourself getting better with time, and it probably won't take as long as you think.

And you can still work on commitment/SPR in tandem with developing your REM skills. Even if at first your commitment thoughts have "tunnel vision", i.e. are a little more narrowly skewed towards your own hands, with time you'll get more and more comfortable and your "peripheral vision" will start to open up, and you'll find yourself more and more thinking about your opponents' hands.

gl,

Sunny