Prof No Limit vol 1, does this apply to online 6max?

[riverspecialist]

I didnt want to ask this in the "books andpublication" area because i suspect everyone there will says "yes" whether or not it does and i think we'll get more relevant discussion here.

I just finished the Prof No Limit vol 1. It was interesting because it focuses so much on preflop philosphy - specifically one i knew existed but i didnt fully understand - whereas most no limit books have avoided this area.

Before reading this book I mostly resorted to the standard (4bb + bb*limpers) preflop raise. Now i still keep it as my standard raise, but i try to deviate when I can. I think if i played live (or full ring) more I would find this book more useful. Many of their axioms break down in online 6max.

Their philosphy assumes most of your profit comes from when you get allin. That this should just be taken for granted surprised me. Maybe thats because the site I play on allows players to buyin for 200bb so its not unusual for the entire table to be very deep making allins much less common. Online games are typically tighter than live games, so again getting allin happens less often.

The strongest point the book makes is that it teachs you to think about preflop and post flop play as being connected. While its discussion about post flop play is interesting i think most pros will say "yeah, thats the mathematical reason for why i do what i do. but i dont think that way." and beginners will find it so overwelming.

i wonder if could have learned to play no limit by having read this book or if i was better off just learning from experience and hand analysis and learning their theory later (or never). Maybe the reader isn't supposed to learn post flop play from this book, but rather the post flop discussion is just an explanation of they preflop strategy?

Long post, but its important. beginners and veterans alike, please dont spare me any thoughts.

[stackingboxes]

sounds interesting.

would u say Pro NL is far better/more advanced than the new book written by ed miller?

[stackingboxes]

sorry i meant better than the one written by sklansky?

[riverspecialist]

i like daves. it is just "theory" and like his earlier book, "the theory of poker" it doesnt really try to teach u how to play but just gives u a framework so u can figure it out on your own.

a lot of whats in daves nl book sounds good but doesnt work so well in practice and ive heard this from others. i think people expected something more like holdem for advanced players that basically spells out how to win at limit holdem. but nl is so much more complicated than limit that the same approach doesnt work. the topic is closer to being as broad as...all of poker. so like theory of poker of poker it is very vague it just teach you how to think.

i think a smart beginner would be better off reading skalansky's book and just limping or making the generic bb*(3+x) raise preflop (because i dont remember dave explain preflop play).

i think some beginners with no poker experience would do ok with the new PNLV1 book but would be restricted to playing 100bb or less(pref less) as the book teaches. but if you going to do that, ud might as well just read ed's "getting started" book which will be much easier and wont give up much.

[6471849653]

If you mean the S&Mi book, according to S it's 80% an S book written by Mi so you could understand it better, though I have never had any problems understanding even S&M (that's an M book written by M), but that's not the general opinion.

[carol-ann]

[ QUOTE ]
the site I play on allows players to buyin for 200bb

[/ QUOTE ]which site is that?

[Sunny Mehta]

Hi riverspecialist,

Thanks for the post. PNLV1 is really meant to give starting players a good foundation. I imagine that to consistently beat tough medium-stakes online games, particularly shorthanded ones, you'd need more information and experience than can be gleaned from our one volume. We will be including more in-depth postflop discussion in Volume Two, so be on the lookout for that (next spring-ish).

As far as preflop->postflop, yes definitely one of our philosophies is that the two are connected. Whether the way you connect them is to heavily alter pf raises, well, that depends a lot on what your game is like and what you are trying to accomplish. As we mention, it may not be feasible in certain games - either because you'd give away too much information, or it's just not practical to do too much pf randomizing because you're multitabling a bajillion tables. Though, having noted the latter practicality concern, I do think pf randomizing is something fairly unexplored over large samples in the online environment up to this point.

Again, I think that strictly online 6-max players will probably dig Volume Two a lot.

Thanks,

Sunny

[riverspecialist]

cool thanks. i forgot to mention that multitabling as the main reason i would do this more in live games than online 6max.

I have started integrating this stuff more when the rare megafish comes to a table. a few times a week ill see someone with numbers like 90/5/.4 or something. ill play less tables and the self-capacity demanding SPR style playing becomes more useful. whereas normally it would be ignored, sacrificing 100/bb stats for hourly rate.

also, i just read the OP of a thread under books and pub that specifically says this book was not designed for already advanced players( but not really beginners either if i remember right) which is an interesting target demographic. with that in mind if i was teaching a friend poker i would give them "getting started" first so they can learn to play with small stacks. then PNLV so they could learn 50-100bb play. then finally NLH:TP for deep play or HOH for tournament play. but im more fond of NLHTP than most people and would encourage anyone to read that at any point so they can begin thinking that way.

[Matt Flynn]

i responded to a similar question here.