Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I

Author - Matt Flynn; Sunny Mehta; Ed Miller ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Two Plus Two Publishing LLC was reviewed on 4-Nov-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I by Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. This book is mostly about preflop bet sizing. It encourages you not to make standard raises, but to raise or call based on the ideal implied odds for various hands.

Most of the advice is pretty obvious. Look to play with a lot of money behind with drawing hands, and look to play with less relative to the pot with "big" hands like AA, QQ or AK. If this sounds obvious you don´t really need this book. Still, they put some numbers to these concepts and provide a framework for thinking about this principle systematically, which is in itself useful.

The biggest problem with the book is that it doesn´t give much guidance on postflop play (this is left to Vol. 2). But the sense I have is that the authors are assuming best case scenarios too often: they assume things will generally go right after you size your preflop bets. A lot of the book is devoted to making your postflop decisions easier by correctly sizing your raises preflop, but this often depends on a host of assumptions that don´t really play out in practice, like getting a pot bet called on every street with the best hand.
Overall, an excellent book if you´re one of those dummies that get themselves committed with T9s preflop, but for an experienced player that pays attention to stack sizes, not a great help.¤

2) Paperback Book Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I by Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. A book that highlights the message "plan-the-hand" for NL play. Sounds simple. In reality it often isn´t.
The authors take you through the planning proces and give advise that is very helpful, not just in theory but also in the heat of the battle. Key advise is, prior to making a pre-flop bet, to decide on which flops you do want to commit your stack and on which flops you don´t, and to estimate for your starting hand the percentages of both types of flops. Subsequently bet/raise pre-flop such that you realise the right stack-to-pot ratio on the flop for the purpose of your planned post-flop play. The authors give practical advise for various classes of starting hands/flop combinations what is the optimal stack-to-pot ratio. Some of the analysis leads to pre-flop betting that - prior to reading the book - I would have classified as over-betting. However, the analysis in the book is sound, and it definitely helps keeping a robust rational approach to the game.
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3) Paperback Book Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I by Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. This is a great poker book. Easy to read and understand. I think it has taken my game to the next level. However, it is not a good book for beginners. This book assumes you all ready know how to play poker and teaches you how to think and play like a pro. There are some great books out for beginners, but this book is not one of them. However, This book is a must have for advanced players. It was worth every penny.¤

4) Paperback Book Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I by Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. I used to be an avid poker player but had to slow down when I got married and had kids. Anyway ... this book is a good text on breaking down how one should/could approach thinking mathematically about the issues in no limit hold´em. One key concept for me was how buying in short kept me mathematically from getting burned so much, because I overplayed top pair top kicker when stakes are 100BB+. It is definitely not for the casual player and requires some study to understand the concepts. I´ve read this book as well as the Slanksy and Miller No Limit text. This one is better, but only marginally. In all honesty, both have not "done it" for me like the Small Stakes Limit Hold-em text or even Slansky´s Hold´em for Experts, which are both clearer and very informative. Perhaps that is because no limit is a more complex game or the concepts in limit are easier to convey. I´m hoping that Harrington on Cash (which should be released any day now -03/08) is better in than these texts. Nonetheless, I fully intend to finish the series if they publish more. (What else would I buy with those pokerstars FPPs?)¤

5) Paperback Book Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I by Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. I just completed reading this book, and I´m an active NL cash player. My overall impression: the book was absolutely worth the money, and worth the time spent reading. I´ll get Vol II. I´d recommend the book to my poker playing friends.

Clearly, I think the book is overall pretty good. I don´t, however, think the book deserves the level of praise it´s getting here, because it does have it´s flaws. Much of the core of the book revolves around SPR (simply: effective stack size / pre-flop pot size), and manipulating the pre-flop betting to get you the SPR that is ideal for your hand. But *why* are those SPRs desirable? He determines it based on how many pot-sized bets it takes to get you all in. That is a flaw, in my opinion - he builds into the math the assumption that bets and raises are the size of the pot. Sure, sometimes they are, but often they are not.

Don´t get me wrong: your stack size absolutely effects how you play different types of hands. But he takes the idea of specific SPRs way further than it should really go; it´s pretty core to his play style.

Another pet peeve I had was places where he recommended get pot committed / all-in "so that you don´t have to face any tough decisions later in the hand". (He is not the only author that gives this advice, but it rankles me everywhere I see it). Basically he is saying, get your whole stack in, so that you don´t have to make choices later. I think choices are a good thing, especially given that I´ll see more cards and have a better basis for making decisions later - I don´t want to self-limit my choices ahead of time! That advise is only worthwhile to someone who habitually gets bluffed off the best hand.

Over all, though, the book was good and I felt I got some valuable ideas from it. I like his ideas about planning out a whole hand early, and deciding if you will or will not get committed to a pot before you have put much into it. (I see so many players that call a few bets and suddenly realize on the turn that they already have 1/3 of their chips in).

Get it, read it, learn it, but in my opinion, take it with a (small) grain of salt.¤

6) Paperback Book Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I by Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. No-limit hold em was once only a tournament game. Cash games were rarely spread in conventional poker rooms, let alone the Internet. All of that changed when the game exploded on television. No-limit cash games started sprouting up at casinos of all types. No-limit hold em is now the most popular form of poker. Tournaments pushed it to the forefront, and a great deal of money can also be won here despite that fact, many players feel frustrated with their results. They win some money, only to lose it all on one botched hand. This book teaches you how to play and think like a professional. It shows how to size your bets, manage the pot, manipulate your opponents, know when to go all-in, and avoid the big mistake. Do you understand critical no-limit concepts like The REM Process, The Commitment Threshold, and Stack-To-Pot Ratios? If not, this is the book for you.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 2-Dec-2008, 188068540X9781880685402, 010-710-310-961-0X1-261-341-8

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