I don't feel its unfair for him to ask for information on what makes the book special enough to warrant a $300 price tag. But I can see your point too. I would hope that someone that has paid, will be willing to explain how the book would help others improve. Obviously we're not asking for the whole book but just a review.

I may be wrong but I don't think Baluga is allowed to advertise his book, so I have a feeling he may not be able to comment but other 2p2ers are. As I said I may be wrong.

I've read vol 1 now a few times, every reading I try to think about the content a bit more, and really don't want to give a "proper" review but here are some of my thoughts at this moment, without giving away too much or any of the content.

By the way, I am much more on top of how Balugawhale thinks about poker than your average 2+2'er because I have studied his theory posts, many HH's and videos at great length, I also subscribed for the 3betting seminar. Also, I don't consider myself to be a good player in case someone wants to flame me for this, I am breakeven this year if you discount my 3x 10-15 bin downswings and add RB, lol. But sometimes I do have extended flat-line periods.

If I'd reorganize all the notes I have on Balugawhale there is no doubt I'd get a 40 page document after 2 weeks of hard labor which would be cliff-notes of vol 1 without as deep theory structure - I have handwritten notes on all his videos (20 videos imo), 1 podcast, Chaostrazice thread, several strategy posts and HH's, and a 1h47min seminar with non-stop monologue on 3betting and 3bet pots. I would certainly get a lot more nitty-gritty info.

However, what vol 1 does it nicely brings together a framework on which it is easy to build more advanced concepts and sort of organize many things in one's mind. But still, I've found at least 3 clear and new concepts that I'd never thought before (while I was reading I was WAT! WAIT A MINUTE!...) and from many chapters I've found something which although I was familiar with before it was sort of a from a fresh angle for me, which I think has to be a good thing. So if I keep thinking these new concepts and keep finding new fresh angles to old things, I reckon it must be good for my poker development.

It is not a cook book to explain killer lines although there are a few lines in general and especially one which I'd never thought of before and think I should be able to incorporate it to my game. When I'd read it I first thought it was so ridiculously simple example, but somehow I'd never recognized it before at the table or off the table.

So at least for me vol 1 is gradually paying itself as I hopefully learn how to incorporate the thinking that goes along with a certain concept into my game. There are no guarantees that I will become better/good player but say I am in a hand and as the hand goes down I am able to think why's and reasons and associate them to the book, to me that's learning and progress.

Sidenote 1: HU section is easily the best beginner's stuff I've seen anywhere, in books or videos, better than any HU beginner's video series and this is coming from someone who thinks DOGISHEAD is the nuts and bosoxx and Gman are good too.

Sidenote 2: G-Bucks chapter is just a page filler imo and apparently the concept was explained wrong.

Sidenote 3: vol 1 contains many editing errors, for instance the text refers to a previous chapter x although it actually was chapter y, some other errors too in there, not a biggie but apparently a good editor was used, which is strange. This can easily be fixed though.

OK. This book (Volume I), is read along the same line of style that Baluga is famous for. It's broken down into simple and easy to understand concepts that pretty much anyone who's ever played can easily absorb. You'll find a few times, throughout reading, an a-ha moment and nod while he breaks something down that you may have intuitively known but haven't seen it articulated this way. Baluga is best at telling you why. In most other poker books I've read, you're told what do or what to think about, while Baluga is constantly asking you why.

I think anyone who reads and digests this book is capable of beating any micro and some small stakes games. I think Volume I is mostly geared toward that player. I'm interested to see how he handles Volume II, but if it's anything like Volume I is should be super helpful.

That said, if you're a Deucescracked member, alot of the info and concepts in Vol. I will be familiar. Topics like Isolation Theory, Table Dynamics and Pot Management (the best parts of the book imo) have been covered and well explained in previous Baluga videos. For the price, this book would be solid gold to your random micro stakes player starting out, as it builds a very strong framework to play off of. For a current DC member, there isn't TOO much new stuff although there is some.

If I had to sum up the book in a single sentence, I would say this. This book, for the price, is the equivalent of one fantastic coaching session with an articulate, good high stakes regular who's great at teaching you the game.

(Does that make sense?)


TD

Ty Ulkis and TD for your posts... I'm tempted to buy but will have a think.

good reviews so far, thanks guys.

Thanks for the review.I have no doubt that Baluga is a good player and a good coach but $29 for the videos sounds like much better value than $300 for the book.

I don't have too much too, so we'll leave it at what Ulkis and TD said.

fwiw, I wasn't buying the book just for Vol 1., but for Vol. 2 as well.

Honestly, if you play 100NL/200NL the book is hardly a lot of money. I can only image how bad CTS got flamed when the original price tag for his book was $1850.

Are you speaking for everyone?

If there isn't much in vol 1 it shouldn't cost so much

Yes but CTS is a bigger name and a more succesful player.I've looked at some of Baluga's vids and there are better players out there doing vids tbh.If any player puts out a book at this price they must be prepared to have their credentials examined.

Thanks for reviewing the first book.

Any though about the second book?

It doesn't take a top-caliber player to teach you the fundamentals of NLHE or how to beat SSNL/MSNL. If one of those "big names" came out with a book teaching the fundamentals it would be a lot of the same information at a much higher cost. Once you reach a point of trying to beat 10/20+, then you talk to them.

When I first decided to get Baluga's book I was a bit sceptical about what it actually could add to my game. I am a member at Cardrunners and Deucescracked, and I thought this may be a regurgitation of concepts I have seen in videos.

So far I have read Volume 1, and I was pleasantly surprised how much I got out of it. Baluga explains the 'fundamental' concepts in a clear and concise way that makes them easy to understand, and like Ulkis said the book forms a framework to build more advanced concepts on. Yes, I knew a lot of the ideas he conveyed but the way in which they were explained has given me a different angle and perspective to think about the concepts.

I have read volume 1 twice and I have picked up new concepts that I have not thought/heard about. Now these concepts are probably not 'ground breaking' but I believe they will definitely improve my thought process and winrate (which is what we all want). This book gets you to think like a poker player and think about why a certain move is best. It will not give you answers like 'do A, when B and C occur'.

I have also read Bobbos Bible, and thoroughly enjoyed that book aswell. It is alot more advanced than Volume 1 of Easy Game but the best thing about this book were the quizzes throughout the text. These greatly help in explaining ideas. I found that if I didn’t quite get the concept after reading the chapter I would go through the quiz and it really helped to drive the idea home.

Both books have alot of information that you can revisit over and over again, and honestly I can’t wait to read Baluga's volume 2. A good thing about Baluga's book is that it has been professionally edited, where as Bobbo's has not.

PM me if you have any questions regarding either book, or if you want to know more about the contents of them.

It sounds like you have:

A) a problem with me

B) hatred for Baluga Whale

Kindly quit posting and just don't bother ever getting the book. For someone with 59 posts you have quite an attitude.

Has anybody got the second volume yet?

Why are you posting in here? It's clear that you have no interest in purchasing this book. You've provided a review of the table of contents, which we're all very grateful for, and you've provided unsolicited opinions on Deucescracked and Cardrunners videos.

There are people posting in this thread who have read the book and are providing reviews of the content - that's what the people reading this thread are interested in. Not your overrated opinion on something that you haven't even seen.

40 posts up in this thread cwocwoc was supposedly finished with the discussion.

I just wanted to know what was in the book and why a player with Baluga's modest poker profile (compared to CTS,Galfond etc) thinks his views on poker are worth so much.If you ask this much money for a book then I think you have to be one of the very best players to be able get away with it.I don't think any book is worth this kind of price as the player himself has to do all the hard work and all a book can do is provide some sort of structure for learning and introduce a few concepts which the reader may be unaware of (as Improva pointed out in his video about his own book).I will not be buying the book.To be honest I get more out of CTS,Townsend,Galfond etc. Baluga looks like a decent (but lesser) player.

Latest word is that it'll be out on Tuesday. I'm like a kid counting down the days to xmas.

Good, then don't buy it. It's not the right choice for everyone, and definitely appears to not be the right choice for you. If Baluga is a "lesser" player, I'd love to be just less than lesser. Stop trolling.

Personally, I'm very happy with the book so far. I don't view it as just "buying a book", I view it as an investment in my poker career, just like coaching, or like taking a class/seminar/etc. for my engineering career. If I could buy an engineering book for $900 and my bosses would give me a $5/hour raise, then I'd do it in a heartbeat. I look at this the same way, and I made enough from poker in the first few days after volume I was released to pay for both volumes, so it doesn't take long for the investment to pay off. But if you're not yet at the point where you can afford it, then you're better off just learning from videos until you get there. Also, if you're not willing to work hard to study, learn, and apply the concepts, then you will inevitably be disappointed - no book or teacher can magically transform you into a good player.

If anyone has specific questions for someone who has bought and read the book, let me know. I'm not going to spend any time trying to convince people to buy it, though; if you don't think it's a good deal then you're probably better off not buying it.

**** I didnt read the responses so my judgement is not clouded...

I personally feel Theory and Practice, the Harrington books, Prof NL v1, are the 4 best books to learn NL. They set a foundation for the game and give all the tools for understanding how to take the information they provide and expand the game. Thats how I learned. The 4 above for < $200 can give you all the information you need to do quite well. Combine them with other books on Poker state of mind and discpline, I say you will be 100% a winner if you follow their teachings

A $950 book from a pro is not worth the price unless it encompasses foundations, styles, tactics, image, and a good full scope of the game and at least the 3 different styles. Reading some of the sections made me feel he wrote this book as a gimick to make him money based on his name. Each pro has their own style. If you want to learn it get coaching lessons because they will teach you their style. One coach comes to mind who has very good foundations and can explain the whole dynamics of the game, Splitsuit for low NL games.

Someone I know bought the book and didn't like it. He thought it was too basic. He showed it to me and I read some of the material and stopped because the material was too unstructured. It had no foundation to stand on, didn't examine table dynamics, not enough examples, didn't explain exactly where and when to use it, didn't explain how his plan works with table image, how to design your preflop strategy based on his plan. In Layman's terms he told you he's building a house and showed you the fancy high priced windows first, instead of telling you about the how structurally sound the foundation will be built.

In the hands of an intermediate player this book can be disasterous. They will apply the tactics in the wrong spots and wrong situations. I personally disagreed with some of his writing thinking it was spew in more than a few situations and he didn't cover those.

While Beluga is a very good player and perhaps the intent was there to put out good material I felt it was rushed out without much thought and critical thinking about the material presented.

Now I do understand he is a feel player, and his book is written the same way. Math/Theory based players will have a harder time interpreting the materials or believing in it without numbers backing it up. My suggestion for the book is it to be rewritten in conjunction with a mathematical/poker theory based player to give good solid foundation to his thoughts and good support. It should then be rereleased free of charge to those that bough it. Also Beluga needs to estabish the image this tactics represent there in the book. There are no grammatical mistakes and I can tell it was edited for its writing. You can't put out tactics for war without setting the battlefield stage.

I think it is worth $40 in its current state

obv i'm cherry picking and not responding to your whole post b/c its hella long, but:

wat? i'm pretty sure i'm looking at the chapter on table dynamics.

I don't get the bolded parts. You want Baluga to talk about table dynamics and table image but think he should find a mathematical co-author to do so? I suppose it's not an exact contradiction since math players pay a certain amount of attention to image/dynamics but that's pretty much the exact opposite type of author you'd want to be writing about those topics.

I don't get what you mean by "the 3 different styles" either?

Also, I'm not sure about every coach, but I don't think they're attempting to teach you their style. More to help you plug leaks in your own style and then build on it.

Poker is math, pshychology, discpline, theory, logic, image, table dynamics.

PLAYERS: He seemed to explain how to play vs good, bad loose passive, bad loose aggressive opponents but never really stated how these players would react to how YOU THE READER play. Not all donkeys are the same in 2009 which is a far cry from the open fields of atms playing in 2003.

TABLE DYNAMICS: table dynamics are more complicated than what was stated which seemed basic. Nothing is easy in poker or everyone with 110 IQ would be winners.

You don't sound like you've actually read the book, tbh. Maybe skim read.

Also, I'm not sure why you expected the cheapest of a two volume set to cover everything.

$300 isn't cheap.You can get a lot of other books or a year of Cardrunners etc for this price.

$300 isnt cheap the 4 books I mentioned have far more information for what $160? Not sure if they are $40 each or $30.

For $300 I would expect a book to have a lot more deep thinking. Poker is NOT ABC easy. I didnt say it was bad, its just too basic for the price.