So I thought I'd leave comments or a little review about the book.
But then I thought "I'm the same as most others on 2p2, why should anybody care give more credence to me? I'm not well known or respected like DD or ASB. Lets see if we can make the results speak for themselves."
A bit of background information.
That was taken before stars blocked all of PTRs tracking of their players of course and around a month before I purchased Building a Bankroll. I think it's pretty accurate. Even has my 3 individual nights of bankroll destroying PLO spin ups. As you can see I was a losing slowly and consistently over time. A losing reg if you will.
This is me now after around 100k hands and using Building a Bankroll heavily as reference.
I decided to start over and deposited $80. That was bankroll and I was gonna work it up using a 30BI and move up roll. Started off at 0.02NL ZOOM and have worked my way to ~$250 currently at 0.05NL ZOOM. There's a mix of 6max and FR in there as well as some time (less than 5%) in regular games. Around 70% FR and 30% 6max. Once I start to get to the top end of a stake and I feel more comfortable with the slightly larger 6max swings then I have the option of playing 6max.
There a number of concepts and methods of work I've taking from this book.
One of the main ones is focusing on good decision making coupled with session review. If you have understanding of variance (the book as one of the best explanations of it I've seen yet), I've found tilt becomes much easier to keep in check when you take a beat beat if you focus on your decision making. Did villain suck out? Yes. Was your decision leading up to the all in sound? Yes. The suck out then becomes a lot easiest to take and you can move past it knowing you played it right. Same method applies when you hit the very top of a players range.
However when you make a questionable decision then that's when reviewing your game comes into play. After every session I play I review every hand that was 50BB or more. One particular situation that has come more than once for me and is actually an example in the book I think. You have UTG raises for 3BB, hero in MP 3bets to 9BB, a 7/5 with 1.6% 3bet 0% 4bet cold 4bets to 25BB out of the SB. Ask most of the uNL players and they will say "Never fold KK preflop" as a blanket rule, bollocks. Given these stats what else is SB supposed to have aside from AA the majority of the time? This type of logical thinking is present throughout the book over a range of situations and has helped my confidence playing NLHE a ton.
There are tons of concepts throughout the book, all extremely well laid out with examples of how to implement them. From an explanation of the Baluga Theorem, to pot control with various methods, to building reads on players with stats to the discussion of the physiological aspects of poker ie the mental game.
A quick note about the mental game section of the book. As others have said it uses references from both Tommy Angelo's and Jared Tendler's books. I have Tendler's book but I liked having both books quoted here. It gave a chance for a slightly different take on a subjects that all pokers should be keenly aware of.
I could praise this book all day long. I'm constantly going back to it. Looking up the situation that I just had that I found difficult and then checking to see how I handled it in the past to compare.
One minor gripe would be the slight lack of explanation of some of the terms used. For example, Verneer starts to talk about implied odds but as far as I can tell doesn't actually explain exactly what they are. I know it seems a bit idiot guide and a simple google search would fix that if you didn't know already but a quick one line to explain the maths would be good. It might sound harsh but given how thorough the rest of the book is I don't see why something like that can't be put in. Maybe a small glossary at the back?
Anyways. The TL: DR version of this post is this, buy this book. Even if you have read Verneers challenge PDFs, buy this book. Just buy this book already.
My long term goal is to make back that $3.2k in the PTR pic. There are still areas of my game that I know require improvement and I continue to work on all parts of my game. It may take a long time but given the tools in this book I'm almost certain I'll get that $3.2k eventually.
Two Plus Two
Katy and I are moving to Blacksburg, VA in a few weeks though.
Linear Mode
