There are a few reasons why there hasn't been a general book about beating online cash games published yet. For the most part, 6-max cash games are full for fairly complex situations when you start breaking them down. Those that are crushing the games don't have a lot of incentive to write about it. Even if they did, writing isn't easy. That said, Dan Harrington's new book is the most ambitous volume in trying to educate players on the topic of winning at 6-max games.
In many ways, the books is pretty good. It covers a lot of topics that are important to winning at holdem. If one of my friends watched some poker on TV and wanted to start playing online, I would recommend this book. On the other hand, for someone had already played online over any reasonable sample size (30K hands at 25NL or above) and had a basic understanding of a TAG style, I think this book has very limited value and at times will even guide you in the wrong direction (more on that later).
Poker is one of those areas where it's fairly easy to say things which on the surface make sense (especially to beginners), but when those ideas are broken down by better players, prove to be wrong. Thus, you should be skeptical of advice given from players who have not demonstrated good results at the games about which they are preaching. While Dan Harrington is an accomplished tournament player, he is a complete unknown in online cash games. That said, this book feels like an eloquent rehasing of a lot of the 2+2 stickies from the uNL and SSNL forums. Yes - there is a lot of good general advice there, but it's nothing that's not available for free with a little bit of searching.
The big upside of the books is its general organization and the fact that it's in print. You can take it anywhere you go and then mark it and write all over it. That's a HUGE upside over searching through all the different forum posts. Thus, if this is all this book was, I would recommend it for the $40 (which is a great value for any poker reasource). The problem that I have is with some of the advice given and general value for a player already has the general basics down (don't limp, open more from BTN than UTG, 3-bet light vs. people that fold a lot, use a HUD). I'll illustrate some of my points below.
For example, the book skims very quickly over double-barrelling:
“Bet if you made a continuation bet bluff on the flop and your opponent just called. A few years ago the idea of a ‘continuation bet’ on the flop was new to many players who just folded if their opponent bet and they hadn’t made a strong hand. As continuation bets became understood, more players were willing to call a bet on the flop with a weak pair, a draw, or even nothing at all to see if they could win the hand later.
The counter-strategy to this approach is to fire a second bluff on the turn. Known as ‘double barreling,’ this second bet shows a lot of strength and is correspondingly harder to call. You should plan on double-barreling at least some of your flop bluffs.” [p. 58]
This is pretty much the extent of the discussion on double-barreling – one of the topics that a vast majority of beginning and even regular players struggle with. Nothing in the quote above is wrong, but nothing is really all that useful. For example, what type of hands and boards do we fire again on vs. what kind of players? Another area where a lot of beginning players struggle is river play. Here are a few pieces of advice the book gives on bluffing the river:
“Only bluff with hands that have no showdown value. […] If you bet with a hand like second pair and get raised, you may have to fold a hand that would have won if your opponent decided to raise with nothing! Pick hands that can’t win the pot for your bluffs.” [p. 65]
“Don’t bluff with a high card (like an ace) in your hand. If you and your opponent were both drawing, and you both missed, your high card may be good enough to win.” [p. 66]
“Bluff if the river is a scare card. Good scare cards are hands which make a low or medium pair on the board, or cards which seem to fill a straight. The story you’re telling is that you had a medium hand or a draw and hit the jackpot.” [p. 66]
It seems like the first two pieces of advice are contradicted by the third. If the river is a good scare card then if you have some showdown value (3rd pair for example), the value of betting your made hand as a bluff could be higher than just taking your showdown. This again follows the pattern of giving general pieces of advice and not fully backing them up with examples and perhaps counter-examples. Learning about situations in which to turn your marginal-made hand into a bluff is a key ideas of moving up in the stakes.
The book presents the idea of HUDs. It mentions some other useful HUD stats while warning the player that “these statistics require many hundreds of even thousands of hands to converge to solid numbers, so don’t assign too much weight to them until you’ve played with a particular opponent for awhile” [p. 113]. While this is very true, it doesn’t give any guidelines for how many hands on average it takes for the different stats to converge. In fact, it recommends inclucing BB/100 right after the player's name and # of hand. As we all know, the BB/100 is something which can take tens of thousands of hands to even come close to giving you some insight, so presenting that as a basic piece of info will do more harm than good.
The section on drawing inferences from the different HUDs will be useful for beginners, but once again we run into problems. When looking at a HUD of a 25/20 player over 210 hands with a 3-bet of 10%, Harrington writes “Also note his 3-bet number of 10 percent. […] (A 10 percent range includes hands like small to medium pocket pairs and even holdings like ace-jack offsuit or queen-jack suited).” This begins to be problematic as trying to construct a 3-betting range for an aggressive player over a small sample size is very difficult (other than realizing he is probably 3-betting light), but it will almost always not include small pocket pairs at the micros and even small stakes.
This idea comes up again in an example of a situation where we face a 3-bet (p. 404 – 407). We open from middle position in a 100NL game (a position where Dan recommends opening 18% of hands). It folds around to the small blind, an aggressive player with a 3-bet of 8% over a few hundred hands, who then 3-bets us to $10. Dan then writes: “Since we raised form MP, our raising range will be a little tighter than our overall PFR. He will tighten his 3-bet range accordingly. Since he’ll be OOP after the flop, he wants to 3-bet light a little more, and call a little less. The net result of all these factors looks like a wash, so we’ll assume his 3-betting number in this situation is no different.”
He then proceeds to assign him a 3-betting range of AA-99, AQ+ for value and 22-55, A8s-A9s, and QJs-JTs as 3-betting light. Once again, I have big problems with that because I cannot think of a single competent winning SSNL player who would 3-bet 8% of hands out of the SB vs. another competent MP open given 100BB stacks (which is not stated, but I’m guessing is assumed in this example).
Given his analysis above, he states that he would 4-bet AA-QQ and call with 55-JJ, AKo, AQs+ and then 4-bet as a bluff with ATs-AJs. I think this is incorrect on a lot of levels (To begin with, why 4-bet/fold AJs if villain is 3-betting A8s, A9s, and 22-55, 99-TT? Why 4-bet AA when he is likely to 3-bet fold such a huge part of his range when we 4-bet? Unless we assume that by 3-betting for value, the villain will 5-bet shove 99 vs. our range. If so, I have even more issues with the analysis).
Here are two more examples from the “Beating Small Stakes” section – the first one dealing with blind defense and the second dealing with facing a 3-bet.
Problem 5-2 (pg. 442-444):
A 200NL game. A 50 BB stack unknown (3 hands) opens for $6 from the CO. We are in the BB with 4c5c. Dan writes “In general, we want to defend our blinds. […] Since you are required to post a blind no matter how bad your hand may be, and since you’re OOP in the subsequent play, you can’t expect to show a profit in the blinds. You can, however, work to reduce your losses, and the best way to reduce your losses is to take advantage of generous pot odds when offered and call with playable hands. With odds of 2.25-to-1, suited connectors are an easy call here.”
Problem 5-16 (pg. 491-493):
A 100NL game. We have $120 and raise 8c9c UTG. An aggressive player (23/23 with a 3-bet of 12% over 100 hands) 3-bets us to $10 and everyone else folds. Dan writes “Player B has been an active 3-bettor and we’ve had to lay down to him a couple of times. Our hand is only about 37 percent to a typical 12 percent range, technically not good enough to call. But he’s been throwing his weight around and we feel like getting involved. He certainly won’t read us for this hand, so we may be able to maneuver after the flop.”
Playing marginal and speculative hands without great reads out of position without deep stacks or initiative is just a recipe for slowly (or quickly) bleeding money at the micros and small stakes. While SOME players can certainly do this because they are really good, no beginner or break-even regular will show a profit making this play though.
Cliff Notes:
While I think this book provides a good general foundation for someone who has never played online poker (or is transitioning from SNGs or MTTs into micro cash games), I think for players who play on a regular basis at 25NL and above and are active in forums it can do more harm than good if the information is taken at face value for the reasons I discussed above.
These players need advice not on whether to open ATs on the button, but how to deal with 3-bets, whether to c-bet and then what spots to double-barrel on, how to profitably play from the blinds (all areas which I think were inadequtely and at times misleadingly covered in this book).
In addition, winning poker is about emotional control, managing your bankroll, and having a plan for moving up in stakes - areas that this book didn't even begin to cover.