Perfect. Verneer is a person that really understand the leaks and needs of the microstakes players

I think Harrington/Robertie's material is excellent for the target audience. It provides all the essentials for beginners (and maybe intermediates), while lightly touching on more advanced topics. It is up to the audience to pursue further study of the advanced topics.

My poker was getting a bit stale, hopefully this new book will refresh me. I should be getting it soon.

Yes indeed if nothing else ,just a good refreshment of the basics
explained in such a way that seems to make absolute sence

Harrington style

how many words are in his book?

+ 1
well said

He should write a book. Hell yes, I'd buy it. And so would a bunch of players here.

I'm not sure if i'm allowed to say this...

but from what i recall verneer was at one point thinking of writing a book. Check his blog...

+1

It's coming!

I wonder how it will compare with 'Small Stakes hold'em' by Miller,Sklansky and Malmuth.

On the plus side, since the book arrived just as I was getting back into full stacked play, I've been working thru it as a refresher course (and thinking more deeply about some of the more difficult areas it seems to skip or fudge) and I've been running at 9.91PTBB/100 - so it has more than paid for itself dozens of times over already.

The more of it I mark-up the more holes I find in it - but it's still a great 0-$100NL 6 max guide with enough in it to re-focus jaded $200NL players as well.

One caveat is that I play on Euro sites - I always find Stars and Tilt play one stake level above those (i.e. Stars $50 = Ipoker $100 tables in toughness) - so it might only be a 'must-buy' for US players up to $50NL or so..

I am now on my second reading of the book. The information is well presented. I was familiar with some of the topics, but I definitely learned quite a bit. For example, I know that I need to play differently against different types of opponents, but I wanted to read about some player-types that were compared so that I could get a better understanding of this. The book did exactly that, with HUD information included.

As far as errors in the book, I have seen some typos, but that is all. I hope in the next month or so more people will continue to bring out specific details in the book that they do not agree with. I like to take those comments and add them to the book – it just makes it that much better.

I was impressed by the method used to decide on a 3bet value / call / 3bet bluff range, and I worked through parts of it myself to get a better understanding of how the authors did this. I have a couple questions about it though, like why would we put 98s, 87s, and T9s in our bluffing range before we put A6s and A3s in it, since the A6s and A3s have more equity. But the book says, "These are the best hands available and give some representation in each category." (page 399) A3s is more of a "best hand available," but perhaps the 98s is needed to get "some representation in each category." I need more information on this.

I would also like to get some good HUD ranges for turn c-bets, but those were not provided in the book.

Overall I really like the book, and would recommend it to anyone.

The areas the book 'fudges' for me are areas where two different factors come into play and your decision making is pulled in two opposing directions.

Off the top of my head these include a table being desirable with the good players to your left and the bad players to your right as 'money flows clockwise'. Apparently good players to your left is OK as 'your skill should let you minimise losses to the good players' (pg182).

Obv. you want loose players with big stacks to your right and tight ones with smaller ones to your left (but those are different factors and ones that far outweigh how 'good' or 'bad' the player might otherwise be).

A good LAG to your left is one of the worst spots in poker. You'd rather have the LAG to your right and a dreadful calling station to your left for example.

Then when giving examples (pg 185) Table 2 - you are warned to leave if the two TAGs on your left put too much pressure on you and on example table 3 (pg 186) the two LAG's on your left are reason to 'man the lifeboats now'.

The book purports to give looseness,stack size and good/bad player as factors of equal weight when checking out the players on your left and right, when in fact they are not.


Another example is bet sizing (preflop).
Pg 269 (micro stakes section) says to bet more vs a weak player, when in position and when you have a strong hand. That would seem to suggest smaller raises with AQ in EP than OTB for example. On page 31 we are told there is nothing wrong with keeping a standard open raise size throughout of 3-3.5BB and then in the next sentence that in EP we should make bigger raises to discourage callers (as we will be OOP if called) - directly contradicting Pg 269 which says we should bet less OOP.

Another issue which seems oversimplified is donk bets.
He basically says you should never donk bet as if your hand is strong enough to bet it's strong enough to C/R (pg 45). Given that the C/R will risk far more money and unless huge will give better pot-odds to a caller in position than a simple donk bet, and given that we are often talking about medium strength made hands and draws here this seems dubious advice at micros/SSNL. Donk bets are a perfectly valid tool in a lot of micro and SSNL games for a medium hand (or bluff) to take down a small ball pot OOP with minimal risk. If they work just under 40% of the time you are in profit. The apparent recommendation to start C/R medium strength hands OOP is going to get a lot of folks into very tricky spots.

He also says donk bets are bad because they enable the PFR to fold when he has missed and so you will lose out on the chance of getting the extra 4BB's (or whatever) into the pot from his CB before you C/R him (pg 46).
But the obvious question is, if that is the case, why not donk bet a wide variety of air/weak hands as bluffs on dry boards and take advantage of villain's propensity to fold?

Or if villain is aggro and reads donk bets as hands not strong enough to C/R and so auto-raises them then lead out precisely those hands that are good enough to C/R (and some draws that you don't mind shoving over his raise).

Unless villains folds/flats and raises of donk bets are extraordinarily well-balanced against your donk bet frequency, you are going to find reason to donk bet at some point.

There's a whole area of exploitative play and balance issues around the optimal way to play OOP in a raised pot (usually when defending blinds) that is just swept under the carpet here.

Those are just three examples where the book seems to fall short in its clarity...

skimmed the book

it's decent
nothing of the information is new, but it does a decent job of amassing what we know.

don't like the 3betting/4betting information. it's wrong IMO. I found it interesting to read, but the theory is not as well done as other attempts in DVDs, videos, and books.

you'll probably get your moniez worth if you don't have subscriptions to the coaching sites and/or spend hours on forums studying. It's a good effort from a media that is just not capable of conveying where the thought of the game is at. If you've spent time on any of the big coaching sites, or spend a lot of time going back and forth on forum threads, you will not find new stuff here. However, if you have trouble putting thoughts into a cohesive whole and/or cannot afford the coaching sites, this book is probably worth it.

I still feel like 2p2 books are a few years behind where most players at a level are at with their most recent attempts.

of course, I end up buying nearly all 2p2 books as the majority were way ahead of me and I end up learning a ton from arguing with the ones I don't like. Plus, it's the best way I can think of to kickback some money to the company that lets me spew all over their forums. My guess is it will make me a stronger player to dissect where I find this book incomplete/wrong.

what specifically about the 3/4 betting advice do you consider wrong?

Really fast skim as its roomates book, but thought I'd add this...

As much as I questioned his ability to write on 6-max at all, I've found the book way better than I expected. It will teach the basic thought process much better to players who just haven't got it. (i.e. the use of a hud and how to read it) I've coached people who after they get a hud all setup it doesn't alter anything they do. This is beyond frustrating, but it's a very common problem

At one point the book even had me laughing out loud when he was explaining what it's like to play at micro stakes. I won't ruin it, but the analogy and wording really had me laughing. It didn't make me miss it however lol.

I haven't read it all , but in general I'm worried he's teaching too much abc 6-max that's a bit out dated and while he mentioned that you should be aware of your own stats at one point, he doesn't go into when others are very aware of their image and manipulation of data.

for example at higher stakes (but I've even seen as low as nl200) you'll see some players right now play a style I call "**** tease" they make it appear through just stats alone they're really loose, but when you actually study their hand history you realize they're way more nit than 75% of people playing them understand, and who appear nittier.



Take all I said with grain of salt, I'm busy as hell and again it was fast skim through so maybe he does address the more meta game later and I missed it. Just thought I owed a review since I questioned it so much.

it's a bit wrong and much more just incomplete

There is not really any interest given to how to proceed post-flop and how that changes the hand values preflop. There is also almost a totally ignoring of blocking cards. This leads to some minor mistakes in the hands given IMO. The info is based on hot/cold analysis more than the ways that hands actually play out.

The book basically gives a decent introduction to the concept, but doesn't dive in-depth on the issue. In today's small stakes games (100-200NL), 3bet/4bet/5bet situations are one of the largest areas that delineate the FPP pro from the guy that is beating the games. It seems rather glaring to not do this section even better.

with the info available in Bobbofitos DVDs and ebook, the BalugaWhale ebook/threads with 3bet range debates, the Professor Plotkin videos, and many others, it's sad to see this section is a little behind the times.

I am still on my second read of the book. I have comments and questions about some of the items that other posters have written above.


I really liked your post overall, but in regards to this point I think you made an error. On page 31, the advise on making bigger raises when in early position refers to preflop play; but on page 269, the advise on making smaller bets refers to postflop play: “Make smaller bets or raises when ... You’re out of position after the flop.”



Could you please give an overview of the types of exploitative plays you are thinking about here? If you use any HUD stats, can you give some actual stat ranges as well for when you make those plays?

Could you give some more detail on how players manipulate their stats like this, and how you recognize when it is happening and how you adjust to it?




It is funny that I wrote above that I was “impressed by the method used to decide on a 3bet value / call / 3bet bluff range,” but you wrote that it is wrong. The reason why I was impressed is that it was one of the most in-depth analysis of ranges that I had seen which applied directly to preflop play; however, I still have much to learn about these areas, and so I do not have the knowledge yet to know when the analysis, given the method that ranges are applied, is done correctly or incorrectly.

Could you give some information about how you approach your 3-bet/4-bet ranges?

[QUOTE=GalacticRewind;20252839] Er no - the whole section about bet-sizing pg 266-269 is about pre-flop play.
Read the pages - every single example and piece of advice given is about pre-flop bet-sizing.
It's also in between sections on blind stealing and attacking limpers with iso-raises.

When it says to make smaller bets/raises when you are OOP after the flop it's just the author/editor being lazy and saying 'you're OOP' rather than 'you will be OOP'. It's not talking about post-flop play at all...or if it's meant to be post-flop advice then it's in entirely the wrong section.

There is a detailed post I made about Harrington's rather cursory treatment of donk bets here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/39...-tl-dr-828189/

It's TL to repost here...

some nitty points that i think readers should be aware of:
1) in the HUD section, raise c-bet and check raise stats are very valuable at micro and small stakes
for instance, in a later micro stakes example, there is a 944 flop that gets check-raised. If the villain only check-raises 1-2% of the time (and this is common) and your note is that they check-raised with the nuts earlier, this is a huge bit of info.

2) the river aggression number use is off... in many examples, the authors talk about how the high river aggression number shows lots of bluffing. In my experience, most of the time a low stakes player has a high river aggression is because they fold almost everything they miss on the river after going too far with drawing hands.

this thread gets better and better.

what did ppl think of the preflop ranges suggested at the beginning of the book?

In problem 5-7 on pg. 461 he says that with $18 to call into $45 we need a wining chance of 40%. Am I correct that he is not, and instead we need a 2/7 chance to win?

No, you are wrong. 18/45 = 0.4
You don't win the $18 it costs you to call.

0.4 * 45 = +$18.00
0.6 * -18 = -$10.80

18-10.8= $7.20 (which is more than breakeven)

2/7 * 45 = +$12.86
5/7 * -18 = -$12.86

12.86-12.86= $0.00 (which is breakeven)

This working is correct isn't it?