You don't have to answer every question with full answer. But if you could take the time, at least give me (us) links to study. Please. I respect both you and BlackRain. And I'm looking for answers as a beginner player. Thank you

Why is that ? (I never played above nl10)

Why is is misleading ?

What are these "game theory frequencis" anyway and why you are so certain author doesn't play with them ?

What % would u recommend and why ?

Why is that ?

All of his 3betting ranges are depolarised which is clearly a bad idea, especially in situations like BTN vs CO (where he advocates no flatting range). Also note "I will have a small and varied flatting range for balance here against some of the better regs" again shows his complete misunderstanding of balance - it is far easier to balance one continuance range than two, and it is not unbalanced to only 3bet or fold BTN vs CO (but it is still bad).

Hmmm, yeah .. thats interesting to mee too.

What other hole cards would u add to this flatting range and why ?

Yeah, also strange ... what range would u be flatting here ?


Yeah, this is again also strange to me ... when I was reading it I was asking my self there has to be calling range in bvb.

Yeah I agree to some very unintelligent people or totally beginner this could be potential harmful. I guess this depends A LOT on squeezing frequencies of these opponents, right ?

Yeah, this is strange .. should be explained fully.

Yeah also strange .. I guess in some particular spots against particular opponents we should call it. But because I'm beginner I have no idea how to construct these ranges

Why is that ?

And are they ? In which spots and why ?

You can see where he gets the stats from, but honestly his strategy in general involves far far far too much folding and raising both pre and postflop. Again, this isn't 2010.

Could u go through my questions ? Not only it is very important to me and I wish to know. But also for other people reading this thread it will make them feel your arguments are full and not just stabing the author Make a cup of coffee and go through them please. Doesn't need to be super deep detailed .. but at least to some extent explain why.

See bolded.

Thx will go through it

I was definitely up in the air on whether to even respond to this at all. This is one of the very few people (TheDefiniteArticle) that I have actually had to place on my ignore list in nearly ten years on 2+2. I can literally count them on one hand so this is quite the accomplishment. Anyone can have a look through his posting history in the past year alone and see that he has a near borderline obsession with attacking me, the two books that I have written and the training site that I make videos for.

I have literally spoken two words to this person in my entire life (he pm'd me once about the release date of the book being discussed in this thread ironically). So it is really all quite creepy to be honest. Anytime my name comes up anywhere you can count on him to quickly chime in about how misinformed and terrible my advice is. As you can see above, his rants are typically incoherent, holier than thou and far from constructive. This is why he very rarely receives a reply from me.

It came to a point (at least for me) a few months ago though when in a thread where someone was asking about what the best training site is he proceeded to go off about how awful I am and the site that I make videos for as usual while at the same time admitting that he actually works for a rival training site! This is just a blatant conflict of interest and if the mods aren't going to do anything about this guy then I certainly won't listen to it anymore.

That is about all that I will say on the matter. I actually already replied in detail to this person earlier in this thread covering many of the exact same points that he has decided to bring up again here. He is clearly not interested in a constructive debate about the material in this book and seems disturbed in general.

I don't know about his earlier posts, but the last one was pretty spot on if you advice stuff like that in your book, it's pretty bad.

Also it seems you advice a pretty bumhunting heavy style.. I don't like that at all. And yes the site looks pretty awful, can you name me one single coach in your lineup who can beat the zoom games on PS? These are all the same coaches like you had 5 years ago, the last time i checked this training site. No way in hell you can compete with Ivey or RiO...

Well this really seems creepy and I wish u both good luck in establishing normal discussion between each other in feature.

Anyway, he made pretty good arguments and I would really like to know your answers to it. Could I write you what I discussed with him about your book here so you could try to gimme me comment on these ? Or PM from me is better (I won't ofc publish it anywhere).

thx diss

I would highly disagree as have many others in this thread. Many of the points that he makes are taken badly out of context as well, the "ideal stats" for instance. This was all covered before earlier in my reply to him but he has chosen to completely ignore that of course.

Absolutely. You would be crazy NOT to do this in today's games.

Maybe call the book "bumhunting the microstakes" then Okay well at least that's an honest answer.
But I think that's the cancer of poker.. Soon seat selection will die anyways.
When people already at 5NL insta-siout when a fish goes bust it's just pretty sad and not good for the games..
This will also really badly affect your play in fastfold games which is the future that online poker will go to.
How can he take "ideal stats" out of context?

In my defence, what BlackRain is talking about is that I am an active poster in Beginners' Questions, where his books come up frequently. As I have read more poker books/used more training sites than most, I feel I am in a better position to offer advice on these topics than most, so I answer nearly all of the threads which pop up in BQ on the topic, and tend to chime in when I see it discussed elsewhere. It's not Blackrain-specific - in fact, I think a number of the posts he objects to are ones in which I am recommending people to not use DragTheBar. In the thread which (I believe) he particularly objects to, I made the mistake of recommending a rival training site (among others I recommended) without mentioning in every post that I produce videos for that site (but have no direct financial interest in its success or failure).

I have offered his first book, Crushing the Microstakes, as a recommendation to some people in particular contexts, and would be surprised if this had created a couple of sales for him. I also offer regular opinions on other prominent poker authors (for instance, Ed Miller and leatherass), none of whom describe the regularity of my commenting as 'creepy' or a 'borderline obsession', as I have more positive things to say about their writing, their books not being close to devoid of merit. Also, for what it's worth, I don't think anyone could reasonably draw that conclusion - they would likely see the PGC which I am referring to, but beyond that I have made well in excess of a thousand posts in the past six months, of which possibly 6-7 refer to BlackRain or DragTheBar (and most of those being replies to questions about my initial points).

Specifically, the reason why I have made this post is that I was asked what problems I had with the book after disagreeing with its recommendation in someone's PGC, and figured it had sufficient depth that I ought to reproduce it here. I accept that that former post may come across as a little difficult to read, but as you might be able to tell, I wasn't going to write it as a proper review, but rather quickly skim the book to be able to respond to a question regarding the problems I had with the book. If you feel any of the criticisms are untrue or inaccurate, feel free to report the post with the parts you feel are inaccurate, but ultimately I don't think you'll be able to do that. I PM'd you because while CtM was flawed, it did have merit as a useful way to stabilise the strategies of losing nanostakes players (which was clearly a gap in the market), and for that reason I was actually looking forward to Modern Small Stakes as it was marketed at people in my position at the time. As it turned out, it was the turd for the reasons I described at length above, and I'd be surprised if someone following the strategy outlined in the book didn't lose at in excess of 10bb/100 in an actual modern small stakes game on any of the major sites (without having a really fast script, at least). I think perhaps BlackRain knows this, and this is why instead of responding to the criticisms of the strategy outlined, he resorts to ad hominem attacks, perhaps in the hope of maintaining sales of his terrible book to the group of people who've read this thread.

Finally, as for the assertion that I have a conflict of interest, again, as I mentioned above, I have no direct financial interest in the relevant training site's success or failure beyond them continuing to purchase my videos. I also think that the CoI has demonstrably not manifested itself in my posting history - I recommend Run it Once, for instance, significantly more often than my own training site, as I believe that it is the best site on the market for most people at the moment. My opinions on 2p2 have always been my own, and never clouded by a conflict of interest (would Mason Malmuth have a conflict of interest if he was critical of the book in this forum?).

To summarise:

• The reason I am so often critical of Blackrain, far from being obsessed with him, is that he is a figure who comes up frequently in a forum in which I am possibly the single most active poster, and in contexts in which I am almost uniquely in a position to have a well-informed opinion
• Modern Small Stakes is an awful poker book which will be harmful rather than helpful to most of those to whom it is marketed, and this is perhaps shown by the fact that, rather than choosing to respond to any of my criticisms, BlackRain simply uses ad hominem attacks
• Since a single incident, I have been careful about the potential 'conflict of interest' issue, and I think that excluding someone in my position from offering opinions on training sites and books would also exclude a good number of the current active posters who win at the upper microstakes or higher
• I would still recommend Crushing the Microstakes to anyone who struggles to beat 2NL; I do not have a blind hatred of BlackRain - indeed, as he points out, there is no reason for me to have one

As I don't believe he'll see this post, it would be useful if someone quoted it. As for having ignored me, that's fine, but I think it does show a lack of willingness to actively defend your products and people should take of that what they will.

Also, having just seen his point about 'ideal stats', yes, I saw your earlier post. I'd dispute that your methodology of database analysis is particularly useful, especially if you're including stats from before approximately 2012, and we certainly have better ways to know what is 'bad' (the 70% ftcb mentioned before will get you crushed by anyone competent - of that I have no doubt). Yes, different styles are appropriate in different games, but if you're going to recommend stats like you do, I think your caveat is insufficient - rather, you should mention that these stats are only actually anything close to 'ideal' in ludicrously unusual game situations.

good point btw who are you? TheStudent on Ivey??

I am not going to discuss this guy anymore. I already replied to him earlier in this thread covering many of the same points that he has decided to bring up again.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...6&postcount=34

He is not interested in a constructive conversation and clearly has some sort of personal vendetta against me given his posting history. Like I said, I don't even know the guy. But for this reason I no longer read his posts nor deem them worthy of a reply.

Well Im not interested in him. And I dont want u to answer him a thing. However he (in last posts) had interesting particular points n arguments. And I really would like to know your input on these, since I bought both of your books thx !

Will this new book and does the old book address live poker as well?

I dont get where the hate comes from for this Blackrain guy. I purchased his book when I was losing at 2nl about a year ago and it quickly turned my game around. Since then I have gone from 2nl to 50nl as a 2bb/100 winner at 50nl. This was not solely because of Blackrain's books but his new book lays out in great detail how to go from 5NL up to 50NL.The other surprising thing about Blackrain is that he gives you his email so you can ask him any questions you want and gives you actual responses not one liners like other people I have talked to in my one year in the poker community. I am also new to the poker community so I do not know what the games were like in the 2000's but went up the stakes mainly in late 2013 and all through 2014 so the games are still beatable, and blackrains books are a great stepping stone to success in todays microstakes games.-Chris

I don't see it as a hate. There were some good points made. And as I stated above I would love BR to comment on these. I'm also his big fan and his first book improved my game A TON ! I respect him a lot. But that doesn't mean we mustn't point out some potential problems in this new book.

The vast majority of the things that have been said that are ''wrong'' about his book are based on certain people's styles. Multiple styles will work in poker in different situations versus different player types. But hey I might be biased because I implemented many of the things he put in his new book and am now having success. Constructive criticism is fine but for someone to come out and say '' I'd be surprised if someone following the strategy outlined in the book didn't lose at in excess of 10bb/100 in an actual modern small stakes game'' is honestly amazing to me.

I don't care about these comments you mentioned. Of course if someone just hates and says the book is bad while not argumenting why ... that's bs. But literally just few post above me one of the critics made few clear arguments: (read from 1 to 3)

1) http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...0&postcount=99
2) http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=101
3) http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=104

No I agree with some aspects of the other guys arguement but the fact is the other guy is being incredibly disrespectful by saying things like '' I'd be surprised if someone following the strategy outlined in the book didn't lose at in excess of 10bb/100 in an actual modern small stakes game'' that I dont really blame Blackrain for not wanting to respond to someone like this.

In your second link im sure he has no problem answering those.

Well I don't take hate seriously ... so that's really not what am I interested in.

I mean .. I would love BlackRain to comment fully on those arguments I mentioned and even you said some of them could be realistic :/

Why you think so? Btw: his graphs from micro limits were out there and everybody could see he was truly crushing it !

Why not show actual ones (nl10+ up to nl50, nl100) ? I mean .. I would like to see them not only as his fan, but it also gives a reader clear reason why shouldn't worry about quality of the content.

And thats why im sure he will answer you without a problem :P +1 for updated profit chart for 2014, just out of curiosity :P