You have 14 posts and you're labelling others newbies? Re Andrew's critique, I don't use the book for poker strategy. I use it for two things:

Calculating VPIP of other players, which I can do for about 1.5 hours, then with seat changes, change of players, etc., it gets tough.....and

Knowing exact ranking of every single hand I play. what rank do you have 8,7s? How about offsuit? A9s? Offsuit? 66? I want to know this, and I do. 8,7 is 26/71(15%/35%), A9 is 34/72(20%/35%), 66 is 43(20%). So, if playing vs. someone with 40%, or 15% range, this is helpful. This book taught me how to do this, remember exact rankings and ranges.

If those two things aren't important to you, don't buy the book.

I may change my rankings. I've been using Sklansky, and I may elevate pairs, which would push down other hands. I don't really like what Doyle Brunson calls "trouble hands", KQ, KJ, KT, QJ and QT, and of course, they're all ranked relatively highly. KQ is an easy play, but the others do get me into trouble often. I wouldn't mind pushing those down a bit in rankings.

This character has 18 posts, total, and 13 are on this book.

Highly likely he's a shill.

No. I read the book, liked it, worked for me. I've been a member here awhile, but never posted. Thought I'd give the book a plug. It's a topic I can offer advice on, as I read it. Most other threads I just read, some are good, some not so good. I liked the book, and it does what I can use. I trained with the author, and thought I'd help him out. If I didn't like or use the book, I wouldn't have written on it. It's better live. Online, too many seat changes at cash games, and where I play, no icons/avatars, just seat numbers. But they don't allow trackers, and for VPIP, at least, I don't need one. But I can't do PFR, not yet. So, limited to VPIP and ranking every single hand, up to about 75. Though I may change my ranking system. I use Sklansky, and I may elevate pairs a bit.

Q's for you. Can you do VPIP at a live table? If not, would you like to? Do you know exact ranking, in system you use, of the top 75 hands? Would you like to? This book allows that. If you don't think that's important, this book's not for you.

lol i'm bit skeptical with the reviews posted by some of the people on the thread like someone posted before. question, would tracking 20 to 30 hands of an opponents at the live table help construct ranges, and tendencies etc...i mean it's not a big sample size....and i highly doubt anyone can track couple hundred to thousand hands just using their head. i just feel that it would take my focus from different aspects of the game.. just my 2cents.

can you explain why exact ranking of hands is important ? i don't see how that's relevant in actual game play...

Because I like to know opponent's range vs. cards I have. If you don't know your opponent's range, and you don't know what range your card is in, how do you decide to play vs. that player? How is that not relevant. For example, in Sklansky's rankings(which I may change from) he's got J9s as 22nd hand, or in that grouping. It's not a hand I particularly like, but 22nd hand is in top 10%. Still, vs. a tight player, I'm not so likely to play that, unless I'm in position, or able to limp and see the flop. Vs. looser player, with 40-50% range, I'm playing it, because he most likely has worse cards. Does it always work? No.

Last week, at Foxwoods, one player played 18 of 20 hands, the other 15 of 20. I raised late pre flop with JTo(31st hand, just in 15% range), the cards were Q, 9, 6, then J. I whispered to myself, "I hope this jerk doesn't have KT." He did, and the other player had pocket 9's,(the 18 of 20 guy) so I was crushed twice. S*** happens. BTW, I did C bet on flop, and the jerk with KT called with gutshot draw. The 9's still had me buried, but the gut shot call was dumb, and he won on the turned Jack. Poker.

Good point, re the focus. But question for you. How do you size up your opponents? I can track for 1.5 hours or so. What causes the problem is not the inability to track, but the table changes. When you've gone around the table twice, and 3 people leave, 2 of the remaining change their seats, 3 join, then another 2 leave, 1 joins, then 5 minutes later another joins, it gets tough. So, I start over, but you can't really start over 3, 4 times, as you lose track, so what I normally do is stop tracking the players who have been there a while, and just track new players, to size them up.

A recent game at Foxwoods had 4 players. I was in seat 5, seats 3 and 4 played 20 and 17 hands out of first 35; seats 9 and 10 played only 3 and 5 of those same hands. Those players played, like me for at least 4 hours, then the seat 3 left, after losing about $600 at 1/2. I played for 7-8 hours, and those other 3 did also. But the rest of the seats, as you can imagine, changed frequently. So, I stopped tracking those 3 or 4, and tracked the newer people,to get a read on them. If no seat changes ever occurred, it'd be easy to track up to each players VPIP up to 25 voluntary bets, or 75 hands with people playing 33% range. That's maybe 3 hours.

Last week, in the game I mentioned where I mentioned guys playing 15 and 18 of 20, one player in the 10 seat, played 2 of 20. Then we had a bunch of seat changes, but he was clearly very tight. Well, he played one hand raising pre flop, only time he did that. By the turn he went all in, with an AK on the board. I wasn't in the hand, but there were 2 diamonds, and some dope called, probably a flush draw, but maybe a weak ace. What'd the tight player have? Whaddya think, AK. To me it was obvious. Now, if it were either guy who played more than 75% of the hands, I wouldn't know. One of those 2 played A3o, and actually won making a flush with his 3!(he also played 84s) I wasn't in that one either, but I had a bad night. But my best play of the night was a fold. I had pocket K's, raised to 6 bb pre flop(5th seat), seat 6 called, seat 7 raised to 15bb's. I folded, suspecting Aces(not AK, as I had 2 K's). Anything lower than Aces wouldn't raise like that, IMO. Seat 7 went all in on the flop, seat 6 called(flop had no broadway cards or aces). As suspected, seat 7 had Aces, seat 6 had Kings, so he was drawing dead, as I would have been, and got stacked!