I must admit, I reported his post - he was extremely rude and unintelligent.

I guess he did not avoid the ban hammer after all!

zero

I am looking forward to reading the book, so we can have some actual book discussion and not pull this thread into some of the tangents that are all to common around here.

You have the fanboy posts that an author could republish the phonebook and people would praise it as revolutionary poker literature. On the other side, the troll crowd that plays the gotcha game with authors.

Collin Moshman wrote two quality books on topics that very little quality material has been published in book form. If you wanted to learn the fundamentals of SNG play, you have two complete books to learn about the format and develop a solid ABC game. That is what good sng play is. That seems to me to be the goal of the books and I feel it accomplished that goal.

It is odd to me that Phil Shaw's books have not been attacked as much as Collin's books here on 2+2 as I find them both inferior. Shaw's books are not terrible, but they bring very little new to the table. That why I shipped the money to zero. There is much great SNG material on training sites, but some people don't learn well by watching only video's. I know I don't. I tire of watching them even good ones.

That is why I am interested in the format... Book and video that I can interact with and focus on watching the video's several times. I liked Collin's stuff on the now defunct Stox so if he is endorsing Greg's stuff I think it is worth a look.

I have disclosed one of my screen names to Zero so he is aware that I am a winning sng player even though I don't have the total volume that many would respect. I clearly have enough of a sample to show that I understand the format, how to beat the format for a modest profit and if Zero's material will enhance my game.

Lazy. Insulting and lazy. I'm not going to get into this here, the thread is already messy. I'll just say however tempting it is to see things in terms of extremes like this the world doesn't work that way. Realise that and your quality of analysis of any issue, whether it be poker, politics or anything else, will markedly improve.

Have fun!

would my posts and review of the book be considered fanboy posts or the troll crowd that plays the gotcha game with authors?

If you have a honest review, post away.

posted a page back.

Take a look at a few hundred of my posts and judge for yourself if I see everything in extremes. I don't recall seeing you post much on this forum I am a regular here. Trust me there is much of the type of posting I have referenced here. Not all of it but a noteworthy amount.

It's funny that you seem to trying to discredit my review before you read a word of it. I have read a ton of poker books, played a lot of poker and been a winning player at the stakes that are the target audience for this book. I never heard of Greg until I posted in this thread. So clearly I am not a fan boy. I also am not trolling book threads like some of the others I have called out. I think I can offer a fair and honest review. Unlike a bunch of others around here I also purchased the book.

My pet issue around here overpriced e-books. I know that is my pet issue, and I fully disclose that here. My issue has been more with the ridicules priced one like Baluga Whale's was selling that is now available for about 20% of what he was pawning the thing off originally around here.

Do I think $69 bucks is too much to pay for this package? I don't know. That is why I took up Greg on his offer and am looking forward to reviewing the book. Sng's have been one of the strongest parts of my game and I am sincerely looking forward to jumping into the material.

I have been impressed with how Greg has dealt with me. As I posted earlier Collin Moshman's endorsement is also something others around here should find to be a very valuable endorsement of Greg's work. I certainly do.

Neither. I thought you posted a fair review. I enjoyed reading it.

My only issue with your posting in this thread is the your comments on volume.

I think your standard for volume to achieve credibility with you is to high.

If I was a little sharp it is because I have a limited amount of time available for such things and I get frustrated by the quality of some of the discussion on these forums. Perhaps I could have found a more deserving target.

If you take my own post, I believe it was honest and based on what I know rather than what I supposed. It gave an endorsement of the video series on DTB and on the author's professionalism in general.

I deliberately did not mention price - I don't know if it is correctly priced or not. Demand curves for this sort of thing (most things) tend to slope downwards, both individually and in aggregate. Whether they have found the right price at this moment is going to depend on the exact details of that demand. Would reducing the price of the product from 60 dollars to 40 dollars increase their total profits? I don't know, I have not done any research into this market. It depends on how many more people would buy it at 40 dollars than at 60 dollars. This is a business decision and it seems to me that if they have got it wrong, or if the market conditions change, the price may adjust in the future.

Absolutely I do not discredit your review, I look forward to reading it.

well take it as a learning experience because my standards aren't based on my bias towards big volume because I was a sicko grinder (I wasn't), they are based on math.
Your winrate over a sample size will tell you how likely it is you are within X% of your true winrate - 6,000 games is so low that a seemingly respectable ROI (like zerosum's) could be made by someone who, in reality, is no better than break-even.

You should probably look into the variance in SnGs, it may open your eyes and actually help your game out (at least your mental game).

GL.

Hello,
I'm a former student of Greg's and I wanted to put in a few honest and thoughtful comments.
My name is Bill and I worked with Greg about 2 years ago. My post count is low on 2plus2 because I prefer to post on training sites since it's more constructive and time efficient imo.
My FTP name was riseabove79. <------------ Full Time teacher with extra classes on top so that's why volume is low.

I have NOT read the book but I did have coaching from him and found the information very helpful.
I was a finalist for ESL teacher of the year on Jeju Island, so as a teacher I can say that Greg knows how to teach. I found his coaching sessions very helpful and easy to understand/apply to my game.
This is a big thing since I've worked with some brilliant people who couldn't teach.

IMO:
The person who would benefit from this book is anyone who needs some help with calling/shoving ranges. I used my sheets and pivots for a long time but now I have them committed to memory.
Also, this would help someone looking to increase number of tables while not pushing into diminishing returns.

As far as the price, I think of it like this. 100 dollars for a session and the book isn't a bad deal. Some coaches charge this an hour and there is no way you can cover all this stuff in that time.

Will I buy the book: No but ONLY because I have our coaching sessions recorded and I can rewatch them any time I want. IF I didn't have them HELLL YESSSSSSS.

Questions or thoughts?
Hit me up.
Madison79

Full discloser I know I am opening myself up here. I just may learn something. So I am prepared to have my eyes opened.

I have used tracking software for just under 13,000 sng's. I played many more but when I first started playing on Party, Paradise, and Pokeroom I did not use tracking software. I have a combined ROI of 7% all the on the sng's I tracked. Sharkscope would confirm this although I don't know if the Pokeroom stats are available there as I never looked.

I have tracked every online sng I played since March of 2006. I never 20 tabled; most of them were played one table at a time. I feel it is fair I can declare myself a winning sng player with that sample size.

Over 500 sng's sample size, the my results would be suspect but 13,000 sng's is clearly enough volume to determine if I am doing something correctly.

My ROI went down from a peak of just under 10% in 2007 to a low of 4% after the UIGA and until Black Friday for just that period. My Total ROI is still at 7% for all 13,000 games. I attribute this to my opponents improving more than any regression to the mean. Players play the bubble way better than they use to. Many training sites like SNG Grinders, PXF, Stox, Cardrunners, Bluefire etc have raised the bar for correct sng play. Also, Collin Moshman's book and software like Wizard and Power tools have also made a stronger pool of sng players. The UIGA killed off many of the shove on the first hand players I played against on Pokeroom.

I saw a Sheets video on Real Poker training. He posted one SNG video on that site several months before he and Bax started PXF with Mindwise. That one 25 minute Party Party SNG transformed my SNG game and I immediately started beating sng's after watching that video about 10 times in a row.

I had a bad stretch on Fulltilt after the UIGA for several months fortunately avoided badly tilting and weathered that period and bounced back nicely. But for any period of 1000 games or move I have always been a winning sng player.

You may be right about a larger pool of players and 100% so in cash and multi tournament play but an aware sng player: Tight early especially in early position and ICM based shoves on the bubble can take you a long way in $10 and $20 SNG's and you don't need a sample size of 200,000 games to prove it.

By the way, large volume Sng players are some of the easiest to exploit. One of my favorite tactics was to sharkscope everyone at my table and see how many multi-tablers were there. I would tag them and mercilessly steal from them in the early and mid-game folding every time I got 3 bet. Anyone playing over 12 tables at the $10 and $20 level plays so mechanically. Even with these extra steals my stats on a villains HUD are still rocky enough that it made it very easy to pick up extra chips to avoid being the short stack on the bubble. Thus giving me move time to find a quality hand to shove. Most players like to avoid high-volume regs I know that exploiting high-volumn regulars was a huge part of my win rate.

you're going way off on a tangent. we weren't talking about multi-tabling or how exploitable multi-tabling regs are and I certainly wasn't calling your sample-sizes or ability into question.

Firstly, keep in mind it isn't the number of games alone that is important. It's your winrate over a sample of games. 10k is a decent sample for someone with a true double-digit ROI because it is X% (high 90s? I don't really remember) likely to get them within a few points of their true ROI and if their true ROI is 12 that means they will usually fall something between like 8-16% or w/e (just pulling these numbers out of my ass). However if your true ROI were something like 2% (good ROI for STs, and an ROI a lot of lesser mid-high stakes guys will have) 10k games isn't much because they could range anywhere from losing to winning >2x as much as they should over a 10k sample. I'm sure a ST player can correct me but I'm sure most good ST guys don't really care about sample sizes less than a few tens-of-thousands sample.

Secondly, you're talking about games from 2006-2008/09 which TBH are completely irrelevant because they simply aren't even close to the same games that are being played today. How well a person did in 2007 doesn't mean anything in todays games. This was another problem I had with Zero's results, because not only is the 6k sample almost meaningless but on top of that a chunk of the games shouldn't even be thought about since they were played when the games were just completely different than they have been the last 2 years or so.

If you go to STTF and do some searching around you'll find some really good old gems about SnG variance and sample sizes.

As much as I love to see people arguing with someone other than me, I have to say that this discussion has gotten a bit off track.

I am looking forward to some more reviews as they come in. I think that discussing the book will be more productive. I have not gone out of my way to try to get people in here reviewing because I want people to be honest and not to feel coerced to write anything other than their honest opinion. (For better or worse)

One thing I did want to address though is the following. I realize that the games are changing. I don't think that the value of a book like this (or some of the earlier published works) is diminished by this. I believe this book is a fundamental discourse on what I believe is important as a foundation for learning SNG's. It was intended to teach people how to think about SNG's and solve SNG problems. It is intended to teach people how to use tools to create strategy that is representative of the current games. I think this is more valuable than just simply describing the latest dynamic in the games because 6mo from now the games will be different again.

Regards,
zero

Your post above was very good.

I strongly disagree with your representation of 2006-2008/09 sng's. I posted close to a double digit ROI back then but played a more ABC game then because tight play allowed you to cash. There were less multi tabler's then. The sites didn't even allow you to fire up as many tables as today. So stealing from regs was not effective. You got called light. A10 off would potentially call your raise back then and fold today, long before the bubble so stealing light was less profitable and actually a leak. Today's multi tablers present other opportunities as I alluded to above with raising light.

There were some very good sng players at mid limits in those days. Also the structures were different. Party for example, you played so many hands a level. It was a fast structure like a turbo today. Blind level's were not timed. You needed to use different approaches to beat that game. But that would not make you an inferior player. It would be like saying Babe Ruth was not a good baseball player because the average skill of players back then was not as good as it is today in professional baseball. Pele the same in soccer. They were still very good compared to there peers.

I think you need to look if a winning player of 2007 is still beating the games today at a respectable win rate over a decent sample size. If so that player is doing something right, even though it might be very different tactics then 2007 and not as high of a ROI. That's what good poker players do is adjust.

The thing about SNG's: if you stray too far from ABC and good ICM bubble play you are playing sub-optimal. It's a fine line but good players know how to walk it and can beat both the 2007 and 2011 version of the game.

Can you guys do this over PM's? I think this should be for Zero's book and comments about it. Thanks.

I have a question on the value for money thing. For what sort of player - stakes, volume, aspirations - do you think its good value for money, and why?

I notice you are both members of Team Moshman and that you both have 79 at the end of your screen names. Why did you pick zerosum79 as a coach ? He plays turbos and you play regular speed stts. I watched one of zero's DTB vids to see if there was any mileage in his "pivot points" approach. I was not very impressed. He was using the 50-30-20 stt structure for his ev calcs on the first table of an 18 man. This resulted in him giving the advice that the player needed 75% equity to make a call when there were nine players left (four players on first table) ! There were many other inaccuracies in the vid as well.

I think it's a good value for anybody grinding 30's and below. As far as volume I would say it's pretty good for someone who is trying to add tables without missing spots. It's super easy while playing more tables to miss a 7bb or 8bb shove due to increasing amount of decisions. Having push/fold chart makes some of the hard decisions a little bit easier.
Example: Readless shoving 75s with 5bb from the button 6 handed might not be standard for a person or could be easily skipped over when moving up from 12 tables to 16+. Over time these becomes engrained into a persons mind and you tend to look at the chart less and less but I still find that I reference it for those hairline decisions.

Pivot points allow you to have a set range of hands that you play. So if my resteal range is XX + and reg loose button raises and I have XX it's a super easy reshove but if person is Tag Rec player I adjust up my range to YY.
Now what if a super huge mega fatty fish opens the button I might reshove with VV or even UU+. (The letters represent a range of hands, ie 22+ or something.)

Aspirations:
3 ways to make more money in poker. Play more tables without diminishing returns, move up in stakes or both. I'm assuming your goal is to make more money/ make more +ev decisions.????

Hey,
I can see that some people might think i'm a shell or another account for Greg but this should clear that up. This is my video for the parents of my new place in Korea. We both were born in 79 and I'm super uncreative about making poker names. shrugs what do I do.

http://youtu.be/NIosl6emyNA

Notice the Korean writing on stuff and the Korean style houses. In the bathroom if you look at the head and shoulders you can see a Korean man.
Unless Greg, flew to Korea, rented a place and post under this name I'm 100% we are 2 different people.


In 09 when I signed up for Team Moshman I was assigned to work with Greg. I didn't get to pick my coach. I think they place people on times and number of students a person can handle.
I did play reg speeds at the time but the information was very helpful even for non turbos. The only adjustment I tended to make was sometimes passing on thinner resteals and shoves since I had a few more hands to play out. Another reason I played started out playing non turbos is because I played on Stars first and didn't really want to grind out against Sippin and Glitler.

As far as that vid, I have never seen it but I can say that I've made mistakes while teaching English and we are all human.

I totally respect your disapproval of this product and you have been very open and honest about it. BUT
Tons of winning players have come and said that Greg has helped them in some way.

Cheers.

Two weeks later you were finally able to sift through a ton of my stuff to find a mistake. Congrats. It is true there is a vid on DTB where I didn't realize that the SNG Wizard in HEM would revert back to 9 man payouts every time you go to a new hand even if the tournament were relabeled as an 18 man. If I recall it was back before the HEM stars update where they were not reading tournament histories for MTT SNG's correctly.

I should have asked DTB to pull this video when I realized it but I will certainly do it now. You will notice that on the next video in this same series it was addressed correctly. All I can say is that anyone who has made as many public record comments on poker situations as I have, is bound to have made a mistake at one point or another. I am ok with that.

As far as the book is concerned, the videos with the book were produced with scripts and strategy was edited by multiple players to ensure a high level of accuracy. I am confidant that you will not find errors there.

zero

You didn't mention that you were Team Moshman as well when you gave him such a glowing report. I have the same misgivings as those expressed by SiQ very early on in the thread viz that I don't see how zero is qualified to charge for strategy advice when he's such a moderate and inexperienced player himself. Having watched one of his vids this opinion has been confirmed. It was riddled with poor and sometimes wrong advice. Off the top of my head I remember him advising that A8o with 10 bbs on the button was a fold with six players left, that there wasn't much equity with AQo on a A25r board and that the same pushbot sheet should be used for both the first and the second table. I don't blame zero for not being an expert but I think it's a bit rich of him to charge money at his skill level.

It's really hard for someone to comment when you ramble your thoughts all together but I think you want this since it makes it hard to disagree with you and make it coherent disagreements. This is a typically FOX news tatical.


Here is my challenge to you Cwocwocz: You have been a very strong opposition to Greg's book but you haven't showed your stats, as far as I know. In the tradition of 2+2, Stats or gtfo! Greg, others and I have given proven stats to our results. Ur Turn, Bro.

No more posts till you prove u can beat the games! Greg, me and Collin beat the games! Do you?

Cheers,
Bill

Its hard to disagree with nonspecific points, but one basic tenant of 1bet, 2bet, 3bet is that TP with a strong kicker has a ton of equity and get it all in. I find it impossible to believe that AQ on an A high board would not get that recommendation. I challenge you to produce it.

Since this is so obviously a fabrication, then I can only assume that some of your other examples are as well.

zero