I am a poker professional who has read over 20 2+2 books among a plethora of other literature. Small Stakes Hold 'em was the 2nd book I read(after Hellmuth's "Play Poker Like the Pros"
) and it immediately turned me into a winning player many years ago. I credit a lot of my development to 2+2 and the community remains the gold standard to this day.
With that, a candid review was requested...and I'm not sure where to start. I did not want to comment on the first half as I thought it was weak and wanted to finish the book - but often just found myself just saying "WHAT?" out loud.
It was a frustrating experience, and not in the good, challenging way. This book doesn't seem intended for someone like me(if you play online may as well toss it), but a beginner/most intermediate players would struggle to comprehend what's even being said. I wanted to finish the entire book before any review, but now that someone has said it - the criticisms in post #108 regarding the first half are very valid.
Personally I got annoyed getting 'Do you see why'd' every few pages or something being obvious(if it's obvious why devote any page space to it?), all while grazing concepts that have already been discussed deeper elsewhere(just read Janda's Applications for example) and frankly are. just.
obvious.
Many ideas are presented impractically and are invalidated with slight changes of numbers(anyone capable of bluffraising essentially invalidates the entire book), even to the point of presenting wrong, dangerously incorrect advice. An egregious example is on page 280 - bluffing to stop a bluff - when our EV comes from betting for value.
Realistically change our opponent to never paying off/just calling + winning 20% - we would be torching our EV down to the tune of $60! If villain is capable of bluffing(which is good!![if they only bet value(20%) we could fold all and keep our $80!]) there is no strategy to stop their EV realization of $30 in this example. The idea introduced is an exploit and not a "GTO" concept. I say "GTO" because it is used interchangeably between Nash Equilibrium and MES throughout the book.
In addition to stuff you already knew,
There is no discussion on the nuances of different positions(while we're talking about doing things like perhaps raising AT LJ, calling T8o button vs open, folding KKs to x/r on Q97ss)
There is no discussion about different boards/textures
There is no discusssion of ranges(0 hand matrices in entire book) beyond a quote from ToP
I have always subscribed to the idea of getting 1 concept out of a poker book makes it worth it. *Perhaps* this one will do that(for intermediates with accurate dismissal of incorrect ideas) but would think it's most valuable to an advanced player articulating what is incorrect.
3/10. 2+2 has always been fantastic in my eyes(and remains so) but if this book is supposed to be the holy grail of NLHE theory, this isn't it.
Last edited by AmazingErvin; 06-23-2021 at 01:54 AM.