David Sklansky did a thorough interview about our new book Small Stakes No-Limit Hold 'em: Help Them Give You Their Money: Exploiting Weaknesses in Small Stakes No-Limit Hold 'em Games on The Poker Zoo Podcast. You can find the interview here:

https://persuadeo.nl/pz-90-sklansky-goes-bumhunting/

Mason

Does he explain why overlimping KK on button in a live 1/2 after 5 limps is +ev?

Can either author beat 5/10 in vegas? Does either author beat 2/5 in vegas?

I'm just curious but do you actually think we would start the book with an example like this where we don't give an explanation at that point without ever explaining while over limping can sometimes be correct? And by the way, in the example we give David was two positions to the right of the button, not on the button as you say, and there were four callers, not five as you say.

And we also say "It's an extreme example, but we wanted to start with it to show how different many of the strategies in this book are and to give you an idea of how different, in occasional situations, our approach to maximizing your expectation is from the typical player,".

You should at least get the details correct. Also, we priced the book fairly low, especially if you purchase a kindle. So you may want to get a copy to see what the answer is.

Mason

Sorry I didn’t get the Hh exact mr mason sir. But I was damn close.

No you weren't.

MM

doing it on the button is way worse

i'm a third of the way through the book and find it to be great

Can't wait for mine to show up... LFG!

Edit: That link is a gem https://persuadeo.nl/pz-90-sklansky-goes-bumhunting/ great read

That's correct. On the button there are only two players left to act. Two off the button there are four, and that's a big difference.

Thanks for the positive comment.

Mason

I'll be honest I speed read this book looking for new elements to introduce into my 2/5 game. I hated most of it but accept that it's going to take some trial and error to implement correctly. Obviously my 'standard' approach to the game made so many of their examples feel very unnatural if not downright counterproductive. The one thing that kept nagging at the back of my head though was "what was their sample size?". I feel like to follow their recommendations and really apply their concepts would need at least 1000 hours or 1 year of live play. I could have sworn someone commented that their sample was barely 3 months of play at maybe 250 hours? Do we even have published winrates for their adventures using this style? I'm just not willing to accept that limpin' is pimpin' based on that alone. After 3 days of trying to make adjustments to my game to play cheap multiway pots with suboptimal holdings I was not a winning player. Upon returning to an ordinary RFI/3bet/fold strategy I was immediately stacking players within standard realms of variance. For those reasons I just cant justify continued use of the material in this book. Yeah I see weirdos limp K6s utg and sometimes win a big pot but I refuse to believe they are winners overall in the game.

I also feel like even if you mastered their approach to the game you'd still get run over by players targeting you with any degree of competency. It's really not that hard to put someone in the blender with a iso raise preflop and then 1/3 flop to pot size turn bet. You'd have to be in a VERY particularly fishy game for this super passive 'get in there' strat to work. We're talking Thanksgiving special with distant relatives kitchen table poker.

Perhaps you should read the book more thoroughly instead of speed reading it. For instance, on page 34 it says:

"In other words, in early position, you only limp with these very mediocre starting hands if you don’t expect to be raised, and some of the players who’ll see the flop will lose too much to you if you get an unusually good flop."

A lot of the $2-$5 games tend to be much more aggressive than the $1-$2 and $1-$3 games.

Also, you wrote:

I did spend 11 years working as a professional statistician, and in the world of statistics, there are two types statistics, classical and bayesian. So when you're in a game and by limping there are "some of the players who’ll see the flop will lose too much to you if you get an unusually good flop," how large does your sample size need to be?

Mason

Because the leaks at low stakes live are so large in so many areas of the game, multiple strategies exist to beat the games. That GobbyGeek guy has a very limp heavy strategy whereas I prefer RFI/3bet/fold - both are valid when done correctly. It's really a matter of preference IMO - whatever strategy you're able to play well is gonna be the way to go rather than trying something unfamiliar as you will be much more likely to leak extra vs your original strategy.

He’s asking you the sample size you guys used to determine the profitability of these strategies.

And I answered that question. It's not my fault if you don't understand.

Again, this is from the book:

"some of the players who’ll see the flop will lose too much to you if you get an unusually good flop,"

To make things clear, this is a condition that we set and this condition forms what is known as a "conditional probability." And when this is the case, how large of a sample size do you need? The answer is "zero."

And when you play these live small stakes games, you'll see players like this all the time.

Mason

I saw an answer about statistics and such, did not see anything about how many hours you guys spent practicing this strategy at live poker to make sure its profitable/effective.

I guess I can make it easier for you

did anyone recently spend over 500 hours at live poker specifically using the strategies in this book?

if so, at what stakes?

if not, then no need to reply, we will take your silence as meaning no

I have the utmost respect for these guys and honestly their theory approach outlined in this book sounds brilliant. While reading it was like "ahhh, now thats interesting". I actually took notes and discussed it with people. I just couldnt execute it in person which I take responsibility for, both from a practice standpoint and from failure of retention. I think it's entirely possible to find a way to reinvent your game (or learn from scratch) using these strats. If 1/2 and 1/3 is where it really excels then I misapplied the book bringing it to 2/5. It's still the first thing on my kindle sitting on my coffee table as we speak.

You never answered the question - what's the answer? Over limping KK or any other big value hand is never the ideal play period - we raise to force others to put money in with inferior hands and essentially "raise the stakes". Would love to hear the logic for limping KK multiway.

Edit - just found the thread/post. He calls preflop hoping the last two positions will raise and build a pot, when low stake players are very passive preflop and probably only raise 5% of the time. Furthermore if you raised yourself, low stake players call too much so you should be able to build a big pot and have a good chance at stacking top pair. Terrible strategy but good luck with the book!

I listened to most of the interview and agree with most of what Skalansky said. It seems like Mason is the one who put all of the garbage in the book that was referenced on the original thread, like the infamous limp KK hand.

From the bottom of page 42 to the top of page 43:

"However, and this is important, with aces, kings, and maybe queens or ace-king suited, limping in some games should not be a rare play. If the limpers usually call a raise, and the players behind you tend to try to bully those limpers by raising with any decent hand, your deep limp can be a big profit maker. If it’s $1-$3 and there are four limpers in front of you followed by your limp, a $20 raise behind you might get three or four calls whereupon you can now make it something like $120. This play only needs to work occasionally to make it better than raising yourself. Just be careful not to get too involved when it doesn’t work and you’re facing multiple players. You now may need to get rid of your big hand (while keeping in mind that your hand is completely hidden and that no one has a clue since you played your holding so unusually.)"

and from page 44:

"Example No. 4: Several players have limped in, you hold a monster hand, and the remaining players are aggressive, including the big blind who will occasionally make a big raise with a weak hand after several players have limped in. Your play might be to just limp along hoping a raise is made by one of the remaining players. (See Example No. 1 on page 3 in the “Introduction” to this book for a similar example.)"

and, of course, that's the KK hand.

and when the players are as you describe here, you don't make this play. That should be clear from the book. Perhaps you might want to get a copy and carefully read it.

And one final thing. As you can see, the answer to this question was in the book. I suspect that the answer to any other questions that you might have will also be in the book.

Mason

This sounds to me like you may be trying to do too much. Perhaps taking a more conservative approach by adding only a few of these ideas at a time would work better for you.

Mason

We wanted to start the book off with some example hands that many people would question. This was a device we used to create some interest in the book and I think it's clear that this worked well. And as for me adding garbage, it's clearly stated "Here’s a hand that David played in a Las Vegas $1-$3 game."

Mason

What's wrong with overlimping/calling to trap

Almost every play can be correct given the correct situation.

You have trouble answering basic questions. The question was what was the sample size, not how many years have you been a statistician (which is just an argument from authority). At no point did you indicate what the sample size was, so you didn't answer the question. It's your fault that you didn't answer the question, this should be clear.