Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth
You should read the book.
Mason
Before the book's "Introduction" there's an essay written by David that explains what's going on in this book. Here it is plus a few comments by me that follow:
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Why This Book
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by David Sklansky
When I came back to Vegas in 2022 after being gone for a few years, I decided to start playing serious poker again. But most of the games I was used to were rarely spread anymore. So, my decision was to start small by playing $1-$3 and $2-$5 no-limit hold ’em. I was adept at limit hold ’em and no-limit hold ’em tournaments, and also had a strong understanding of no-limit hold ’em cash game theory. However, I didn't have much experience in no-limit hold ’em cash games. And I also didn’t have much experience playing against mainly amateurs and often complete “live ones.”
When I started to play these games, which are the large majority of poker games spread today, it was shocking at how badly many of the players played, and this included many opponents who were regulars in these games. At least half of them sometimes made egregious errors at some point in the hand. Errors that made you money if you played the standard style but had the potential to make you much more if you correctly took advantage of these errors once you identified them.
It also became apparent (to me) that if you were good at exploiting these mistakes, many of the small games which this book addresses were worth, per hour, as much as the typical game with significantly bigger blinds but where the typical player had a better understanding of correct strategy. I always suspected that this was a possibility because I was aware of a high stakes poker expert who now spent most of his playing time in these games. And once I was playing in them, I realized why he did.
So, what do these participants in these small games do wrong? Some of the mistakes I noticed were almost never bluffing, betting too little on the flop, not knowing when to slowplay, not playing deceptively, giving a free card when it’s wrong to do so, raising too much money preflop, calling big (sometimes very big) reraises preflop, falling in love with and paying off with good but not great hands, overcalling too much, misplaying multiway pots, and, of course, simply entering the pot with too many hands.
As a result, I decided not to be too anxious to move up in stakes. Meanwhile, I started calling Mason Malmuth to tell him about various astonishing hands where some players would almost literally throw money at me especially if I played a certain style. A style sometimes quite different than what other authors recommend.
And it turned out that Mason had been occasionally playing these games as well and had also noticed many of the same characteristics which were described above. When he realized that we were both doing things to exploit other player's leaks, he knew we had the makings of a new book. If I agreed, he would start playing more no-limit than before (especially once some other publishing work he was doing was finished), incorporating the moves we were discussing (which will be explained in the text) to see how they worked. And if they did, he would co-author a book with me about how to win the maximum in these small stakes games which featured many opponents who didn’t understand how to play well and made numerous costly mistakes.
Since the book is now in your hands, you know they worked. And hopefully, they’ll work as well for you as they have for us.
Comments: I have yet to play in a $1-$2 or $1-$3 game where I didn't see players like this. The $2-$5 games are more hit and miss with some of them not being games we would target with all of these strategies. But given what I just said about the $1-$2 and $1-$3 games where every game features some players like this, how big does your sample size need to be?
And that's why the discussion of sample size here is just silly. If you want to know what your true win rate would be in these games with fairly high precision, neither David nor I have enough hours to give a precise answer. (And if you don't think I know what I'm talking about see the chapter titled "Win Rate Accuracy" in my book
Gambling Theory and Other Topics - Expanded Edition.)
On the other hand, if you're interested in exploitive strategies that can take advantage of the poor play of some of these players then this book,
Small Stakes No-Limit Hold 'em: Help Them Give You Their Money: Exploiting Weaknesses in Small Stakes No-Limit Hold 'em Games, should be well worth your time. So read the book.
Mason