Have you ever even read a 2+2 book? This is the kind of thing they usually put at the beginning of a book.

I still remember in one (probably Small Stakes Holdem, it starts one section with an example of someone cold calling a raise (in LHE) with KJo and says that it is worse than folding a Royal Flush. Then in the actual chapter it explains why.

The Table of Contents looks fantastic.

Visiting a 24-hour joint to play number games against lunatics sounds like a pretty great time to me, maybe even worth paying for. To make any money doing that is a dream.

In the 2012-2017 era there were definitely $1-3 pros in the midwest. $16-21/hr from $1-3 was more than some of the people sitting at the table were making. Today that's clearly dog ****, even fast food hires at $18/hr. Imagine being the poorest person at the table, making less than a person in a no skill job and thinking you're living the dream.

$1/3 builds a bankroll to nowhere.

I will read the book when it comes out and give my honest opinion. The issue that I have is with the hand examples. I have read many booked by Sklansky and yourself that I thought were good poker books.

I will also read , and as someone who has beaten these low limit games for 20-25 an hour lifetime, some of these plays do work in specific games

Folding aces pre might be a better move than what you advised in those hands

Do you understand that? That’s where the flack is coming from.

Except that we didn't advise anything in the given hands. All we did was say that this is the way we played five particular hands.

However, there's plenty of advice in the rest of the book.

Mason

You guys didn’t advise anything?

No implicit advice based on seeing how the authors of a training book play?

There’s plenty of advice in the book. You’ll just have to read it when it’s available.

Mason

There must have been a strong read for the KK overlimp. The AK limp UTG, maybe short stacked and going for a limp/shove? It is confusing when stack sizes are not provided. The flat call with AKo is the BB, presumably the late position LAG raiser would represent on an A or K high flop and maybe overplay TPGK thinking he was good. The UTG AK limp seems the most reasonable of the three. Interesting the reasons for doing these, whether or not they were good plays.

the implication is that the way the hero in the hands plays is how they should be played.

otherwise, why write this as a preamble to the examples:

Hypothetical question: If your game sees 100% of pots raised preflop, would you raise any hand yourself preflop? Or simply limp/overlimp with 100% of your playing range and then decide the best play after the raise?

I think there's likely a pretty decent argument to made for never raising ourselves in that situation, no? Course, there may still be arguments for raising (not saying there aren't).

Now adjust the preflop aggression. If limp/overlimping isn't horrendous at a table with 100% raising, what about 90%? Acceptable enough? 80%? Maybe? 10%? Probably not.

So how does your typical LLSNL table play in general? IME, you'd be very hard pressed to find a typical LLSNL that sees more limped pots than raised pots, but maybe your experience differs than mine.

Ghasn'traisedasinglehandpreflopintheLJ-in6+yearsandhasdone~okG

It's not really advise though because it doesn't say anything to describe what the significant facts are about the hand that led to the plays they made. From reading the intro, we can't take away any strategic principles like "when in situation X do Y" because the intro doesn't describe X in any detail.

I think a mistake a lot of people make is to assume that the cards that are visible and the plays made by individuals in a hand are all you need to know to maximize your winnings -- but that's not the case. That's all you need to know to play GTO, but of course that is different from maximizing winnings.

The intro describes the plays and cards, but doesn't tell you what you need to know to understand the _strategy_ they are illutrating. It's a teaser. It's giving you a little bit of information, hoping to draw you in to find out the whole story.

just for lulz last night I attempted to emulate the HH's they posted when similar scenarios occurred and overall just played a very limpy strategy. It was interesting; when typically playing a RFI/3bet or fold strat your opponents are always on the defensive, you get into 3-4 way pots on average and sometimes you have last position somtimes you dont, but overall you never really feel great about your hand unless you smash the flop because of the ole "welp, they could have anything!" MUBS'y feeling.

However by going for limp-rr's (almost never happened since nobody raises) and just getting into those multiway pots for 1BB instead of 4-7BB's it took a lot of pressure off to 'make hands'. Essentially my range is still superior to theirs, I just got to play it way cheaper. Initiative didnt matter much, and the only disappointing part was those boards I would have flopped huge in a raised pot but were now all small pots, which really just illustrates that all my isolation/range betting exploits kinda just felt like gambling on the offchance I build a bigger pot to win. And maybe there is merit to that? Raise 67s not because I think 7 high is good or to keep em guessing but because I know I'll play it better than their J8o if we both connect.

The most interesting part though was by lowering my AF it really enabled my opponents to turn up theirs, and boy howdy did they make some epic punts. Forfeiting initiative is apparently a green light for every fish to make the most creative of spaz plays. We're talking floating 2 streets with complete air from the SB 4 handed and then pot jamming river when the obvious draw hits and then acting like they just got unlucky when someone calls. Cbetting with junk that has no backdoor equity. Barreling T7s on a A223r board trying to rep TPTK I guess. I felt like this is what 2004 Pokerstars must have been like.

Eventually I grew impatient of 'letting them off the hook' with hands I would normally have raised with so I changed gears back into a more classical approach and definitely saw an uptick in session winrate, but this was all over the span of a 6 hour session.

Yeah, that Introduction was intended as a teaser, but it doesn't work. People think these old nits won't raise or 3-bet with anything. It seems like probably a really good book presented badly here.

I have the most problem with postflop. I don't see how you fold KK on a J97 flop multiway to a single normal sized bet. For one thing, you can improve with a K and sort of improve with a 7. Anyway, you are ahead close to half the time, even if it is difficult to play. It is also almost never best to shove the turn for twice pot. I understand villain had a draw and incorrectly called. Anyway, the point of the book is the plays not whether the hands are played correctly.

It looks really good to me from the excerpt and the TOC. I have been reading the Miller book recommended ITT, which seems good. However, it spends a lot of time telling you not to do certain donk plays and gives you rules like what hands to play, never limp, even not limp behind, etc. The 2+2 book seems more advanced.

Remember how win rates of posters here on 2+2 suddenly dropped, a lot, when people started posting graphs from hand trackers, instead of giving their own opinion/testimony/estimate of what their rates were?

Even if you respect this unnamed person, and you have good reason to believe he makes a lot of money at poker, and you don't think he was lying to you, etc. it really is irrelevant if he thinks someone could make $1000+ in that particular game, or any $1/3 game. Show the receipts, or don't bother repeating it at all.

The intro could have been at least passable, if it made clear that these were outlier plays that the authors don't recommend doing with any regularity. Instead, they are presented as plays no one but the authors would make, and that shows why the book will help you. This paragraph is especially egregious:

"(Again, these examples show you only a small number of the many ideas we will soon tell you about.) To see what we’re talking about, here are five examples. Notice that in every one of these hands, we’re playing differently, and sometimes very differently, from the way most poker instructors, coaches, book authors, poker video content producers, etc., will tell you how to play. It's true that, in general, their advice may be reasonably good, especially against tougher players than those we’ll be addressing. But it won’t be well targeted for these small stakes games. And if you’re playing live, these are the vast majority of games that are spread in our public cardrooms."

The third sentence (based on what David is now claiming in this thread) should also include that they're playing them very differently than how the book will teach you to play - unless you have some super specific read on your opponents. The intro claims this book will teach you how to beat the low stakes live poker by playing differently than everyone else will teach you, but then it gives 5 examples where the lesson is you should play bad fundamental poker but just have great reads on the entire table.

An intro - especially if that is the only part of the book you choose to share - should make people intrigued and want to read the rest of the book. Here, it seems Mason's strategy is to write an intro so baffling and counter-intuitive to good poker play (without any real explanation in the intro for why the plays are sound), and then tell people they have to read the rest of the book to get any actual coherent poker content.

I can agree with all of this and I have limped AA/KK 3/4/5th in before on the CO/button because there were either 2 super aggro anti limp pros behind me or the straddle raised a high percentage of the time. You can always find good reasons to play hands in a weird way. The issue is that there was no context provided behind these otherwise atrocious HH's which I am thinking might be on purpose to generate attention at this point.

By the way, a cousin to the KK play is the flop check with certain types of merely good but not great hands after others have checked and an aggressive player is the only one remaining to your left. Besides the chance for the (bet, call, you check raise), scenario, there is also the (bet, someone else check raises, you fold) scenario, and the (everyone checks and then someone with a worse hand than yours, who would have folded to your flop bet, now comes out betting into on the turn) scenario. I have used this play hundreds of times and there is no doubt in my mind that those times earned me more money on average than a simple bet.

I think that fold isn't controversial. There are two players yet to act who could check-raise forcing you to fold anyway. There's three to a straight on board and you could be drawing almost dead already. While a King improves your hand, it also improves QT to a better hand. A 7 improves you to two-pair, but also improves 87 to trips (and 97 to a boat). There are five opponents any one or more could already have two-pair or a set. And of course there's that flush draw. This isn't a great flop in a limped pot for Kings against one or two opponents. Against five, you're a long shot. The bettor has something and the two callers have something or are drawing to better hands than Kings, and the blinds could have anything. If you're good now, the only safe cards are a non-spade 2, 3 or 4. And you have to fade both the turn and river. Remember, this is a low stakes game and players will limp with a very wide range. Muck those Kings.

"Give me all you got!!!" - Al Pacino in errr, uhhh, I forgot whatever great movie.

Should he be required to read a previous 2+2 book to comment on what Malmuth and Skalansky voluntarily started this thread for? Why should he have to do homework on their previous works to analyze what they posted here?

"Heat": he shakes the table at the chop shop when looking for info. The guy tells him his cousin will be at the club.

What turns cards can we call an overbet on? What turn cards can we continue on when someone bets pot and there’s a call?


Tis an easy fold