One idea that really hit home to me that jeff brings up is the relationship between effective floating which he defines as "float equity" and implied odds.

If your opponents often c/f when a scare card comes in and they dont have it , you can call with any peice of the flop for profitable bluff opporutnites when the scare card comes.

If they instead pay you off when those cards comes with a wide range, nullifying your float attempts, your implied odds on your nut draws dramically increase.

Even if your opponent knows your floating a lot and plays a balance strategy to defend against it, your still extracting value. He must be folding some of the time, and paying you off some of the time...

While against a thinking player you probabily shouldnt be floating super light all the time.. Part of the time , it MUST be profitable.

Another mega reason why position is so important.

Now I need to develop some strategies for playing out of position against a solid player in position, nowadays I almost never feel like raising anything but premium stuff unless im on the button

This worries me. Even at 25c/50c most players aren't dumb. Some are transparent and tight I'll concede but even at this level half the table have a good idea. I was hoping for advice against good players.

i had a big leak of raising out of position. i just limp or call now out of posistion. I rarely have losing sessions now.

Have you tried min-raising? If it gets the SB not to complete or if it gets the BB to fold, the extra bb seems totally worth it. Always playing every hand 3 way just seems bleh.

I don't know that that's accurate. I should note that the hands in the book are real hands against real opponents in games from $0.25/$0.50 to $2/$4 online and from $1/$2 to $5/$10/$25 live, and as such represent a fairly accurate assessment of a fairly broad range of players as the game is played today. I think it is more accurate to say that my opponents didn't know how light I would call them and how often I would float them, and that they couldn't make an adjustment if they didn't know I was doing it virtually every hand.

It is one thing to know that a play exists; it is another to know that a certain player has it; and it is another thing entirely to know that your opponent executes a play as a matter of course rather than as an occasional play of opportunity.

And that's really the key: It is hard for your opponents to account for a play if they don't know that you have it. It wasn't until I wrote a 7-part series on floating that some of my opponents caught on to my play and started picking me off, and even then they wouldn't have known it and been able to adjust if I didn't put it in print. At that point, as I noted towards the end of Part III (in the "Cutting Back" discussion in the section on The Positional Advantage), I adjusted by restricting my floating range some and value-betting more against some of the better players that I played with.

That said, I think we are still a ways away from a day where the average player routinely picks off floats.

Jeff

I went thru all the hand examples for shorthanded 6max play and i dont think i seen Jeff raise in early position unless he had AAxx or KKJT. There may have been another hand i may have missed it. When i say early in 6max im talking about SB, BB, UTG and Hijack.

I think i more comfortable not min raising out of position unless i have a good hand or AAxx. I hate to min raise with a marginal hand then be 3 betted off my hand, which seems to happen a lot to me. (I like to play a 100bb stack, so this is pertaining to that im semi deep)

For example of one type of hand that i like to limp/call. I have been making a lot of money limping in with a marginal hand like TT68 then having the button make a standard raise and then it sets off a chain of callers and then spiking a set on the flop such as 4 T 7 and crushing villian that has a hand like 8875. Were as If i would have min raised pre flop i maybe may have been taking off this hand by a 3 bet from the button as i would be out of position here.

Jeff i see from the hand examples in shorthanded play, you rarely play out of the highjack as a matter of fact you play more out of UTG then Hijack. (UTG=15, Hijack=7) Is this the case in your normal play or was just do to the hand examples you wanted to show in the book in shorthanded play?

I imagine it is a function of the fact that many of the hands are heads-up, 3-handed, 4-handed, or 5-handed, rather than a full 6-handed game. When the game is 5-handed or less, there is no hijack position, which would account for any discrepancy.

Jeff

Min raising and then folding to a "3bet" is bad, because the 2bb difference is marginal, and the number of pots you win uncontested are going to make up for the number of pots you pay 2bb more to see a flop.

I've never folded a min raise to an isolation raise (3bet is misleading, because unlike NL, a 3bet only has initiative and doesn't have fold equity here) you've always got the odds to call.

Well what i mean is say i min raise UTG and the hijack call and the button pots it. How does this look for me?

Lets say the blinds are 1/2 with effective stacks of 100bb, so we got $3 in the pot from the blinds and i put in my min raise UTG and make it $4 then the Hijack calls for $4 then the button pots it $19 with a more then likely better hand then me most of the time. So i have to put in $15 more and be out of position to the button post flop with a marginal hand.

If i have a good hand i don't mind doing this but not with a marginal hand. I just think over all its -EV if im on a table who keeps re raising my min raises. I rather control the pot size with a marginal hand.

On the other hand if the table does not re raise my min raises it would be a good play to do as you say and min raise from early position.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through the 128 shorthanded examples which looks like the climax of the book to me. One thing I would have liked to see on some of the hands is to discuss what to do if different things happened. For example, CO opens, Jeff calls on button, blinds fold. Flop is xxx, CO pots, Jeff floats, turn is x, CO checks, Jeff bets, CO folds. OK, that's great, but what if CO c/r? What is CO calls turn and bets riv? What if CO checks turn and checks riv? I think too many of the plays Jeff makes in the book work out to his benefit. It's not always that easy.

That said, it's a hell of a book and has helped me think about the game in a different way.

Is there much HU content in the book?

I have a question on hand example #51 in the Short-Handed Play section. In this hand the pot is $21 pre-flop and you have $177 left over after your raise. The SPR is 8.4.

After you bet pot on the flop, you get raised and realize that if you are continuing, you will be playing for stacks. To find the equity you need to call, the book says, But it seems to me that this calculation doesn't take into account the money you bet on the flop. The pot is now $63 (plus the raised amount), and you will have to call an additional $156 to play for stacks, offering an immediate SPR of 2.5 and only needing 41.6% equity to continue. Am I right that in a scenario like this, we should consider the equity after everything that has happened instead of the PFR at the time of the flop?

I'm guessing in your scenario that the 41.6% number is the correct equity to call, but that wouldn't change your decision on this hand.

where can i get this book to be shipped in italy?

(without 30$ of expenses?

Sigh,
http://www.conjelcostore.com/conjelc...&productID=330
+
http://www.conjelcostore.com/conjelc...&productID=277

$15.95 priority mail shipping

There isn't a separate section just for HU but a lot of the hand examples Jeff goes through are either HU or SB vs. BB. He def. discusses his heads up strategy. The book is basically about playing hands with either 2 or 3 people seeing the flop, while his first book is about multiway action after the flop.

My tuppence worth on the value of the book. I fell in love with PLO before Christmas and have got 25000 hands of inexperience. I was breakeven at best according to PTO but felt that the games were extremely soft as I was just flying by the seat of my pants.

I know how I play and I was shocked to read Jeffs first 15 or so pages and realise how little I knew. I haven't read any more as I am having so much fun floating. It may be variance and I may have got lucky but I've never had results like these. 3 times in 3 days I've run my stack up to 4+ BIs, mostly attributed to successful floating. Single tabling and thinking about the game is helping understand the dynamics too.

I for one have received 10 times the value of the book already (the postage investment is peanuts by comparison). BTW, I also had my biggest cash ever in a NLHE tourney at the weekend and used the "cap touching" float signals a couple of times there too. Enjoyment ... Priceless - thanks Jeff!

I'll come back with more comments when I've read more (and won more, I hope).

Isn't hijack = UTG 5-handed?

Get both and consider reading the second book first or at least in conjunction. The first book really gets into quality hand structures which sort of became a trap for a nitty old man like me. If you look for these structures (e.g., avoiding a gap on top in a rundown) you simply won't get in enough hands playing 6-max 100 BBs deep (I'm pot stuck on FPPs playing Stars, wish they had 200 BB tables like Full Tilt ). The value of a "flawless" type hand described so well in the first book primarily comes into play when you're very deep and can get in a fourth bet with the nuts plus a freeroll to more nuts.

The second book gets into just about everything and is about the best organized and well-written poker book I've ever read. Congratulations Jeff.

~ Rick

I'm confused about the title. Small Ball and Short-Handed. Does this mean the chapters leading up to the short handed section are on full tables.

"Small ball" refers to the size of your bets and raises, while "short-handed" refers to the number of opponents you have.

I understand the meanings but is the book for full tables or 6max. For instance Short-Handed can be full or 6max. On a full table if their are several folds it becomes a short handed game.

Let me put it another way. Are the starting hands in "The Big Play Strategy" the same for the new book or has Jeff given a new range of hands for 6max if indeed this book is for 6max. Anybody who has read the book please.

In this book he emphasizes opening up especially in position. Also a slightly flawed hand (e.g., rundown with a gap on top) mostly reveals its flaws when you and your opponent are very deep relative to the initial pot (i.e., high SPR). This doesn't happen as much in 100BB 6max so you play the flawed hands up to a point UTG.

He also tends to advise flatting raises rather than re-raising for initiative and then use floats to take some pots away. I'm more comfortable with this approach than the "light 3-bet" approach.


~ Rick

Thanks for the reply Rick but I still need to know whether this book is for 6max or short-handed play as they are not the same thing.