We do remove redundant expressions, whenever possible, from the manuscripts that we receive. So having the word "immensely" appear twice close together is something we should have corrected.

Another example is the word "I." Virtually every book we publish has the word "I" removed from the original manuscript literally hundreds of times, and many sentences then get rewritten to account for this. The same is true for other pronouns, but "I" always seems to be the most troublesome one.

Best wishes,
Mason

in a "normal world" any thread titled "reviews and discussion" would actually have mostly substance. things like typos, questionable writing, editing might be mentioned once. most would just drop a letter to the publisher. here at 2+2 there are multiple public posts about editing and typos. it is absurd. very few want to read that. i know i want to read about the substance - i have purchased the book but not yet read it.

i think this community needs to tone down the accusations, slamming others, and provide good information that would interest the wider audience.

I finished the book. I am definitely happy with it overall, it is definitely one of the best advanced NL books out there. It's not perfect, but well done. I was hoping to get a little more out of it, but I still enjoyed the read.

My only significant gripe is that I would personally say that the subtitle "Crushing Mid-Stakes Short-Handed Games" is inaccurate, or perhaps a year or two behind the current pace of online games. I play 2/4 6max online and I think most small winners in that game today, and certainly the top players, already are aware of and implementing the advanced concepts in this book.

The content is definitely good, but the subtitle and the fact that the hand examples are from 5/10 seem to suggest that the book is aiming to turn mediocre mid-stakes regs into excellent, "crushing" 5/10 players. In the modern game, I think the set of knowledge in this book is closer to one that will turn a losing 2/4 player into a mediocre 2/4 player. Certainly not "crushing", and certainly not at the higher end of the mid-stakes spectrum.

I actually think .5/1 and 1/2 NL players are those who would benefit the most from this book. Today, those are the stakes where I would say that an understanding of the concepts in this book are really enough to let one "crush" the opposition. I hope prospective small-stakes buyers aren't turned off from this book by the subtitle. Similarly, I think winning mid-stakes players might be a bit disappointed by the content, though it's probably tough or impossible to fit any higher-stakes concepts into a book.

Just my opinion!

Does Thomas Bakker's book replace or complement Miller et al's SSNLHE?

I am a FR NHLHE player so need to know if they are many crossover concepts applicable to FR rings.

Do I need to buy both, neither or just one of two?

I have read:

HOH 1, 2 & 3
HOCG 1 & 2
NLHTAP
PNLHE

and other books.

I didn't buy the Harrington 6max book.

And in an earlier post you mentioned that you really liked DUCY as well. But do you think it is fair to hold Mason to THAT standard?

Your post may be a level or in a joking manner, but I do think it is fair to hold every 2p2 book to a high standard. In fact, after getting such great information over the years from most of them, I find myself holding each new book up to even higher levels. I have been disappointed by a couple of the recent books.

When I read each of DUCY, TOP, and NLHTAP for the first time, I found myself mostly enthralled with the cutting edge thinking and information. Maybe I wasn't on the look out for errors, but I don't recall any of them being plagued with problems. When starting ANLH, I was in a similar mindset and thought it was a great book for the first 30 pages or so. After that, I started to find too many errors and problems that I started to look for them more. It started to turn me off of the book.

And why is there no Acknowledgements page in ANLH?

Acknowledgments pages in our book are voluntary on the author's part and are not required by Two Plus Two Publishing LLC. If no Acknowledgment page appears it's because the author chose not to have one.

MM

Wow i wish they would hurry up and delivered this book.I am not interested in typos ect and this is first book since TOP i will have purchased the TOC looked very interesting to me not the title Acknowledgments ect.
As some of these e-books are like 2k a pop what ground breaking info do they offer thats different?Any way looking forward to the read myself and all this here makes me want to read it more.

First of all I'd like to say that I've only read half the book so far. Obviously this means it would be stupid to attempt to review it, but I just want to get my word in while there is some discussion about the book in this thread.

From the parts I have read, some of the analysis seems quite superficial. Thomas talks about C-betting and its profitability. He talks about C-betting Kxx dry flops later (or possibly before can't recall) and say's that when we have top pair we shouldn't C-b Kxx dry because we will get too many folds, we should check back and bluff catch. And to balance this since we aren't betting when we hit a hand, we shouldn't be C-betting this board?

I'd love to hear this elaborated on, have I mis interpreted? This is directly conflicting advice to the advice that, say, Tri Nguyen offers in poker blueprint, imo the most accomplished NL book ever made.

There are one or two wooly examples I've come across like this in the book so far that I just wouldn't even consider putting into my game, which is bad because thomas is clearly crushing and I want to be able to use his advice. But from watching videos by iRock, Matt Janda and some other very intelligent mid stakers over at Cardrunners, I just don't think I can take this advice on board.


I'd also like to add that some parts of the book I've read so far have been excellent, and I'm enjoying the book and have 100% learned something from it worth my 22$

In what ways do you think position helps the opponent if he flats your 4-bet with starting stacks of 110bb's? Even a very small 4-bet leaves the stack to pot ratio at most around 1.6:1 and probably less for most 4-bets. If he calls, are you firing out 1/3 pot and folding when you miss, or are you treating it like a shove and just giving up, or doing something else? I just feel like it should be a fairly straightforward matter to deduce a flop line for every conceivable action which has us either folding or getting in, given our opponent has 3-bet us wide but then called a 4-bet.

But I don't see the power of position really playing a role in any context at all once we 4-bet with 110bb stacks. Anything less than 160bb's really requires that you know ahead of time exactly how the hand is going to play out once you make the 4-bet. Stacks are just too shallow.

Also, 4-betting and then folding to a ship with AQs is kind of terrible IMO, although depending on your reasoning it can have merits. The problem is that if he is 3-betting light, then 4-bet/folding basically allows him to play perfectly given our exact hand, and folding weakens our perceived 4-bet range even though it's a good hand. So we loose the value it should be adding to our range. I think if you've decided he's light, you have to go with AQs and just know that the equity you lose from being behind when you're called is made up for by the times you pick up the 3-bet uncontested. And if he's not light enough for you to be confident in doing that, you can simply 4-bet small with a polarized range and toss AQs in this particular spot. (Calling 3-bets oop just spews money.)

Now then, a potential reason to 4-bet/fold AQs is if our opponent is super exploitable, 3-betting wide, but only shipping with a very strong range. So like if we have datamined a guy and just sat down at the table and haven't played with this guy but we still know he'll be light--but he doesn't know how we play--I can see making a case for this play. But I can't imagine anybody in an online 5-10 game being difficult enough that we feel we have to 4-bet but dumb enough to be so exploitable as to 3-bet light but fold the vast majority of those hands to a 4-bet.

(Interesting, in Rush, a situation were 4-bet/folding AQs is OK happens frequently. Because it takes more hands to see how often a guy 4-bets than it does to 3-bet, if you have 40-150 hands on a guy, and he has 3-bet say 7/20 times, and you've only had one or two 4-bet opportunities and haven't 4-bet, you can 4-bet him and he is forced to assume without any other info that your 4-bet is strong. This is a very rare case that only happens in a game like Rush where you don't play with the same player and he has little enough info on you that the discrepancy between reliable 3-betting info and reliable 4-betting info per number of hands played can be utilized. It's obviously highly exploitable and thus once you have more than a few hundred hands on a person--and he on you--you can't 4-bet light nearly as often.)

Anyway, back to my original question! What uses do you think position has in a 4-bet pot 110 bb's deep that can't be accounted and planed for ahead of time given such shallow stacks?

Also, I'm reading your book, and I really like it.

I wasn't ever involved in the whole "release Bakker's screen name" deal and I'm indifferent towards it, but I was wondering if he's made his SN public, and if not, why you say he's "clearly crushing"?

100 bb stacks, I'd much rather play against an aggressive opponent who three-bets bigger (lot of aggressive dead money)

Against a fish I'd rather 4-bet larger (3-bet larger, raise larger etc)...more passive dead money.

My mistake his SN isn't yet public, I thought I remembered reading somewhere on a cardrunners blog that he was a big mid stakes winner, but I can't think of where now


I have about 60 pages left in the book I'm quite disappointed and I'm willing to review that statement: I don't believe the advice this author is writing (that I've read so far) will help a solid 200nl players game. But I'll write a full review when I'm finished, pointing out some of the problems I've had with the book. Maybe it's just a radically different approach that I'm not used to

That's because there are so many more things you need to be doing right than what is in the book to "crush", doing some things one way or the other doesn't probably matter at all in the end. Reading this book and applying the advice won't make anyone win if he won't do the rest of the stuff well enough, either by intuition, or accidentally, or have studied and learned to do it somehow. That's just my guess though.

but something like not C-betting Dry boards with top pair, and then notC-betting them with air for balance seems kinda like a fundamental building block of someones game, and I just thought it seemed like strange advice for almost any situation

I was thinking more in lines of when you check back that Kxx flop, and villain starts donking into you on the turn (and following through on the river maybe), what do you do? Being able to read the situation and know your enemy and guess if you actually induced some bluffs or is he just doing it for value most of the time will be much more valuable. Dunno for sure but seems like those are the situations that books don't teach you, and winning players are good at evaluating and making decisions at?

I think the hand you're talking about occurs on page 71 which is part of the "Playing Against Short-Stackers" chapter. Hero has

KJ and the flop is:

Flop: K42

and the author states:

Of course later in the book there's a whole chapter on "Continuation Betting" where Thomas works out things when it's not a short-stacking situation.

MM

I understand that it's vs Short stackers, I realise that my original post wasn't very clear, apologies.

The problem I have came a few pages later (p77). I don't want to be quoting your whole book, but we basically flop air with the same flop. In the interest of balance, we don't want to C-bet this board now. It's just slightly backwards to me, that's the one perfect board I guess I was always told to C-bet. So the only issue I have so far is really the idea of balance in some of these spots.

Later we discuss betting the flop with a top pair (AJ onJ83ss I think) and then checked the turn when a king falls.

It seems to me that in this spot, that a check is difficult to balance assuming we are going to fire that card with our air too. Checking doesn't protect our two barrel range (with air) and it turns our hand face up. There's value to be had and we're giving his draw range a free card. We're also playing a guessing game on the river rather than maintaining the initiative ourselves. If we bet the turn in this spot, since "our opponent is loose" we protect our two barrel air range, get value, protect our hand, pick up the dead money, and buy a free showdown to eliminate guess work on the river.

Obviously I've thought a lot about this and could well be over thinking (or perhaps under-thinking and over-generalising) these spots.

But it's nice to see someone talking about different spots in books as gball said. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book and as I said, it's a good book so far with plenty of very clear and relevant ideas.

On some levels I think there is an over obsession with balance, although balance is good and definitely recommended (obv). This is a good board to both c-bet and check behind. How often or how little depends on the players you play with, image, etc. Aware opponents will expect you to bet here with about 100 percent of your range...it gets interesting when you check behind because most opponents will expect you to bet such an obvious flop, I think in some ways when you check behind you can get more credit and apply that later in the hand. Sometimes you just don't get credit for air when you check behind in position (be it on the flop, turn, etc). As it is I don't think a check turns our hand face up...well it turns it face up to air or maybe even hoping to induce/keep another hand in. If you check here and regularly get no credit, sounds like a fantastic spot to continually check behind and get more value.

Again, you're misrepresenting what the book says. For everyone else, here is what it says (and the opponent has a short stack):

Then you write:

First off, for everyone else, we're not in the "Playing Against Short-Stackers" chapter anymore and this example appears on page 139. The Hero is the cutoff and his raise is called by the big blind, and here is what the text says:

Again, I think it's fair to say that what you have written does not do a good job of representing what the text says.

I suspect that what may be happening is that you are having troble moving between exploitive play and game theoretical optimal play. But do not fear, our next book, The Intelligent Poker Player by Philip Newall, should help you in this area.

Best wishes,
Mason

ETA on that book Mason?

I don't mean to try and quote the book and I didn't want to start moaning or nit picking, so I'm sorry for mis-repping. I'm not trying to review the book, just pointing out some confusion I had with some of the spots. I'm not saying whats written in the book is wrong.

Perhaps I am mis-interpreting. I understand exploitative play vs optimal play to a decent extent. But I think then in some spots, the difference is skimmed over. I'll be re-reading this book even before I post a long review, likely on my blog @ cardrunners, and I'll make sure I have every thing straight before I talk about these spots in that. I don't want to quote the book irresponsibly as you think I might be.

Thanks for your response, I'd still like Thomas to perhaps step in and discuss some of the spots, but maybe that's too much to hope for.

Late March/Early April

Mason

I sure hope so. It's not fair to us at Two Plus Two or our new author Thomas Bakker when someone like yourself misrepresents, whether that was your intention or not, exactly what the book says.

On the other hand, if you disagree with a concept or an example, then that's what these forums, and particularly this one, are for. But we don't appreciate when someone inaccurately describes what's written in one of our books and then explains why the inaccurate description is wrong. There's really no excuse for it.

That's up to the author and Thomas is certainly aware of this thread since he has already participated in it. But if someone was misquoting what was in one of my books and then pointing out that this misquote is bad strategy, it's doubtful that I would give this person the dignity of a response.

Perhaps if you were to apologize for your actions, Thomas would be more inclined to answer your questions.

Mason