I had a big issue with this as well. This is just another way that the author's advice is out of touch with modern 5-10 NL games. If you can find me an online 5-10 game where people are making it 3x or 3.5x on the button with shortstackers in the blinds, please direct me to it!

I have the book but after reading a lot of negative posts here i am not sure i am going to read it. Does anyone have some info about author? I really dont know that guy. If he writes about NL1000 or low i dont know he should at least say his screen name or something. Now guy XY writes a book with the title : crushing ....... super cool book. But i want to know who is it.

Thomas Bakker

Thomas Bakker, the author of the newest publication from Two Plus Two: Analytical No-Limit Hold ’em Crushing Mid-Stakes Short-Handed Games, is a twenty-year-old poker player and college student from the Netherlands. At fifteen, he learned about poker and started playing with friends. Three years later, he started playing online and quickly moved up to mid-stakes games, mostly playing short-handed and heads-up cash games.
Thomas is currently studying for degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science with a strong interest in game theory, statistics, and data mining. He is also using these skills to develop methods for analyzing many millions of hands played at a poker site for the purpose of catching possible cheaters.


http://www.twoplustwo.com/books/authors/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=111

I need your opinion. I have bought the book but haven't read it yet. It is written "mid-stakes" on it but then I suddenly remember that I am still in the micros (Am I not dumb?) Anyway, do you think I should buy CTS $947 ebook? Or is the $5000 audio book better? Please answer quickly. According to the daily variance web site, there are only 2 ebooks left! And it is 48% off! I really don't want to miss a good bargain!

Lol - you're actually considering paying $5000 for an audio book?

i was gonna make a sarcastic comment about a $5000 book being a bargain for a microstakes player but then i got worried you might actually take it seriously.

Buy pokerblueprint and SSNL and you will be fine

when someone writes a book called "crushing...", it seems reasonable to ask for a graph. anyway...

the book seems like it's worth reading but i don't like the 3betting section (as well as the SSing section).
He says that when we 4bet we should do so to 36bbs (110deep) or go all in. This is apparently cos 4betting more is equivalent to going all in and 4betting less offers good calling odds.
I would really like to see a justification of the latter statement (smaller4b offers good odds) but this is brushed over. Amazing that the one key and controversial statement in the chapter is not justified while lots of other things, which i have seen in print before, are justified.
He then goes on to say that 3betting to 36bbs pretty much pot commits you anyway.

The "even smaller" 4b is fairly common in 1/2 games today and, i suspect, in higher games as well. Which leads me to a question...

when was this book actually written?

Look at post #63.

Mason

so it was written in 2008?

No.

MM

This is definately not a book about crushing mid stakes!
"Analytical" is also misleading because the book does not go in depth in any topic, except maybe shortstacking which is not needed at all.

A lot of things in the book is flawed, especially 3b ranges.
Maybe there can be some basic info to be had for a struggling player at nl10-nl25.
However for anyone who beats nl25+ i would NOT recommend this book.

Jimmy, could you be more specific? Whats wrong with the 3-bet part, for example? What other things are wrong?

One example would be on p.206:
There is a picture of a 5 player table with a highlighted BTN and a BB which says "Hero".
Then in the text it says:
"First two players fold. Hero raises to $35 and the small blind folds. The big blind raises to $135 and Hero calls. The pot is now $275."
So we can assume it is Hero on BTN and not BB.

Continues:
"If we give our opponent a pre-flop range of 88+, AQo+, ATs+ and KQs which is around 7 percent of all hands..."

Seriously, which 5/10 player online has a 7% 3b range BB vs BTN with only value hands?

Then there are calculations etc. based on this range which is horrible.

I see a lot more bad examples in the book, this was just one.

Ok, tack

in about half of this. it's pure gold.

I ordered the book a couple of days ago...and should be getting it soon. I guess my question would be in the above example...did the analysis make sense based on the the villain's perceived range...of course...you can question the perceived range...but I think in fairness...both are important

There are still poker rooms that have tables with 20bb minimum buy-ins. In fact, such tables exist on almost all sites, and often have substantial traffic. If you do not know how to beat those games, you are excluding a large number of potentially profitable tables. If I remember correctly, much of that specific section was indeed written before the big changes to buy-ins occurred on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker around April 2010 (I assume that's what you are referring to), but those changes did not completely eliminate short-stacked games just yet; the contents of the chapter are still very relevant today.

I am not sure exactly what ranges you are referring to here. I don't think I have supplied any supposedly optimal three-bet ranges in the book, except for those in the short-stacking chapters. The example JimmyRare posted in post #167 does not imply that I think that all players have a BB-vs-BTN three-bet range of top 7%. It just uses such an opponent for the example.

It is true that I did not supply detailed assumptions to use in practical situations, e.g. I did not include a table showing "Common three-bet ranges for players with VPIPs within certain ranges". This is mostly because three-bet ranges (and many other ranges) are extremely opponent-dependent. In my opinion, the correct way to play solid poker is to practice hand-reading and determine those ranges for your opponents by yourself, not by memorizing 5 entries from a table. The book gives its readers both the tools to learn hand-reading and the mathematics to then find the best decision. I think that ultimately, this will teach a thinking, studying player to make better decisions than if he were to simply use assumptions and direct results from some book (e.g. "Always three-bet with range X when your opponent has a PFR of 18%").

I am a beginner. Just learned poker and started to play once a week about 1 year ago. I am considering playing online at $.1/.2 blind. I been playing at .5/1 house game once a week as well. The people that I play are, just like myself, ABC poker skill. I would like to know if this book will help me get started or if it is too advance for someone my level. Also, any book recommendation for someone my level?

For stakes that small, you are probably better off with verneers free pdf or harrington on online 6-max cash

I skimmed this book and I found the part about visualizing opponent's ranges in a graphical format to be very helpful.

Sorry for my bad english, but I have an important question related to the book. My math is not good at all. (But it becomes better) so I need some help pls.

I like the book very much and it helped me a lot. I work a lot with it. But beside the small mistake in one of the combos equation and another small mistake where the the positions are wrong (both already mentioned in this thread) I really think it is one of the best books besides MOP and TOP, because it teaches you the basic analytic tools to improve yourself on your own.

But there is one thing that gets me completely on tilt. And that is the page 198. I try for some hours now to get the formula in a script. But it does not work. I solved it with some software and by hand but the results I get for the EV of hero's 3bet don't match with the results in the table on page 198. I used the values of the table and plugged it into the formula. But not one of the results for the EV of 3betting are the same as the the results in the book on that page. So I think the table is wrong?

But thats not the only thing on the page 198. I think the formula is wrong also! not just the results in the table.

the scenario in the book goes: (eff.st: $1000, blinds:$15, CO opens $35,
Hero(BU) 3bets to $110, CO folds or shoves)

Variables: r - PFRvillain; a - perc.hands vill. 4bets;
t - perc. of hands Hero 3bets; c - Heros calling 4bet range; eq - Heros equity
when all in

We want to know the EV of Heros 3bet (given Hero has a hand in his 3bet range) (btw.:there can some parenthesis be wrong in my formula)

EV = ((r-a)/(r))*($50) +
(a/r)*((c/t)*((2015)*(EQ)-1000)-((t-c)/(t))*(110))

but I guess it must be: EV = ((r-a)/(r))*($50) +
(a/r)*((c/t)*((2015)*(EQ)-890)-((t-c)/(t))*(110))


I think it is okay to translate the formula like this:

((r-a)/(r)) -> prob.villain folds
(a/r) -> prob. villain 4 bets
(c/t) -> prob. hero calls 4bet
((t-c)/(t)) -> prob. hero folds vs 4bet

so the formula becomes like this: (so some of you can maybe see better what I mean and where my problem is.)

p(villain folds) * ($50) +
p(villain 4bets) * ((p(hero calls 4bet)*($2015)*(Equity) - $1000)
- p(herofolds vs 4bet)*($110))

I think we just have to call 890 instead of the $1000 effective stack in the equation, because when we get 4bet we only need to call $890 because we already 3betted to $110 so we just need to call $890 to realize our equity in an all in pot.

Am I right or is the formula correct in the book?

Because otherwise, if it is not correct this has an huge impact on the $EV. Please tell me, someone who really knows. Maybe Thomas Bakker can help or some other one who knows good about math.

This is the importanst formula for me, but it is the only one I really had some problems with. I really need help in this question before I am getting complete nuts, because of all the time I worked on it.


cliffnotes:
- I think the formula on page 198 is wrong and hero just has to call $890 instead of the $1000 in the formula.

- I think the table on page 198 is wrong also, regardless if Iam using the original value of $1000 or my own value of $890 to call heros 4bet. The results never matched with the results in the table. (Some were quit close, some results were far off track)

ZOMG my english is bad as hell (importanst -> most important haha) but I can`t find the edit button. It's just because I really don't know if the $1000 are the correct value in the formula or it should be $890 like I mentioned. maybe the 1000 bucks are correct because we want to estimate an somekind overall EV in this spot. But I hardly can imagine that. $890 seems like the correct value in that term, to me (math noob^^) because it is the calling all in value($1000 is the effective stack but we need just to call $890, becaue we already invested $110 for our 3bet and the risk/cost of our 3bet is in the last term of the equation.

And please look someone with knowledge the tables up on page 198. If you plug the numbers in it is really easy and quick to solve and maybe someone can give some correct numbers, if the formula is correct. My result for the first line instead of EV: $-29.82, is an EV of -$22.57 and in the fifth row I get an EV of $48.43 instead of $3.33. Would be nice if someone can post his results. (I don't find all my equations and results at the moment.)

When I use the formula as given on page 198, for the first line I get -22.40 and for the fifth line I get 48.53. My difference with Pokerfu is rounding error. I agree with Pokerfu, I think the numbers in the table are wrong.