Just having a stab at Sklansky's ridiculous ego..

Ben Susky wrote an excellent foreword for the book

http://www.leggopoker.com/blogs/sauc...ook-11431.html

that was rejected by 2+2 most likely because it in a way kind of argues against something Sklansky wrote in The theory of poker. Instead there is a hilarious and completely unnecessary "cautionary note" from Sklansky himself, just to make sure his name appears in print in the book. Then there's those stupid footnotes..

Don't we get to see the footnotes in the EPUB copy, or am I doing something wrong as a Adobe Digital Editions reader noob?

Hi,
I have a doubt in the river, pag 433.
Why we use as bluff 98s and 87s instead of some combos AK?

Thanks you.

There are footnotes in the pdf and paper versions? Now I feel ripped off. The content for the epub should be identical to both of the other two.

this is the best book that i have ever read on poker

thanks for sharing what others definitely want kept secret

I just want to keep pointing out that 2+2 spent a TON of time working on this book, and it's unreasonable to suggest they tried to do anything other than make the best possible book. The book is a lot better than it otherwise would have been if I had published it myself (and a probably quite a bit cheaper) or went with another publisher (who would not put as much work into it).

It's pretty common for things to just not work out when you're working on a big project. Everyone rightfully thinks Ben is awesome (myself included) because he's outlier smart, outlier hard working, doesn't have an ego despite being so incredibly successful, etc. But just because he's clearly a "good guy" doesn't mean there needs to be a "bad guy" when things don't work out.

Almost all ranges are my best guesses for what I can reasonably do in a couple of hours per spot. None of them are near perfect and it's not very hard to find slight changes that will make them better. They're hopefully just (a lot? depends on stakes I guess) better ranges than your opponents will use in similar spots, so you'll win money.

Just a quick question, how are people approaching reading the book? I feel like it should be studied like a text book, where you work through and take notes but it's pretty time consuming.

Is this what everyone else is doing?

i am reading it very slowly & just trying to understand the mathmetics as best as i can

i think that if you can just incorporate 25% of what he teaches into your game at first, you will be more successful

you can then build on your GTO the more you play

I've had the benefit of watching all of MJ's videos when they came out on CardRunners, so in many ways what I have read so far is mainly revision. But the book's still a great addition to the videos that I've already seen as it puts them all into a solid framework.

So to answer the question, I've currently reached the end of part 5, since buying the book last Friday. Reading just one part through slowly and carefully, then waiting till the next before re-reading and progressing to the next part. Then I plan to read it all over again, with the appropriate CR video review between each part. But then maybe I'm a slow learner. I like to take things in small chunks and then repeat after a day, a week and a month to commit to memory.

And after that, I can foresee quite a bit of time spent with a hand replayer and flopzilla to carry the theoretical over to fixing real errors at the table.

Sounds good, I keep getting motivation spurts to take my time and slowly work through it, going through all my hands and really figuring out my ranges for each spot but I never seen to have the time

Finally made it to the hand examples and I have a couple of questions on hand #1 pg426.

1: In the CO callers range, is there a reason you're raising 98 for value but flatting 67 on the A75 flop even though 67 has a little more equity than 98? And then on the turn you show that you're folding 67 instead of calling?

2: In the UTG openers range on the turn you show check calling 3 combos of KQ but show check folding those hands on river even though we hit trip K's and villain can have a bluffing range. Is this because if villain is betting a balanced range then we are indifferent to calling and have basically lost the hand anyways so it doesn't matter if we c/c or c/f? Just feels dirty folding a pretty strong hand. Something I would prob never do in game if I got here with that hand.

Just wanting to understand why you're doing certain things with specific hands that I would have done differently so I have less questions moving forward. Thanks

I have a weird question but, what is the math used in most of the calculations?

So I can study how it is being applied?

I would like to understand what is going on with the #'s and don't understand all of it.

(I'm obv not a math guy)



Zy

I'm very only early on in the book, and a butt load of the math is intuitive to me (spent the last 4 years doing pretty tough maths every day haha) but what does help is taking certain equations and writing down their basic forms.

So for example, in the section in the start where we figure out how often ppl must defend vs 3bets to avoid 3betting being immediately profitable, you can turn the equation into breakeven 3b success % = amount risked/total to win.

You can do this for every equation if you take the time to think about it, and then it becomes obvious why this is the case for each.

Google: expected value calculations poker
and you should be able to find a bunch of explanations that will help you with
following the math in the book.

Its fascinating that a 300 page GTO book can be written on such simple things haha

Question about page 37.

"But when the opponent folds, assuming the 4-bet (to 24 big blinds) comes from the preflop raiser, the 5-bet bluffer will win on average 36.5 big blinds.

36.5 = 24 + 11 + 1.5

where
1.5 is the amount of the blinds,
11 is the amount of the 3-bet raise, and
24 is the amount of the 4-bet raise."

Aren't we forgetting about the 3.5BB open? Should the actual total be 40 big blinds instead of 36.5?

The 3.5bb open is in with the 24bb 4 bet.

1. I want to raise with at least some flush draws, and honestly just 9d8d probably isn't enough (I'd probably add one or two more now). 7d6d probably just slipped through the cracks (since it was written as 76s with 3 combos total) as there's no way I'd fold that on the turn. I like raising 7d6d on the flop too.

2. I might be misunderstanding this, but I only show the ranges for the OOP player after they've bet the previous street. So if KQ was check-called on the turn, where does it say I'm check-folding it on the river? Let me know if I'm misunderstanding something and what page I should be looking at.

And just to update everyone on the corrections, I'm currently going over them but am having to sort through them and see which ones I think should be posted. Most are very, very small and I don't think it's helpful to show a correction for something like a missed apostrophe or a very small rounding error (it'll just make the front page messy). That said all the corrections are being noted and if the book goes through another print run I'll give them all of them I agree with to Mason and I'm sure he'll look over them.

I kind of figured that was the case, just wanting to make sure.

Oops you are correct, we c/c KQ on the turn so it's not in our betting range on the river. I've done that more than once going through the HH's.

Can someone help me with the range i call 4 bets ? IP and OOP ?

And Ranges i call ip and oop a squeeze ?

And Ranges for squeezing ?

i cant find in the book ...

Hi again Matt, if you get a moment(and i realise this is probably impossible to answer), but in the situation where there is a pfr, a call and a squeeze then a 4bet from the pfr, avarage sizings and 100bb stacks, do you think the caller should have a continue range vs the 4bet?

Similar question, do you think players should have a cold call range vs 3bets?(i don't because the odds are terrible for a call).

I intentionally left out some ranges (and honestly, quite likely should have left out more of them) because they clearly need to use mixed strategies (so you can't always call, fold, or 4-bet the same hands). Also, none of the ranges can be solved for anyways, so you can make your best guess using the methods shown in the book.

Calling squeezes IP isn't much different from calling 3-bets IP and the ranges most people use look very similar.