Didn't have much time, so I only made it into day 2 coverage. What I can say so far is that he plays his position and the players. When it comes to calling all-ins by smaller stacks he is using a cashgame strategy. This means he will call in +EV situations even if he loses in 9 times out of 10.

Up to day 2 there is really nothing special in the book. Maybe it will change later on.

I don't agree with this... he will control pot size to make his EV a positive one. He is generally looking for a pot equity of 30% or more - meaning he likes calling with pocket pairs or two low cards if he is putting his opponents on two high cards.

The one thing that bothered me about the book was that he didnt list the stack sizes of the players that limped or raised in front of him when he played. Often he left them out or put them in after he folded.

Remember, he was playing poker at the time. I'm pretty impressed that he got as many details as he did into it.

I just finished reading the book (and watching the tournament coverage on Pokertube) and this is definitely my favorite poker book. Obviously you're not going to learn as much as you would from reading something like Theory of Poker, but you still learn a lot and its very interesting.

I also thought Gus came off very classy. Watching the tournament coverage there were quite a few times where I thought Fricke came off as a bit of an ass but I didn't get any of that from Gus' book. He points out some places where he thought Fricke made some mistakes but it was always in a professional way and he was doing the same thing with his own play.

All-in-all, I definitely found it a good read and gained a lot of respect for Gus Hansen.

I just passed where he knocked Lee Nelson out. VERY interesting & easy to read. What blows my mind is how people were just folding to him whenever he called a raise. I mean time after time. Like how he explains what he was thinking as me made his call. Some very funny lines. I also just read the baseball analogy, pretty funny.

Pretty sure he meant four outfielders and no infielders. If I'm being leveled, oh well.

I was a bit disappointed but only because it's Gus and my expectations were high. It seemed like he could have gone further on several points, instead of having so many quick and repetitive descriptions. Still, it's a fun read - if you can stomach the corny writing style - and the crucial hands are all very interesting.

No, that's not what he meant. He bungled the analogy so much that one can't help but crack up while reading it. Here is the entire quote, in all its glory: As a diehard Red Sox fan, I can assure you there isn't a single thing in that analogy that makes any sense whatsoever. For starters, bunting has nothing to do with the outfielders. As for the other parts, the total opposite would be true. Four outfielders would turn triples into doubles, doubles into singles, and singles into outs. I'm pretty certain he meant to say two outfielders, but even then, the bunting part wouldn't make any sense. Not to mention baseball teams play with three outfielders ... so "only four outfielders" is laughable in and of itself. Oh well. It gave me a laugh, that's for sure.


Anyways, I finally finished the book and I really enjoyed it. The main thing I took out of it was strategy when playing out of the blinds. He really goes against the grain here. While most tell you to play cautiously and conservatively out of the blinds, Gus basically says to throw all of that out the window. His blind strategies include:

1. Defending your blind with any decent hand, mostly because of the great pot odds
2. Playing back against late position raisers when they seem relatively weak (nothing new, but he does emphasize it)
3. He absolutely HATES the commonly accepted mantra of "checking to the raiser." If Gus hits any part of the flop, he's leading out. I'm talking bottom pair on a dry board, a gutshot with two overs .. basically anything.

I've incorporated this blind strategy into my game with very good results so far (albeit with an extremely small sample size.) Blind strategy is certainly the biggest thing I personally have taken from this book. I definitely recommend it regardless. It's unlike anything else out there and comes from a player whose results speak for themselves. The format gets repetitive and somewhat boring, but his hand analysis is fantastic. You gotta love Gus' sense of humor as well. Where else can you read gems like, "No reason to slowplay my pair of Treys" (with 23s on a 843 rainbow flop) and "I call in my BB with the suited eight gapper."

It's definitely not a beginner's book, as they probably won't take anything meaningful from it, but it is one that intermediate and advanced players should not go without reading.

I got a laugh out of it too, and his meaning was mostly clear (changing players = changing the game). Although bunting would be more effective with only two outfielders since the infielders would have to play back more to help cover the outfield.

I really like how he talked about the ratio of the SB to the antes. A lot of his blind defenses are based on the fact that the ante gives the BB some crazy good calling odds.

My one disagreement is that I think he gives too much credit to the showdown value of a hand. If your hand has a 33% chance of winning by the river and you're getting 2:1 it might still be a bad call because you're unlikely to see the cards you need to see for free.

I think Gus plays well enough that he can minimize this, but most beginner and intermediate players can't.

I'm pretty sure he meant four outfielders AND no other players.

That still wouldn't make any sense, as the pitcher and catcher could cover second and third base on anything hit to the outfield. Which, with no infielders, would be everything. It would allow more hits, but they would mostly be singles. It's not a big deal at all, as I completely understand what he was trying to say, I just thought it was funny the way he worded it. It came off as him trying to make an analogy for the American market that he wasn't completely comfortable making. Which made it even funnier.

He made an analogy earlier in the book relating to hockey and soccer that worked much better. He was talking about how the fewer the players there are, the greater an impact one leaving has. In a soccer match, when you go from 11 players to 10 because of a red card, it doesn't have as great an impact as in hockey, when you go from 5 to 4 on a power play for the other team. It was his way of saying that going from 9 handed to 8 handed isn't nearly as great a change in table dynamics as going from 3 handed to heads-up is, and it worked. Let's just say his baseball analogy didn't work quite as well.

I also agree with joey joe joe jr shabadoo's comment. Gus does seem to call based purely on showdown equity, which seems a little wacky since calling from the blind certainly doesn't guarantee a showdown. When you factor in steal equity, which is high given his predilection towards leading out and his opponents folding, it does make sense. You're right though, it's not something that can be utilized universally.

I am not sure what exactly he is looking for, but the way he describes it, his calls are purely based on pot-odds - at least half way through the book. Theoretically speaking this is the wrong approach for a tournament. ICM may not make a huge difference at the early or mid stages of a tournament, but you cannot totally ignore it.*

The reason why he is so successful is not his donk-calls, it is because he is stealing way more than his fair share. His whole game is based on fold-equity. He simply plays 2-card-chicken with them. Maybe this will change in the later stages of the book, I can't tell yet.



* You may want to read the article by Chen/Ankenman in IG: http://www.conjelco.com/IG/IG23.pdf

Typical example what a donk he is: Hand 141

Ross Boatman moves all-in 2 off the button with 15 BB.
Gus has A-6o, needs "about 45%" equity and calls.

Now what sort of range does he put him on? No comment as usual and this the big weakness of this book. He never talks about ranges!

A-6o is 41.45% against the top 25% of hands and 51.21% against the top 50% hands. So it looks like he assumes Boatman makes such a move with something like the top 33%, hands like 6-5s, Q-7s and A-2o or even worse. With 4 guys to act? NO WAY!

For good reason Botman turns over A-9o (top 21.6%) and wins. The good news is that Gus remarks that his call was debatable and he should have let that hand go. Good in retrospect, but during actual play he looked like a total donk. Again, the reader gets only presented with the better play (fold), but no specific reasons given.

Just got the book from amazon today. read through the first two days. I was surprised to see two glaring grammatical errors on the very first page. I wonder who was doing Gus' proof-reading?

To Chip Reese-

Remembering the Ones who left way to soon
but still enrished our lives in many ways.

Other wise, a good read so far and I definitely have a few things to try tonight...

Guys

He meant four "fielders" in the analogy.

That's the Danish spelling.

Reasoning like this is why Gus does so well. You said Gus needs about 45% equity to be profitable. Lets assume that Botman does this with top 25% (which is very reasonable) so given what you said he actually only has 41.45% equity.

We're talking about a mistake that'll 'cost' him a few BB. In exchange people get to call him a donkey and make ridiculous calls against him for actual big bets.

I wasn't talking about him betting, I was talking about him calling. If people get the wrong impression about his play because of that is not my problem.

another great thread!!

i think this book provides interesting info on three highly related areas: 1) play from the blinds, 2) heads-up flops´3) orphan pots........... basically when playing TAG (like most of us. NOT gus of course), a large % of your hands will be from the blinds, big blind especially. so i think you really need to think about how to play that Q7o or J7o (or even much worse).... seems like pro´s are fearless and highly efficient at picking up orphan pots (even a mediocre pro like vanessa rousso puts a huge emphasis on it six-handed. too many inappropriate spots though for her)

Yeah, his discussion on blind play has made me change mine. If antes have kicked in and the first raise is standard and from the highjack or later, it's been working well seeing the flop with any two and making the texture of the flop the key factor rather than what's in my hand (probably standard for a lot of players, but new to my play).

[QUOTE=smbruin22;4152650]another great thread!!

QUOTE]

As the creator, I say thank you, but it is only a great thread because it is a great book and the thread has had some great posts. So I say thank you to Gus Hansen for writing the book and thank you to the posters.

Card Player just posted (about an hour ago) the review by Tim Peters. At the end of the review is a short interview with Gus Hansen.

Link please?

Given the contentious relationship that I believe exists between 2plus2 and Card Player, let's not and say I did.