Hi Everyone:

Our book, The Intelligent Poker Player by Philip Newall has now been updated. All that we have done is some minor editing. However, the kindle, which was originally done by Amazon, has been redone and it should now look much better.

By the way, this is a great book and is worth reading no matter what form of poker you like to play although it'll help limit hold 'em players the most. Here is the Amazon page for the paperback:

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-P...srpt=ABIS_BOOK

and here is the Amazon page for the kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MGDQQFL

Also, here's The Table of Contents:

.................................................. ....Table of Contents


About Philip Newall v

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

Part One: Strategy 3
...Introduction 4
...Two Schools of Poker 6
......Exploitive Poker and the Beauty Contest Game 7
......The Nash Equilibrium 10
......Simplifications 14
......The Two Schools are More Alike than You Think 15
...Information Hiding 21
...Rules for Preflop Limit Hold ’em 32
......Exploitive Adjustments 40
......Blind-Versus-Blind (BvB) Play 42
......Capping 46
......Heads-up Games 53
......Conclusion 58
...Appendix to Rules for Preflop Limit Hold ’em: Polaris’s Non-Standard Preflop Plays 60
......Calling on the Button 61
......Capping 70
...Analyzing the Opening Round in Other Popular Forms of Poker 79
......Omaha Eight-or-Better Hi/Lo 79
......2-to-7 Triple Draw Lowball 82
......The Stud Games: Seven-Card Stud, Stud Eight-or-Better Hi/Lo, and Razz 85
......The Big Bet Games: No-Limit Hold ’em and Pot-Limit Omaha 88
...End Play 93
......Balancing Your Checking Range 100
......Asymmetric Ranges in Practice 102
......Returning to Real Poker: Card Removal and Split Pots 107
......Scare Cards 112
......Incorporating Exploitive Poker 114
...Checking Back the Flop 116
......Play on a Three-Flush Flop 118
......Your Range of Checking Hands 121
......Analyzing a Sample of Flop Checks 125
......Polaris’s Flop Checks 140
.........Pairs 141
.........Showdownable High Cards 143
.........Weak Draws 146
......Multiway 150
...Middle Game Concepts 152
......Bluffing 152
......Planning Ahead 154
.........Check-Call 155
.........Check-Raise 158
.........Check-Fold 160
......Checking to the Raiser 164
......Checking Back the Turn 176
......Information Hiding, Again 176
......Information in Multiway Pots 184
......Exploiting Imbalances 189
......Waiting Until the River to Raise 189
...The Anatomy of a Hand 194
...Man Versus Machine 221
...No-Limit Hold ’em: Applications and Extensions 236
......Hand Examples 244

Part Two: Other Topics 265
...Introduction 266
...Bankroll Management and Shot Selection 267
......The Kelly Criterion 268
......Applying the Kelly Criterion to Poker 270
......Conclusion 276
...Risk Preferences: From EV to EU 278
......Risk Preferences in The Brain 288
......Prospect Theory 291
......Comparing Expected Utility and Prospect Theory 294
......Conclusion 297
...Psychological Biases 299
......Overconfidence 299
......Framing 302
......The Importance of Emotion 306
......Cognitive Dissonance 308
......Projection Bias 310
......Conclusion 313
...Personality 315
......Conscientiousness 316
......Neuroticism 317
......Extraversion 318
......Openness 321
......Agreeableness 322
......Conclusion 323
...Valuing Your Poker Business 324
...Investing 335
......Consumption Smoothing 336
......Behavioral Errors 338
......Beating the Market 340
......Labor Income Risk 342
......Conclusion 346
...Predicting Future Poker Returns 347
......Barriers to Entry Model 348
......Predator-Prey Dynamics 352
......Conclusion 355
...Applied Game Theory 359
......The Sitting Out Dilemma 359
......The No Trade Theorem 364

Conclusion and Some Personal Comments 369

Appendix A: Further Reading 377
...Poker 377
...Game Theory 379
...Investing and Finance 380

Appendix B: Game Theory 383
...Game 1: Saddle Point 383
...Game 2: Mixed Strategies 386
...Game 3: Poker 388

Index 395

And here's an excerpt.

Mason

.............................................Middle Game Concepts


In this chapter, I will attempt to cover some points of play that appear in the “middle” of a hand, not at the beginning or the end, and in many ways, the middle part of a hand is the most difficult.

Out of all the rounds, the opening round contains the smallest possible universe of situations and is also the round we play most often. My recommended approach to the first two cards cuts the complexity further: By neglecting certain strategic options, we can make the game easier for us to play while making it tougher for opponents to read us.

The end round is also relatively simple. It’s the only part of the hand where we don’t have to play with one eye toward what could happen later on. Looking at a model of the last betting round can help us play earlier streets too: it can show us which hands to bet (and in approximately what proportion between bluffs and value bets), and also the range of hands that should check. When playing the middle streets, you should mentally picture your range as a line (like in the U[0,1] model), then subdivide that line into action regions and place your current hand in the correct region.

With all of these lessons learned from the other streets, playing the middle game should become much easier. So, let’s move on to some important middle game concepts.

Bluffing

On the river, you should bluff with your worst hands (if nobody has bet) or with the best of your worst hands (if there has been a bet). In the former case, you bluff with the worst hands since these hands have the lowest chance of winning when both players check to see a showdown. In the latter case, since there has already been a bet, you will have to fold some hands. Therefore, fold your worst holdings and bluff raise with the hands that are just barely too weak to call.

For the player last to act, the same logic of bluffing holds on the earlier streets. If nobody has bet, he should bluff his worst hands since they gain the most from forcing a fold and have the lowest chance of improvement with a free card. If somebody has bet, he should fold his worst hands and bluff-raise with the best hands that are too weak to call.

On the earlier streets, it’s more complicated when first to act. When nobody has bet the probability of you carrying certain hands to the next round should depend on your opponent’s tendencies.

Suppose your opponent will always check if you do. Therefore, checking will guarantee seeing the next card. In this case, bluff with your worst hands and check with the slightly better ones (since they gain more from the free card than the worst hands).

But what if your opponent will always bet? Now if you check a weak hand, it will be necessary to fold; your only chance of seeing the next card with these hands is if you bet and get called. In this case, check and fold your worst hands and bet the slightly better bad hands as a semibluff (since they have a better chance of improving on the next card).

If you are playing in an exploitive way, then your choice of bluffing hands out of position would depend on your opponent: how often does he check relative to betting? Against someone who usually bets, it’s best to bluff hands with a couple of outs as opposed to those with no outs.

Unexploitable (GTO) ways of playing, it seems, are more complicated here. Which hands to bluff depends on my opponent’s optimal betting strategy after a check, but this in turn depends on my checking strategy, which depends on numerous factors: the board, the size of the pot, the asymmetry of the hand ranges, etc. …

Planning Ahead

I often see players making routine continuation bets on the turn without planning ahead. These spots occur much more frequently on the turn than the river since on the river there is less betting for protection and less raising, and there are much better pot odds on the flop. A player might raise preflop, bet the flop, and automatically bet the turn with a fair hand, then get raised and suddenly be facing a tough decision. Here’s an example:

Game: $2-$4 limit hold ’em — 5 players with blinds of $1 and $2.

Preflop: Hero is the small blind with the A♣9♣.

Action: The first player folds. The cutoff raises and the button folds. Hero 3-bets, the big blind folds, and the cutoff calls. There is now $14 in the pot.

Flop: 5♦4♦3♠

Action: Hero bets and the cutoff calls. There is now $18 in the pot.

Turn: Q♥

Action: Hero bets. The cutoff raises.

Hero was strongly inclined to fold even thought he had ace-high and probably seven outs or more. The trouble with bet-folding a hand with this much strength is that it unbalances your range and makes bluff-raising the turn incredibly attractive to your opponent (since so many of your hands are bet-folding). Free showdown raising the turn — raising the turn and checking the river — is a highly used play at the lower limits and bet-folding a hand like this makes the play profitable for your opponent.

If bet-fold here is preferred to bet-call, then I would instead recommend checking this hand and often calling all the way to showdown. Note that there is little reason to bet this hand: better hands probably won’t fold — it isn’t a bluff — and worse hands probably won’t call — it isn’t a value bet. Since this is limit hold ’em, we can’t bet enough to force any, but the weakest, draws to fold, and even though continuation betting is a routine play, in this situation it doesn’t accomplish anything, so why not check?

When checking, it’s important to do so with a wide range of hands. (See “Balancing Your Checking Range” starting on page 100 in the “End Play” chapter.). Some hands should check-fold, more hands should check-call (due to the pot size), and others should check-raise. Of course, the question of whether to check or to always bet depends on the asymmetry of the ranges, and when your average hand is much stronger than your opponent’s you can get away with always betting. But this will typically not be the case heads-up;

typo in the OP, book title is The Intelligent Poker Player not The Professional poker player

Hi options:

Thanks for catching this and I've made the fix.

Best wishes,
Mason

Great book!

Really, really good book.

Great book, really smart author. Many poker books go into psychology, but this one breaches sociology. Recently read it and loved it although noticed it took AlOT of ideas from 'the Mathematics of Poker (Chen, Ackerman) but presented them in a way thats accessible to laymen. Same use of toy games, Bayesian inference, Kelly betting, and more.

Got the most out of part 2. Really refreshing to hear in depth talk about why we approach issues irrationally, instead of typical statements that we do but we shouldn't.

+1 Intelligent Poker Player should be default for LHE book IMO along with part 2 Further Limit Holdem.