No. We never turned down Little. Unlike many other publishers, we don’t recruit books. We wait for something to be submitted to us and that never happened with Little.

I’m just approaching the half way mark of this book and are not close to making a decision on it. However, it does contain a number of statements which I believe that someone with a good background in poker and mathematical statistics would not make, and, in my opinion, this has to include Little who has stated here that as publisher and editor he spent 200 hours working on the book.

Mason

I bought it. I found the book too theoretical and prefer more practical works.

To the OP:

For a live 1/2 - 2/5 player, MPT is probably not the optimal (heh) resource-- I would consult Jonathan Little's Mastering Small Stakes No Limit, or better yet pay something like $60/month for his Premium Coaching website with countless cash game and tournament content that, if implemented, will certainly make you a winner at these levels and a bit beyond (really, if you mastered all of his content, you'd at least be competitive at any stake, but you'd have to study more theory and solver work at some point). It will be a highly +EV purchase for you.

MPT, however, is a tremendous resource and I would still advise purchasing it. It is a very small investment. This is especially true if you play online 6max poker or against higher level thinking opponents, and it is a good supplement to Little's more "practical" advice at these stakes.

There may be specific errors in the first edition as others have mentioned (I pointed out to Acevedo that some of the graphs have missing labels that make certain segments un-interpretable, apparently a printing oversight, but he sent me correct screenshots). Errors in calculations and not core principles aren't really too important for me personally, since memorizing precise numbers is not a good way to learn poker. You can always re-calculate the correct pot size or EV of a hand, it is much harder to develop solver-approved tendencies to implement over tens of thousands of examples.

I don't agree MPT is not practical. There are other GTO books that are much worse in this regard. I actually think it covers a good ground between practice and theory, but you have to realize it is not an examples-based book. Most things in the cash game section are about frequencies, and he sets up things in terms of ranges and how it interacts with the board (e.g., c-betting frequency on a A76 board vs. a 654 board). It is not about "how to play AK" or "what do I do if I get check raised on the flop with an overpair" with worked out examples or discussing player profiles. It also doesn't get too deep into awkward spots frequently encountered in small stakes games, like 5-way pots, high rake, high preflop open sizes, etc. There is some exploit discussion but not too much. Again, go to Little for more of that, but MPT should also help build an intuition for dealing with out-of-sample situations. Once you know GTO principles, you "see" mistakes people frequently make more clearly. MPT has a large donk betting section, for example, and many players donk inappropriately in 1/2 games.

In fact, I have changed up some aspects of my out-of-position and c-bet game from tidbits I got already from MPT with positive success.

When, if ever, can we expect at least the more egregious errors to be corrected at least for the ebook version? Reluctant to purchase an unproofread book.

From the thread, I see all the errors listed here are trivial. The value of this book in my opinion comes from all the heuristics that explain why solver make the plays in different situations. It helped you save lots of time, and maybe costly mistakes in game when you draw incorrect conclusions from solver if you run simulations yourself.

I've listed some other errors in a couple of threads on our "Poker Theory Forum." You might want to check them out:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...heory-1752263/

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...layer-1751489/

I'm now just getting into the post flop play chapter. With that said, I think there's a good deal about this book to like. It goes into great detail through lots and lots of charts about how GTO strategy should change, sometimes very slightly, as the situation changes.

However, don't necessarily dismiss these errors as trivial. If some of this mistaken thinking carries over into his why the solver plays a particular situation as it does, it can cause you to make errors as well. So far, however, if this is happening, I don't think it's affecting things much.

Mason

Yeah I think my words were harsh. I went ahead and bought the book and am confident I will extract enough value from the pre flop solver aggregation and matrices alone.

In the Flop section (page 363), there is a chart that advocates cbetting MIN a high percentage of the time (the chart is sorted by strength of hand). This really surprised me, because I almost never see anyone cbetting a minbet. Given that this is such a radical deviation from standard play, I expected at least a paragraph dedicated to explaining why a minbet may be a good strategy, but I did not find any satisfying discussion on it within the book.

Does anyone have thoughts on this?

Ive seen LLinus min bet before

In the 6max cash section on page 154, the CO vs LJ chart shows that CO never flats a LJ open (i.e. plays a 3bet or fold strategy).

In the tournament section on page 271, the CO vs LJ chart shows that CO is calling with the majority of his playable hands.

It really surprises me that the cutoff defense strategy would change so drastically going from a cash game to a tournament. If I am indeed understanding correctly, I would be interested in some sort of explanation for why this is the case. Why can we flat from CO in a tournament and not in a cash game?

I haven't made it this far in the book (which I greatly enjoy thus far), but I can imagine this is due to a couple reasons:

1. The presence of the ante, coupled with the fact that in tournaments EP open raises are usually smaller (2-2.25x) than in cash games (2.5-3x), incentivizes all positions to play slightly more hands than what would be optimal in a cash game--including the introduction of a cold-calling range. The ante, in other words, functions as a sort of reverse-rake effect.

2. In a tournament, you are less likely to get 3-bet squeezed from the BU or the blinds because of the shallow stack depths and ICM structure. Squeezes are generally larger than standard ISO 3-bets, and commit a large portion of a player's stack preflop. As a result, squeezes in tournaments usually come in the form of "all in" and are therefore much rarer and easier to play against than a large 3-bet squeeze in a cash game. So cold-calling then goes up in value.

Presence of ante is most likely one of the reasons because on page 203 he says :

"For deep-stacked no-ante situations...ranges are generally tighter and the equilibrium strategies are very similar to those of cash games except there is no rake. This results in speculative hands increasing in value. Calling bets and playing post-flop becomes more attractive".

Which is great but, since I currently play in no-ante tournaments, it leaves me wondering what ranges I should be using, and specifically if I should have a 3bet or fold strategy from CO and HJ. I understand, however, that there's no way a book can have charts for every situation.

It appears he uses a 2.5x raise in cash and a 2.3x raise in MTTs. Shouldn't be too significant but you're right it is a difference.

The chances of being squeezed in a tournament seems to me very dependent on current stack sizes, and I'm not really sure if his tournament charts are considering ICM (I think they're not).

Thanks for the reply, I think you've touched on some of the major differences.

Hi Knight:

I think you have this right relative to ICM. That shouldn’t have much effect until late in the tournament anyway. Since I’m reading the book on a kindle there are location numbers and not page numbers, so I can’t look it up directly, but I suspect the stack sizes are different.

Best wishes,
Mason

Yes, the tournament chart is 60BB and I believe the cash chart is 100BB. So, I would expect to see different ranges, I just didn't expect the difference to be so drastic. Never flatting from CO and HJ with 100BB and flatting lots with 60BB is (to me, at least) a surprising result.

The book is excellent. It is nothing but an endless discussion of range vs range and how they interact. Get PIO or GTO+ etc and test some of what the authors saying and you'll see the value. As someone else posted, the MTT and 6max ranges are worth the price several times over.

The difference in the Cash / MTT ranges is because of Antes and the presence of rake in Cash games. I think it was solved for 500 zoom, where it's not uncommon to just 3bet / fold from all positions bar BTN - BB.

Thought it was a really great book, highly recommend.

I’m now 84 percent through the book. And while I agree that there is much good information here, the author has yet to mention multi-round Game Theory. So, unless it comes up later, this would be a major hole in this book.

As an example, the author states that for 20 BB stacks, CO versus the button, the “CO could easily opt for a 100% checking strategy with minimal to no EV loss.” Well, I’m moderately sure this example of hiding information (see The Intelligent Poker Player by Newall) is not true and the EV loss could be more than mimnimal, and multi-round Game Theory would provide the answer.

Now I’m not an expert on how the solvers work, so perhaps I’m wrong, but in either case it would be a worthwhile topic of discussion. Specially, in this example, does the solver stop all betting after the flop and look at the results on the river, or does the solver continue betting (which can include some checking) in a game theory fashion until all rounds of betting are complete or the 20BB are used up?

At the time that Modern Poker Theory was being written we had published two books, Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘em by Janda and Further Limit Hold ‘em by Newall, yes a limit book, that discussed this stuff. In addition, our new book The Theory of Poker Applied to No-Limit by Sklansky has a lengthy discussion of this idea.

Mason

Apologies if I am explaining something that you already know here, but I don't quite understand your comments on how the solver works.

This can be tested pretty easily, you run a simulation CO vs BTN 20 big effective, giving the CO the option to bet the flop, turn & river. You look at the EV across as many boards as you want to run (obviously the more you run, the more accurate results you get) you then run the same simulations without the option to Cbet the flop and look at the EV again.

At these stack depth, I would think that using a solid Check / Raising strategy vs the BTN & having the option to use bigger sizings on Turns / Rivers (still allowing you to get AI) will mean that the EV loss is minimal.

I don't think you are being completely fair in your assessment of this book, 90% of your posts are criticizing the book, or pointing out mistakes. Of the mistakes you point out, the large majority of them are in fact not mistakes and are clearly down to your lack of experience/knowledge with solvers.

The problem being that;

1. You are a competitor
2. People look up to you for advice when it comes to books and uninformed people may take what you say at face value and skip the book. When it is by the best of these types of books out there.

Mason is one of the world's top poker experts, and he is giving his opinion about various aspects of the book.

He has stated several times ITT that he thinks that much of the book is very good.

Anyone is free to agree or disagree with his opinions. It's not Mason's fault if somebody doesn't buy the GTO book based solely on Mason's opinion.

Seems to me that Mason is being "fair and balanced."

His critiques of the book are incorrect, he then lists these are mistakes, when they are mistakes on his part, not the book. Even though he states it is a good book, most of his posts are not positive in this or the other thread.

E.G. In the other thread talking about calling Rejams and saying there is not a hand you would call for 15 big blinds, that you would not call for 20 big blinds. This is a ridiculous statement and points it out as an error is laughable when it takes 2 mins to run a simulation to dispute this.

Or above, where he seems to lack understanding of how a solver works.

Or talking about whether you get 3 bet more from EP or LP. He is taking the perspective of a 2/5 live scenario, where the book is obviously talking about theory.

Whie Mason may be an expert in smaller stakes live cash games, he is very clearly not an expert in GTO play. I was merely pointing this out, so people wouldn't miss out on a great book.

Mason has given very positive reviews to books published by competitors, so this hasn't proven to be an issue. In his review of Hunter Cichy's Advanced Concepts in No-Limit Hold'em, published by D&B Poker, he gives it his highest rating (10).

Yeah, that is fair enough, don't want to cause any drama here. Just wanted to point out some criticisms of the book I thought were unfair. Whilst also recommending the book to others

Hopefully someone can help. I'm struggling to interpret the flop family diagrams in the c-betting section, for example diagrams 49 and 50. For each family (AAA. AHH etc) there are two results but the second is unlabeled and (as yet) I find no reference to what they are in the text.

Does anyone know what the second results are? Are the families split into rainbow and non-rainbow perhaps?

Reading on Kindle if that's relevant.