Requesting a review from a person who has actually read this Kindle eBook...

The Perfect Range

For obvious reasons, any reviews from someone who has not read the book would be useless. As the title implies, it has something to do with how to respond to player's ranges. The TOC is interesting, it is a cheap book that probably is self-published but I'm not going to hold that against the author as long as someone who has read the book can give me an honest review.

Thanks for the reviews.

It's been a couple of months since I read it (I've got Amazon Prime and borrowed it from their "lending library" and no longer have it to refer to for this post) and I'm on my third bottle of a damn fine beer so take this with a grain of salt:

It's all live NLHE, almost all of it 1/2 in casinos and cardrooms. A little 2/5 and one home game session? He basically lays out five types of hands that he may play (pairs, two broadways, suited aces, suited connectors, and suited one-gappers) plus pretty much anything on the button or in the blinds. May play, but not must play, he makes it clear that you should fold garbage and marginal hands when facing reraises for example.

He describes some (25 or so?) sessions that he plays. Usually fairly competently, with some tilty diversions. Never rebuys, touts that a lot.

Meh. Mostly okay advice about 1/2 (a bit nitty though). But about two-thirds of the way through the book a big red flag came up when he describes a session he played where he was clearly colluding with a buddy (if you read the book, it's the session where he flops a set of 8's). Doesn't seem to have a clue that collusion is doubleplus ungood.

I also got it free on Amazon Kindle.

It starts out pretty bad and I stopped reading pretty quick when I got to this - "The problem with playing 1/2 No Limit is that, most of the time, you will end up at a table with calling stations, donkeys, and maniacs. It's very difficult to win in a game like that."

lol, tyvm for the reviews was curious bout this not anymore.

I'm only around two-thirds or so through the book, but it's still very worth its price in entertainment value alone. And I'm sure this book would still help complete beginners play a bit better than many players who play 1/2. Many of his thought processes regarding poker strategy are laughable, but there is still a slightly useful framework which is more solid than that used by many players who play the game. However, quite a bit of his strategic advice is bad, and beginners are better off finding material from someone else (like Ed Miller for example).

His "perfect range" is far from perfect. From what I recall, except for the button and blinds, he advocates the same range from every other position. And he groups hands in similar categories together, probably to make things simpler. But as a result, this makes his range weaker. For example, he would play JTo because it's a broadway hand, but not K9s even though the latter is much stronger. And from what I've read so far, I don't recall him giving much advice on how to play the range.. He just gives you the hands you are allowed to play, and some hand examples from various sessions. And when he does tell you how to play certain situations, many times it's bad advice.

But it's very entertaining to hear the flawed thought processes from someone who thinks he's a very solid player. It's kinda like hearing how a fish thinks, and it could be useful in that respect to get inside the head of a fish. He also gives a lot of commentary about some of the people he meets along his journey, and gives some entertaining stories along the way. So as I mentioned above, don't buy it to improve your poker game. But rather, if you do buy it, do so for an entertaining read.

I wasn't interested and totally turned off. But this might make it interesting.

I've read everything when it comes to no limit holdem cash games and the part about how fish think might make this extra reading.

Good to know

I just read Nals' 2014 poker novel The Dark Side of the Felt, one of his many self-published books. (In its conclusion, his semi-autobiographical protagonist describes turning to writing after he goes broke.) I would agree that the writer thinks he understands the game much better than he actually does and that reading this will also give one a sense of how players who haven't studied the game but who've reached their own conclusions by guessing and pontificating thinks. (He thinks opening raise size is correlated to holdings, for example; and that tournament players always push JJ pre-flop; etc., etc.).

As well, the hero stakes his entire bankroll (and thus poker career) on a winner-take-all tourney, a bankroll management error no thinking player would ever commit.

The first part of the book, about how many jams the hero gets into playing underground, is much more interesting and credible than the hoaky thriller plot that emerges halfway through. I doubt Nals personally experienced the events in the underground games that describes -- and if he did he was a fool for continuing to play in these games -- but he probably heard these stories in some form and has collected them here.

About the colluding mentioned above, this novel's hero lacks integrity (looks at another player’s cards, for example).