I'd like to clear this up. I disagree with the way in which you're using the term 'value bet', not with the sentiments you express about the EV of such bets.

Let's say I make it to the river with top pair weak kicker in some situation the details of which are not important. I think that I have around 45% equity when called and I think that should I check and call a bet I'll have 30% equity vs villain's betting range. If villain is likely to bet 2/3rds pot with most of his range then should I check, I'll usually face a bet, and should I face that bet, calling it will be +EV. Check/folding is therefore lower EV than check/calling which is lower EV than betting. The pot does not check through often enough for checking to be better than betting. Clearly betting is the best play, but no this is not what I'd expect to be called a 'value bet' in modern poker terminology. I'd call this bet +EV, I'd call it the best line. I don't call it a value bet in TGM.

If value bet simply means '+EV' then bluffs can be value bets, this is clearly not right. If value bet is to mean 'not a bluff' then I think we're in very vague territory where the reasons for betting are muddled into one far too large umbrella term. Some authors use that latter approach but I don't think it captures the sense of the term as it's understood by the community in general. In TGM, I define every term with separate clear definition boxes as soon as they arise. I think specificity and accuracy are very important as poker is a very jargon rich language. I tried to make the language of poker crystal clear and accessible in my book while also capturing what most players mean when they used these terms, which of course do not rigidly designate exact concepts like the words 'pencil' or 'addition' do.

Secondly, yes you might not always want to value bet with more than 50% equity vs. villain's continuing range if you are likely to make errors vs. his raising range vs. that bet and his raising range is of a meaningful size relative to his calling and folding ranges. I'm not entirely sure why you thought I didn't understand that.

One other important point, and this has nothing to do with any other specific poker book, is that any book in any subject should not just be judged based on the truth value of it's content, but also on how clear that content is made to the reader – how effectively it's laid out and represented. What the author intends by a statement and what that statement is perceived to mean by the average reader are two entirely different things. Of course no one wants to read a factually incorrect book, but they also want to read a book where concepts are illustrated well and ingrained in an effective way. I'm very big on teaching methodology. I wrote TGM with the style of teaching and factual accuracy as equally important concerns.

Any other questions about the content or teaching approach of TGM, please let me know. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far and thanks again to twoplustwo for allowing the thread. I'm interested to hear what those who have read TGM think and to take questions from those who haven't.

Ohh I should add to this that even if we aren't making mistakes, having to forfeit redraw equity even when behind could turn a hand that has +50% equity vs a "continuing range" into a -EV value bet where villain raises often enough to make us forfeit chunks of that equity a significant amount of the time.

Is there any real difference between the last two though? It's nice if the opponent folds out his equity in the pot, whether his hand has 0%-50% or 50.01%-100%, but why do all experienced players talk as if there an iron curtain at 50%?

Personally, I just think in terms of the one reason to bet, which is the same as the one reason to do anything: It leads to the most +EV part of the game tree - your hands run through the tree like rats through a maze taking the turns that lead to the best parts of the maze. Or imagine the maze is a railway station, when we check TPNK on the flop we are going to the part of the station where there are mostly village trains and when it gets to its village it will be the big fish in a small pond - whereas the trains to the big city e.g. c/r flop are best for the most talented people and also the blaggers - sets and bluffs.

I'm not sure a mixed tree/maze/station metaphor like that would really work in coaching / authorship

Ignoring blocker effects, even if his value betting range is identical to the part of his calling range that beats your hand, he can still only get that much extra equity if he's betting only 78.57% as much as he's calling, so he has to be calling almost all the time, whereas the "classical" percentage would be about 60%. (you don't mention your own bet size so I am assuming its the same).

The basic principle is that, that above a certain hand strength you get to play against more of his worse hands if you bet rather than check-call.

Imagine he has 77 combos that beat you (this is high but chosen so the other numbers are whole numbers). If his calling range contains another 63 combos, you have 45% equity. If his betting range would be the same 77 combos, and an additional 33 bluffs (or maybe worse "value" hands if he's unbalanced, aka "merging"), then you would have 30% equity. The reason you bet is exactly because he's not betting with those extra 30 hands which you want to play against. That's why its the best branch of the game tree for your hand to go down.

As a fellow English teacher (LektorAJ means "The English Teacher") and learning poker player, I would say that Carroters has good teaching technique in his podcasts. I think the point he made about the importance of "how" the material is taught is important and I would expect this book to be very strong in this area.

IMHO he is head and shoulders in terms of teaching above the other coaches on the GS podcasts and I've listened to all except 2013-2014 now - also better in terms of correctness than most of them. Sorry to disagree with him in our first interaction.

I think to be fair, Carroters didn't come to this thread in order to criticize Harrington.

I mean, if we really want to get the most accurate statement of 'reasons to bet' it's 'because it's the highest EV play', it doesn't really simplify perfectly, except on the river I suppose. I think the threefold classification is better than a two-fold one with some garbled bits about protection in the value bit.

I mean as reasons to bet, protection and bluffing are the same reason - to make people fold out equity.

There is no reason for it to have a different name depending on whether that equity is larger or smaller than some arbitrary barrier or when its used alongside another reason (value) or alone.

If you define it that way you have to start doing a lot of discussing the EV of checking different hands.

Trust me, I've taught a lot of new players, it's best to keep things as simple as possible.

Hi Lektor:

I agree but his comments about Harrington Online being much out of date are probably wrong since I suspect the advice on how to play hands is actually very similar. Howver, with this said, once he gets a Kindle version out I plan to get a copy and give it a read.

Best wishes,
Mason

With "protection" bets, you're often currently beating many hands in villain's range, but you'd still like him to fold out many hands, since the next card is more likely to be advantageous for villain's range than for your hand, so you bet to prevent him realizing his equity (or gain EV) for free. With more obvious "bluffs", you're usually losing to the majority of hands in villain's range, but you have decent equity against the hands that call.

e.g. On J95, you might bet 22 (a made hand) primarily for protection, even though it's beating hands like A8, but you'd bet QT (queen high) as a bluff, because it's losing to A8. In both cases, your EV is usually maximised by eliciting a fold, even though in one case (protection), you had the best hand at the time.

Yeah I've found the threefold definition to be the best way of explaining reasons to bet. There are some miscallanious ones too and one such example I'm quite fond of is the 'protection of fold equity.'

In some spots it's necessary to bet immediately to sieze a large amount of (average) fold equity that may not be so abundant on the next street. EG. vs an unknown Hero c-bets 87s on 442r BU vs BB bdfd or not. Six turns hit the bulk of villain's range and he will lead some unknown freuqency against which 87s is a fold in a balacned strategy. However, on AK4r vs. a very passvie player, checking and folding to turn leads and delayed c-betting the same hand when checked to is clearly higher EV IMO. This is largely due to the fold equity 'needing protection' in the first hand but not the second.

I like this way of thinking about it. Protection is a pretty cool teaching concept regardless of how intrinsically essential it is for describing EV.

Curious about a physical book too.

As it was ignored [my 'real' book version question] - I guess there won't be one [?]

Even if demand for a physical book is limited, its worth putting it up on one of those print on demand websites* for the people who want it and you can also get a few copies yourself to have something other than false teeth to show the grandchildren, get an ISBN number like a real author etc.

* they print one copy every time someone orders it, which works out more expensive for the customer than printing a run like a "real" publisher, but if people gotta have a physical copy...

It also gets cheaper for you if you want to have something like 10 copies of your own book rather than just one.

Oh, I agree with keeping it simple for beginners. It's like science where you learn by moving through various models, so in chemistry you learn a lot using the valence model, then it gives way to oxidation states and further models. Or in Physics most of us never need to get past the Newtonian model, but it's an incomplete one andthere are more accurate models possible. I thing it's the same in poker, you move through various models as you go on. BalugaWhale's "work out how many streets of value you want with this hand" was very helpful to me when I was starting out with post flop play, but I don't think in that way now. Reasons to bet can go through a similar series of models so it's probably helpful to separate bluffs and protection into two separate reasons even though its the same thing.

I was replying to this though:

As the owner and operator of Grinderschool.com Small Stakes Poker Training, I will speak to this. Pete / Carroters has been regularly producing quality poker strategy videos for our site since 2010. The quoted number on Carrot Corner is a bit out of date, actually. As of today, he has published 264 videos* with us and is by far the instructor who has contributed the most to our site. Quite honestly, Grinderschool would not be the site it is today without Pete.

Good luck with the book, Pete!

- Jeffrey "JGB146" Blake
Founder, Owner, and Administrator of Grinderschool.com Small Stakes Poker Training

* The 264 videos is broken down as 227 full-length videos of more than 40 minutes and 37 shorts of under 20 minutes.

Nobody picked up on this and I think it needs to be "quoted for truth".

From podcasts I expect Carroters to be very strong in this area and it's why I'm looking forward to the book - despite my being on the other side of the theoretical discussion earlier in the thread.

Sorry I must have missed it the first time round. There are no plans for a physical book to be published in bulk at this time, but it depends on how well and quickly I can promote and sell the PDF and kindle versions. I probably will do as suggested above and arrange an option where physical copies can be ordered if the reader prefers. There is a chance it will be published as a physical book in the future, but as of yet I haven't spoken to any publishers.

The kindle version should be available in a few weeks time. I'll come by with an update as soon as it's on the Amazon kindle store. Sorry for the delay on this. It's now in the hands of someone much more technically gifted than myself who is building an HTML file with new images that translate prefectly to kindle. As soon as he completes the task I'll have it on sale.

Thanks. I appreciate all of your input on this thread and it's nice to see fellow players with teaching backgrounds who are aware of my stuff.

I used to play NL25 6max some years ago, but paused some years as I lost passion. But now I got interested again, started to play NL5 6max and quickly realized how different the poker-enviroment is in the meanwhile, as the game have changed so much in the recent years (I'd say NL5 6max is thougher than NL25 6max used to be 4-5 years ago). That's why I decided that I need a good book on the current games (I also owe and read HoOCG back then, but wanted something more recent, written by an online-player, for my restart).

So I bought "The Grinder's Manual" yesterday and started reading (I also watch different videos to improve my game). I will post my thoughts on the book, when I finished (maybe I will also put on some questions while reading, if any occur and the author and the 2+2-owners allow this). But this will take some time, as I wont make it a quick read, but rather a work-through-read. First impression after 50 pages:

- I like the style the book is written and the illustrations.

- I miss the page-numbers, as I wanted to print the book out and put it in an folder and take out only the pages I actually read, but without page-numbering this could become a mess to quick.

- Layout: There are some orphans an widdows, which have influence on the readability (hope these are the right words, as english is not my native language) and irritate me a little bit (but maybe it's only me, because I did some layoutthings myself in the past and such things catch my eyes).

All in all I a really curious how the book will help me and I am looking forward to reading it.

Greetings,
Andi

Thanks very much for the initial feedback and for purchasing a copy. I'll look forward to more from you when you've made your way through more of the book.

Your layout concerns are very useful as a second edition of the book will look to fix all of these kind of issues. I'm looking to update the book with small fixes simultaneously with the kindle version becoming available.

Hope you enjoy the manual.

All the best,

Pete.

Hi Andi:

The bolding is mine and this is exactly what we at 2+2 like to see.

Best wishes,
Mason

I think you should Private Message the author all of the errors you find

...as well as suggestions on how to make the book more esthetically pleasing.

You could post all of your specific ideas on this forum, but perhaps PM is better- up to you and the author.

Nice post.

At the moment I am on page 180 and i have to say, that it is really good stuff. I collect my remarks and questions and will send them to the author as a whole. After I have finished the book, I'll write a review.

Peter

Have you checked your recommendations with any GTO solving software? Or is your manual more of a roadmap on exploiting opponents of differing styles?

If I purchase the PDF now, could I receive a free Kindle copy as well?

Great question. I was thinking that myself. Is a epub version coming out too?

Would this book be applicable to full ring live games too?