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Book review: Professional No-Limit Hold'em vol 1

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bjsaust

09-02-2008, 01:17 AM Post subject: Book review: Professional No-Limit Hold'em vol 1

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Straight Flush

Join Date: May 2007

Location: Ballarat, Australia

Posts: 5,842

I bought a bunch of poker books a while back and had a vision of doing indepth reviews on each as I finished. Then I realised that its been 15 years or more since I last did a book review so instead they'll be short ramblings.

Good book! Limited in scope, but it addresses issues that in earlier poker books havnt really gotten a lot of attention (if any). I really like that it assumes you know how to play poker and it works to improve you, rather than teach you the basics.

It talks a bit about what it calls the REM process. REM stands for Range Equity Maximise, which is basically stuff we should be able to pick up off FTR. Playing hands optimally v's our opponents ranges.

Where it gets interesting is the discussions of pot commitment and commitment threshold. It really gets you thinking about the results of betting (or calling a bet) earlier in a hand, and what that does to the pot in so far as compared to our hand. In reality its a discussion on Pot Control issues, but addressed from the perspective of how we get into bad spots and the thinking that leads us there. This is also where it gets into SPR which you might have seen on the forums, which stands for Stack to Pot ratio.

The book discusses SPR a lot, and spends a lot of time (perhaps too much) talking about what SPR we want with which kinds of hands, and brings up an important point overlooked not only in most books but also most poker discussions, that certain preflop hands are more likely to make certain postflop hands, so we should be planning the pot on the flop based around the SPR we want with the kind of hand we're likely to make.

It all starts to feel a bit artificial though. Ideal SPRs that in reality are very hard if not impossible to create in real games. On the other hand it does discuss some lines to think about when playing preflop to help achieve our aims, and at least warns us about the potential pitfalls and ideas to help compensate for them postflop. It also starts to feel very absolute in what are obviously variable situations. Very exact and precise numbers used for what should be approximations and "it depends" type situations.

On the whole though, it really openned my eyes to some key concepts in poker that I just hadnt got. More than that, I really hadnt even considered, even after all my reading and study. I've probably over-applied some concepts since reading it, but it definately improved my game a LOT, and I suspect would help almost anyone not very familiar with the ideas already.

I'd recommend the book to people with a couple months experience I guess. You still want to have TOP and NLHE-T&P as your first books to read, but once you feel you know the basics and are ready to extend your game this book could really help.

Unlike TOP and T&P I don't think you'd get a lot out of reading this book more than 2-3 times. It really has 2-3 core concepts that it drills into you by smashing you over the head repeatedly. Its probably good for a second read a month or two later, but not sure you'd get much more out of further ones.

Should belong in most poker players bookshelves though, unless they can borrow off a friend

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Book review: Professional No-Limit Hold'em vol 1

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