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Wow. This discussion is a bit slow. Are people not reading or are they afraid to post? I urge all players that are starting to learn poker to take part in the discussion. This is a very important book and, in my humble opinion, probably the best book for beginners.
 Originally Posted by Santo2True
so to start off the disscusion, does anyone care to share what their feelings are on the key fundamentals skills that are listed in the book? Perhaps list what you do to bring these skills to game. Some examples, some practices and your prospective of them from your point of view.
-Manipulating the pot size
- Adjusting correctly to stack sizes
-Winning the battle of mistakes
-Reading hands
-Manipulating opponents into playing badly
Which do you tend to use more often? Which are you good at, lacking at, horrible at?
I know I could use some work in all these areas. Please tell me what you do to use these skills in your every day grind.
In order of what I feel is most important:
Reading Hands
First thing: remember that we are never putting our opponents "on a hand." We are putting our opponent on a range. We want to put our opponents on a range of hands that may play this or that way. The range of hands that villain may hold is very dependent on his playing style and any reads we may have.
A very general example is villain calling our MP open from the button and then raising our cbet on a T62 rainbow flop. We know villain to be quite passive as we have played many hands with him prior to this one hand. This is the first time we've seen him raise a cbet. On such a dry board (there are no flush draws on the board), what can he be raising with? With such a passive opponent, we can probably safely put him on a range like {TT, 66, 22}. What about JJ+ (overpairs)? A common mistake new players make is including hands that we took out of a players range on an earlier street. We can discount JJ+-type hands since he did not three-bet preflop. (Please don't nitpick this example and say villain shouldn't three-bet JJ here...I'm just coming up with an example off the top of my head). With no three-bet, we take JJ+ out of his range after the preflop action. We can't suddenly choose to include JJ+ on the flop.
By reading ranges (and becoming good at it), we can pick prime spots to value bet, bluff, etc. If we know villain has top-pair hands and fold them a lot to aggression, we can turn our weak hand/draw into a bluff/semi-bluff. If we know villain has a strong range and we cannot make him fold, we can counter by simply folding ourselves. If we know villain has a very strong range but we have the nuts, we can bet largely on all three streets to set up a river shove. The takeaway point here is that by becoming a good hand-reader (or range-reader if you will), we know exactly how to play against our opponents (and we will lessen our chances of making a mistake).
Manipulating the Pot Size
A mistake I always made when starting poker was being afraid to bet my set. I was simply afraid of "betting villain off his hand." I would check hoping villain would bet so I can call to "disguise" my hand or check-raise for whatever reason. A whole lot of the time, I ended up on the river with a tiny pot. There was not much value I was able to get due to my lack of pot-size manipulation.
Ironically enough, in a lot these hands from my early poker career, I would lose a huge pot with a marginal hand. I was allowing villain to create a large pot in which I may have stationed off my stack.
Or perhaps I missed a standard turn check that I should have made to manipulate the pot-size into being smaller by the river.
I hate the "small hand, small pot; big hand, big pot" blanket statement as do most players. Blanket statements in poker are horrible. As Sklansky explained, TPTK may be a stack off against some opponents while it may be an easy bet-fold against others (this relates back to our range-reading). We want to win the big pots and we can do so by getting into situations where our range is stronger than villain's range in these big pots.
Manipulating pot-size is covered pretty well in Professional No Limit Hold 'Em. I'm sure we will have a book review on that book as well.
Winning the Battle of Mistakes
As you may (should) have read, when we make less mistakes than our opponents, we profit. If our opponent stacks off too lightly and we don't stack off in those same "bad" spots, we profit from the difference in mistakes. If villain misses value with his nut hands but we always get value from the same kinds of hands, we profit from the difference in mistakes.
However, I feel there is a bigger mistake that most poker players (myself included) make that is not necessarily related to the physical cards and hands: tilt. Imagine a perfect scenario where we never ever tilt and we're at a table of hotheads. These players are making the mistake of tilting off money while we never make that mistake because we are not playing with our emotions, we're playing with our brains. We would make so much money at this table, it's crazy.
My point here is that mistakes don't necessarily have to be made during actual hands. If my opponents always play when they're tired and just get home from work and I never do, I win the battle of mistakes. If my opponent fails to observe what is happening at the table (live poker) and I make these observations, I win the battle of mistakes. I can go on and on. I feel the most important (and most easily avoidable) mistake is controlling tilt. If we can't control it, we can learn to identify it and not play when we are tilting.
Manipulating our Opponents into Playing Badly
I just wanted to throw an example from a recent session I had. There was this maniac/whale at my table that was basically giving money away. He was three-barreling a lot with super large bets and winning a lot of hands since nobody stood up to him. Funny enough, he would always fold to any bets/raises. So there are two observations right there: his three-barreling range is super wide and he always folds to aggression. How can I manipulate villain to pay off my hand? Value-betting probably isn't the answer in this scenario. Instead, I can manipulate his range to be weakest by checking and having him bet out. I will not raise since I know he will fold his weak range and probably call/raise with a rather strong range. Therefore, I was able to get three streets of value from my marginal hand by check/calling for three streets. Fun, fun.
When I read manipulating our opponents into playing badly, I kind of read manipulating our opponents range. This example showed how I manipulated villain's range to be weak by checking. Since he always folded to aggression, I know that his continuing range is probably rather strong.
Maybe we observed villain always bets on the turn when we check through the flop. By checking through the flop, we've manipulating villain's turn betting range to be weak.
Perhaps villain always bets his missed draws on the river as a bluff. By checking the river to villain, we have manipulated his range to include bluffs that he would have folded if we were to bet the river.
Perhaps we've been three-betting often against a certain villain's open. Now we three-bet with AA. Here, our past three-bets manipulated villain's CURRENT continuing range into being wider (assuming he is observing). He will continue with a weaker range since he has seen us three-bet often and assumes we have bluffs (which we do) in our range. Maybe he will four-bet light or flat our three-bet. Either way, we are at the top of our range and have manipulated villain into making the mistake of four-betting light or flatting our three-bet light.
Sklansky may have been aiming for a different meaning of manipulating our opponents. This is simply what I took from that.
I hope this helped a bit. Please don't nitpick my examples...I created them off the top of my head. Also, I would ask the regs to help generate discussion and help Carroters with this. It shouldn't be all on his head imo.
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