No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice [Versión Kindle]

Those of us who have been playing and studying poker for years know what huge contributions David Sklansky has made to poker and this book is no exception.

No limit holdem had all but disappeared(except for tournament play) until about three or four years ago and any one playing today understands the explosion in poker is primarily centered around no limit holdem. Many veteran players like myself have tried to adopt and adapt a solid limit approach to no limit and achieved mixed results. Often the mixed results have left us wondering if were are getting better or just experiencing a good run. This book will help you think about and understand the game better than most of the previously published no limit material.

Many of the "greats" that we have come to know play and teach the game through their own experience and developed "feel" for the game, which is nearly impossible to teach. By learning the underlying theory of no limit holdem as taught by Sklansky, the student comes to understand how "situational" especially no limit is and how to think about the game in numerous situations. Those players willing to study this book will accelerate past the players who are primarily playing an adapted limit game or by trial and error. I have already expanded my approach and thinking process after only one reading and am eager to re-read it after a few more sessions of play. Highly recommended.

Stick with 2+2's other NL books by Harrington (vol 2 & 3). Ed Miller and David Sklansky show their inexperience in NL in this book. They do mask their No-Limit shortcomings by filling a lot of the book with Limit Holdem analogies (their strength) and a lot of mathematics (another strength).

Sklansky is the son of a mathematician, and Ed Miller is an MIT graduate. Their strength is in mathematics, and they excel in Limit Holdem due to it. However in No-Limit, they have no qualifications. Sklansky isn't known as a good NL player (the next time I see him in a WSOP NL final table will the first time), and Ed Miller doesn't even frequent the middle-stake games. How much stock would you put into someone else's limit holdem advice if they don't play higher than 10/20 holdem? It's like that guy who's playing 3/6 holdem with you, but he acts like everything spewed from his mouth is a blessing for those lucky enough to hear. Except with these authors, they actually do have credentials from another form of poker, so many people will assume, they also are an authority on other forms of poker. Would you take tennis lessons from a good ping pong player?

They make a lot of observations about NL situations with math, but they don't actually give out a game plan of how to logically think through a hand the way a pro does. They fill the book with these types of situations:
Assume he has these hands: 99, AT, T9s, and if the pot has this much money ($500) and you have $1000 left, and opponent has $1000 left, then the following bets will net you X%, depending on how frequently they call Y% or they raise you back Z%. Then they proceed with the math to explain each possibility. Of course, they don't actually go over many hand reading situations to explain which hand the opponent may have and how they would play it. It doesn't help to know which move to make, if I can't deduce what hands he has, and that should be the focus of any quality poker book, which 2+2 claims to produce. This one falls short, and it's due to the authors' lack of NL ability.

This book's strength is that it shows why certain plays are mathetmatically correct. That doesn't mean, you can't take those conclusions, and figure out the correct play to make.

For example: If you have AK and you raise, then if our opponent raises with KK, we can use math to show why it's correct to fold. That doesn't help me if I raise with AK, and my opponent raises me, sometimes I should raise again, sometimes call, sometimes fold. I don't know he has KK or AQ or 87, so how's the math help me now? It doesn't. This is a very simple example for those who play small stakes or are new to poker. But this is the best example in summarizing this book.

It's an interesting book.

But a lot of the examples assume:

* Your opponents have their heads firmly implanted up their butts.

* You can never fold your big pair.

To a certain extent, these are just simplifying assumptions to make the math easier. They lead us down some silly paths, though, in my opinion.

I think Miller and Sklansky have played predominately in strip casinos at a level where they don't play the same people that often. I think that's why they're not too worried about leaking information with their bet sizing. I've been playing a lot with the same people for a long time now, and we're exploiting patterns we discovered in hands played years ago. (Maybe the hidden lesson is that with good game selection you can play against opponents who aren't paying attention.)

On the whole, the book goes against the conventional wisdom. It makes for a more interesting book because of it, but I think they're wrong sometimes. Don't make it your first NLHE book.