"It's the thousands of small strategic decisions that the pros get right and the amateurs don't." Don't misunderstand. "It's not the one gut-wrenching decision for all the chips that counts most," the authors write. I review poker books for Card Player magazine, and here's the piece I submitted about this excellent new book from Two Plus Two (in its November 7 issue): A lot of amateur players seem to believe that no-limit hold'em is a game dominated by feel and aggression instead of mathematical rigor and brutal rationality, but this powerful new book dispels that notion in no uncertain terms. In No-Limit, 10 to 20 BB per 100 hands is achievable at the small stakes, and counter-intuitively with LESS variance. You can never hope to be THAT much better than the field. WHY? Limit is so mechanical and technical. but it feels like it is not luck.) If you are a NLHE cash player at the small stakes, you NEED this book. After about 12,000 hands I'm showing that on average I play 1.8 tables at a time, and I'm making close to 10 BB/100. If you pair this book with a decent online tool to track your opponents (so you can tell the set-farmers, from the action-kids, from the tight-rocks) you will find that you can easily play 3 or 4 tables at once and NOT be a predictable player yourself.
And rarely will there be a Turn decision. The play of the hand has already been established. It gives an excellent explanation of the target Stack-to-Pot ratio you need to aim for depending on your cards (are you going for top-pair, or is it a drawing hand: Suited ace, connectors, small pair.) You'll find yourself constantly NOT CARING how your opponent acts on the flop. You will find out how to position yourself in situations so that you'll know in advance what to do when the flop comes. This book is the first of about 20 NL or PL Hold-Em books I have read that really, really explains what is meant by planning your hand and manipulating the pot size to your advantage. They key has been to plan the hands from before the flop. Now, after getting through this book a SECOND time in a month's worth of reading, I find that it feels like I'm playing against a bunch of children. It felt like I was always up against a group of pros, not knowing what to do on the flop or turn.
I dominated the $10 to $30 tournaments for a solid ROI, but found that even at the $2/1 cash games, I kept being "pushed around". But have found that because of the time commitment necessary for those, I have been migrating to the ring/"cash" games.
I have played online, mostly single-table tournaments, for about 4 years. Right up there with Sklanky's Theory of Poker. Like most of the other reviewers, I feel like this should be considered one of the classics.
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