Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em

I’m proud today to officially announce Small Stakes No Limit Hold’em by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn. It’s the affordable poker ebook.

Yesterday I posted an update on the book, and since then – as can be expected in the fast-paced world of poker ebooks – a few things have changed.

We hit an unfortunate snag with the timing tells section. You see I always play poker by dialing in with my 14.4kb modem to an ISP located in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I learned long ago that online poker is rigged for anyone who lives in Slovenia. At first I was preparing a move to that land of Alpine serenity and unnerving hyper-aggression, but then this dialing-in tactic came to me in a moment of pure inspiration. Sure it costs a little extra in international calling fees, and I can only play one table at a time. But it’s so worth it to finally be able to hit a freaking set once in a while. (I’ll sell the dial-up number for $5k. Email me.)

Anyway, I developed the timing tells software using the dialup connection. Yesterday I sent the software to Sunny for the first time to test on his broadband connection, and wouldn’t you know the HUD was saying that everyone had aces all the time. So there are a few more bugs than I thought, and I’m afraid we’re not going to have this material ready in time for the book release. The software package is also unfortunately indefinitely on hold.

And the postflop chart. Funny story. Matt read my post yesterday and gave me a call. It turns out that for the last four months he’s been in intense training for a cagefighting match and he never got around to writing the chart. So I’m sorry, but we’re not going to have that for you either.

Enough about what isn’t in the book. Let’s talk about what is. Here is the high-level Table of Contents.

Small Stakes No Limit Hold’em by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn

Part 1: Introduction

• 64 Squares
• Showdown Equity And Steal Equity
• Using Equity To Make Decisions
• Stealing

Part 2: Beating Online $1-$2 6-Max Games

• Introduction: Why $1-$2 6-Max?
• Stealing The Blinds And Playing Position
• Profiling Opponents And Putting Them On Ranges
• Barreling
• Going For Value And Controlling The Pot
• 3-Betting Light And The 3-Bet, 4-Bet, 5-Bet Game
• Isolating Bad Players
• Handling Opposing Aggression
• Making Specific Preflop Decisions
• Putting It Together

Part 3: 7 Easy Steps To No-Limit Success

Part 4: Beyond $1-$2 No-Limit

• Choosing Fixed Bet Sizes
• Balancing Your Lines
• And more…

Focus of the book

The bulk of the book is the Beating Online $1-$2 6-Max Games part. It’s a thorough, example-driven discussion of beating this semi-tough game. If you don’t play this particular game, you may be puzzled why we focused on it. Here’s our answer from the book:

This first part is focused on a quite specific topic: how to beat an online $1-$2 6-max no-limit game. Why did we choose to focus on this game? Indeed, why did we choose to focus so narrowly on any one game? And if you intend to play a game other than online $1-$2 6-max, how relevant will this book be to you?

Here are the short answers to these questions. This game provides an ideal platform to teach the most critical no-limit concepts. If you can learn to beat an online $1-$2 6-max no-limit game, then you can handily beat 99 percent of all no-limit games in the world. So this book is highly relevant to the vast majority of no-limit players, whether you play live games or online, shorthanded games, full-ring, or even heads-up. Learn these ideas, apply them to your game, and you will destroy the competition.

We then elaborate for another page or two. But the basic idea is that we’re teaching concepts that work in a wide range of no-limit games. We picked this particular game for our examples because we see it roughly as the toughest of the “small stakes” games. Most of your opponents will not be giving their money away, but you also (by and large) won’t have to engage in high-level metagame thinking against super-tough players. If you play in an easier small stakes game than the one we chose (including live full-ring games), then this book will more than prepare you to get the money.

7 Easy Steps

Long-time readers of Noted Poker Authority will recognize the 7 Easy Steps To No-Limit Success part. This part is a rework of the series of the same name I wrote a couple of years back. We decided to include it as sort of a “breather” section. The Beating $1-$2 part is dense and thorough with all-new material, and it will be quite challenging for many readers. We thought the 7 Easy Steps would go well at the end to offer a high-level perspective of what’s most important and to give the reader a little break before charging into the challenging Beyond $1-$2 part.

Professional No-Limit Hold’em

If you haven’t done so yet I recommend reading our first book, Professional No-Limit Hold’em, before this one. You can order and read it while you’re awaiting final release of Small Stakes No Limit Hold’em.

The new book is not a sequel or second volume of Professional No-Limit. The new book is designed to be fully readable as a stand-alone book. But in it we do reference concepts like commitment and SPR that we introduce in Professional No-Limit. We summarize these ideas in the new book to get everyone up to speed, but if you want a full, nuanced understanding I’d strongly recommend reading Professional No-Limit sometime this month.

Price and more

When we announced that preordering was open in yesterday’s post, we expected an enthusiastic response. I have to admit that we’re a little disappointed with yesterday’s sales figures, so we’ve reconsidered pricing. For those of you who did preorder the book at yesterday’s price, we appreciate the support. We know it can be disconcerting to see a price drop announced so soon after your purchase, so we’re compensating all those who bought yesterday with a $100 iTunes Gift Card. Enjoy some tunes on us!

The book price will be $99.95.

Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em is an ebook. You are buying an electronic book, not a paper book. You will be able to read it on your computer and possibly on other devices (as many as I can figure out how to reasonably support). I’m personally of the philosophy that you should be able to use the book in any reasonable way once you have bought it. It’s your book. To that end, I will try to make sure that we support as many reasonable usages as we can. I can’t, however, promise any particular usage or feature today. In other words, if you want to blow the book up as wallpaper and paper your ceiling with your favorite chapter… philosophically I think you should be able to do that, but I can’t promise that we will support that particular feature. I will try to make sure that we accommodate the most commonly wanted features.

We have no current plans to produce a paper book. Down the line we may decide to produce a paper version and possibly sell it in traditional paper book stores and at Amazon. I’ll provide ample warning (several months at least) before any paper version becomes available. Basically I’m saying that if you would prefer a paper version to an ebook, I’m sorry but we have no plans for that at the moment. If you hold out and wait, we might come out with a paper book, but it could be a long wait and it could not happen at all. We’re going with this ebook thing for now.

Stay Tuned

Things are moving fast here, and we’re getting close to release. I’m setting up the website for the book now and working out the technology issues. We’re putting the final touches on the manuscript. Preordering will be available soon, and from that point it will not be too much longer until the book is released. I hope you guys are excited. I think this book is gonna rock your world!

[Disclaimer: This book is not affiliated in any way with Two Plus Two Publishing.]