For those who don’t know, there is some sad news to report with the passing of poker great Bobby Hoff. While I only knew Bobby slightly, there is no question that he was a great no-limit hold ‘em player and was well liked by everyone.

In our book, Harrington on Cash Games, Volume II: How to Play No‑Limit Hold ‘em Cash Games by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie, there is an interview with Bobby Hoff. It’s a terrific read, and as a way of remembering this great player, we have posted the interview here.

As for other news, the number one question that’s being asked is when will the next Internet poker sites start up. Our answer to this is we don’t know, but we’re hopeful that it will be sooner rather than later.

It appears to us, and we have no inside information confirming this, that the state of Nevada is being very careful to make sure that not only does everything work right on the sites, but that there is no way any scandal, such as what we saw with Ultimate Bet, can occur. We at Two Plus Two think this is the right decision and support the go-slow approach by the state of Nevada even though we can’t wait for the sites to launch and for different states to link up,.

Next, we’re also being asked what has happened to our book Harrington on Modern Tournament Poker by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. Well, I just spoke to Dan and much progress has been made. We’re now hoping to have it published by the end of the year.

Finally, I want to mention that it has been discovered that the kindles of two of our books Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretical Sound Poker by Matthew Janda and Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game by Philip Newall are not as good as they should be. So we have asked Amazon.com to take the kindles down and we’re hoping to have much better kindle versions available on Amazon.com in a few weeks. However, our other e-book version (for both of these books), which is available through our 2+2 store is fine.

To start, our next book Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Game by Philip Newall is now available. For those interested, it can be ordered directly from our Two Plus Two Store. If you use the code flh2p2, you can get an extra 10 percent off the sales price.

We’re also working on our next book, Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretical Sound Poker by Matthew Janda. While it’s still too early to give a firm publication date, my best estimate is late April or early May. This is a major work with the book coming in at around 500 pages.

We then expect to follow this text with our next Harrington book, Harrington on Modern Tournament Poker by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. No other information is available at this time, but as soon as something specific is known, we’ll pass that information on.

On a different subject, when a little bit of time becomes available, I’ve been playing some limit hold ‘em, and for some reason I began to think about nine-handed versus ten-handed games. Years ago, virtually all the games were ten-handed, but today, except for some games at the smaller limits, they’re nine-handed. I think it’s probably safe to say that almost all players prefer the nine-handed game. But for an expert player, which one is better?

The answer to this seems pretty simple. The most common error that many players make is to play too loose. But what’s interesting is that the better your position, the looser you should play. Thus, many players who play too loose may be playing close to correct in the late positions but not so in the early positions since they do not adjust enough for the positional advantage or disadvantage depending on your position.

So this brings us to nine-handed versus ten-handed games. Notice in both forms, the number of late positions will be the same, but when playing ten-handed you’ll have one more early position relative to playing nine-handed. And there, in my opinion, is your answer. The game with more early positions will produce more mistakes from the majority of players who tend to be too loose, and thus the expert should have a higher win rate in the ten-handed game.

Now I also recognize that there are some counter-balancing forces that do occur when playing nine-handed, but they won’t be covered here except to say that it’s my opinion they do not outweigh the significance of having an additional early position for a loose player to play too many hands. Thus again, my conclusion is that ten-handed games are better for the expert than nine-handed games.

However, it’s also my belief that nine-handed games are here to stay. The players like them better and poker room management also seems to like them better. So in the future, it’s unlikely to see a resurgence of ten-handed games, and in fact, I suspect that many of the remaining ten-handed games, mostly at smaller limits, will become nine-handed in the future.