The main news for this month is that we’re hard at work on our next three books. The first, Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game by Philip Newall, is now finished and has just been sent to our index builder for creation of the index. We expect the index building to take about three weeks, and then it goes to the printer where another two to three weeks is probably reasonable. So it looks like we’ll have this text around the middle of January of next year.

This is an advanced text on some aspects of limit hold ‘em where our author identifies situations that should allow good players to improve on their win rates. It’s not a starter book, but it definitely contains many interesting ideas and concepts.

Our next book, Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretical Sound Poker by Matthew Janda is currently being worked on. This is a sophisticated theory book and right at this point in time, even though we have gotten a lot done, there’s still a lot more to do, much more than we have currently completed. So it’s difficult to estimate a publication date right at this moment. But our author is working away so my best guess is sometime during the first six months of 2013.

A few of you are already familiar with Matt’s work at Cardrunners, so there’s already a fair amount of interest in this book, and we believe it will be state of the art and will help most players, regardless of current skill level, to play better, and I know this statement is already true with me. However, the reason it’s going slowly is that some of the material has been difficult to express in a clear and concise way. But we’re definitely making progress and expect to produce a great book.

We’re also expecting to receive the next Harrington manuscript early next yea which would also put it on a midyear or a little later publishing date. It’s title is Harrington on Modern Tournament Poker and of course the authors are Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie. I actually know little about the content, so won’t make any comment here, but we do expect another terrific contribution from Dan and Bill.

Finally, I do want to wish everyone a happy holiday season and look forward to poker having a much better 2013 than 2012. We, as everyone else, don’t know what will happen with the poker laws in the United Sates, and when the US players will get their Full Tilt money back. But we do think that there will be improvement and that within the first six months of 2013 Nevada, and then followed by perhaps a few other states, will have Internet poker again. So we’re definitely optimistic.

It’s been over a year-and-a half since Two Plus Two has published a new book, but that will soon change. Our next book, Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game by Philip Newall should be available by the middle of December. For those of you who read Philip’s previous book, The Intelligent Poker Player, this one picks up where that one left off with more advanced information for limit hold ‘em players. Current status is that the manuscript is finished and type-set and will soon be heading to our index builder, so we’re right on schedule for the December publication.

I’m also going to announce what will probably be our next book. It’s tentatively titled Applications of No Limit Hold ‘em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretically Sound Poker, and the author is Mathew Janda. We don’t have a projected publication date but initial editing work has begun on the first part of the manuscript while Matt is finishing up the final sections. As the title says, this is an all encompassing work on no-limit hold ‘em and we at 2+2 believe it will become absolutely must reading for all serious players.

Also, I’ve been informed that work is continuing on the next Harrington book which is being targeted towards tournaments. Dan and Bill tell me they are working away, and I’ll keep everyone informed as to when this text might become available.

Speaking of our books, we ran a cover contest for Further Limit Hold ‘em in our Books and Publications Forum which is located here.

Many of the covers submitted are simply fantastic, and our current plan is to pick up a number of these covers for use on some of our future books as well as the one for which the contest was intended for. Also, at the time of this writing, the contest is still on-going, but we expect to announce the winners in early November.

At the time of this writing, Hurricane Sandy is just beginning to hit the East Coast of the United States. I know that many of the readers and participants of our forums are located in this area, so we at 2+2 wish everyone affected by Sandy the best in not only making it through the storm, but in the cleanup and other problems that should follow.

By the way, I have first hand experience in dealing with Hurricanes. When I was a kid, Hurricane Cleo was a direct hit where I lived in South Florida. In fact, the Miami Herald, described by home town of Coral Gables as looking “more like a war zone,” so to this day my memories are very vivid. So again, if you live in the area where this storm hit, be careful for many days since the aftermath of a storm like this can also be severe.