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.

Continuing on from last month’s note, work is progressing on all three of our announced books – Further Limit Hold ‘em; Exploring the Model Poker Game by Philip Newall, Applications of No-Limit Hold ‘em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretical Sound Poker by Matthew Janda,  and Harrington on Modern Tournament Poker by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie.

We don’t have publishing dates yet for the last two books, but Further Limit Hold ‘em should be available around the middle of January. We’re waiting to receive the index back from our index builder, but it’s promised, at the time of this writing, to be sent to us by the end of 2012. Assuming this schedule is met and the printing press is available, the middle of January seems realistic. If not, we should certainly have it by the end of January. For those interested, at the end of this note is the table of contents for Further Limit Hold ‘em.

I also want to mention that we’re hoping 2013 is a much better year for poker than either 2012 or 2011 were. The ROW Full Tilt Poker players have been paid back, and we’re hoping that the US players will be paid back in the not too distant future, plus the site is up and running again.

In addition, we’re expecting to see some new Internet poker sites here in Nevada, and hopefully some other states will soon be joining in. We at 2+2 don’t expect this to be an instant cure-all for our industry, but it will certainly be progress and hopefully will lead to a much better future.

Table of Contents

About Philip Newall v

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

Part One: Game Theory 7
Introduction 8
Climbing the Poker Pyramid 10
Why Everyone Should Know Some Game Theory 17
Principles of Game Theory 21
Simpler Decisions with GTO 27
Game Theory Made Easy 38
Bluffing 62
Other Topics on Early Streets 68
Draws to Bet 70
Draws to Check 70
Practical Exploitation 78
N-Players and Three-Betting Light 86
Recognizing Errors 95
Introspection 95
Studying Others 96
Inferring From Results 99

Part Two: Peeling the Onion 103
Introduction 104
Heuristics 106
Preflop in Heads-up 112
Slowplaying 133
Slowplay More as the Other Players’ Ranges Get Stronger 134
Continuation Betting 149
Board Texture Models 154
The Hi-Lo Model 155
The Draw Quality Model 157
Putting the Models to Work 162
Range Equities in a Sample of Flops 176
Conclusion 198
Small Blind Versus Big Blind in Six-Max 203
First Attempts at a Small Blind Flop Donk-Checking Strategy in Six-Max 219
Donk-Checking the Flop in Heads-up 255
Rockhopper 255
Polaris 262
Conclusion 266
Flop-Raising 267
An Analysis of Flop Textures 270
An Analysis of Lines Taken 280
Turn Bets 282
Turn Checks 299
Conclusion: Levels upon Levels 310
Donk-Betting the Flop 312
Rockhopper 313
Polaris 318
Hand Values for Donk-Betting the Flop 322
Checking the Flop Behind 325
Rockhopper 327
Polaris 331
Conclusion 335
Summing Up 337

Part Three: Hand Analysis 343
Introduction 344
Using an Unusual Spot to Improve My Strategy 345
Bet-Folding the River 349
Donk-Bluffing the River 358
Reprising the Free-Showdown Play 364

Conclusion 369
Index 371