New Book Announcement

Yeah, I think there were some decent points in their low stakes book. However, some of the material, particularly most of the preflop advice, was really bad.

They really need to have some people look it over before posting or publishing. Like the excerpt for the new book are ridiculous. There may be some good material in the new book as there was in the small stakes book, but they are making it look awful.

I think you are supposed to guage their recent books through the lens of a beginner.

If you would read the book you would see we say not to play these hands if someone has already limped in. The explanation for this is in the book.

The low stakes book at some good points, but I think it was better for experienced players than novices. Novices might try applying preflop advice like limping Qxs in early position, which we have discussed.

For this new book, you present an excerpt which most readers here think is meaningless. Is there something else in the book that will be worth reading?

While I agree the book is better for experienced players, the criteria for when it's okay to limp with hands like Qxs is very clear.

I hope so. We're a long way from completing the manuscript and it's going slower than expected.

Did you adapt your play to the $1-3 level at the Bellagio while doing your research ?

I recall one such game I was sitting at the Bellagio quite a few years ago. David, standing behind me, watched my play for a bit, then advised me rhetorically, "You know you don't have to play every hand ?" (You were standing next to him, btw.) I thought that comment was hilarious, given the general skill level of my $1-$3 opponents then and the chips I was stacking in that specific game.

I'll buy your book as I've played very little in Las Vegas the past several years. I'm interested in your contemporary sample and related $1-$3 level advice.

Generally when you advertise a product/service/etc you want to lead with something exciting/enticing for the consumer to move forward with a purchase/build interest. Here we have a terrible excerpt that excites me like a prostate exam. I'll take the o/u on 30 sales.

Yeah, that excerpt makes the book look really bad. How could the information in that excerpt be useful to anyone?

I would recommend scrapping the project and focusing on books by other authors. Or maybe get an additional coauthor for this book and revise the approach.

I think my biggest criticism of the book would be how there seems to be a lot of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too ~inconsistency. For instance, you can't be both overlimping KK in the HJ (which is my standard play) while also open limping Qxs in EP (a hand I would literally only play limped to me in the BB). Admittedly, in both cases there are explanations given as to when you can and cannot do this, but in the end there is no single game where you can do both (and I don't think this part was stressed enough).

Gnothatin',justsayin',goodluckwiththenewbook!G

We never said you can do both in the same game. All we said was that when the conditions were right you can make one of these plays. And if you read what those conditions are, in games where it would be correct to limp with kings in the HJ it would not be very likely for a limp with Qxs first in from early position to be correct.

The general view is that Qxs, Axo, and like T9o are not playable hands. Maybe you can call the straddle in the BB with them or limp behind in SB in 1/2 or 5/10 game or certainly a 2/3 game. If you were going to play them, you might call in position on the button with them. In some situation you might 3! with them or iso a bad limper with them. Not limp with them in ep.

You are continuing to defend bad advice. Or maybe you are right and everyone else is wrong about the playability of those hands at 1/3.

However, the overlimp of KK is probably a good play with some maniac usually raising the limpers behind. There was some other good advice and ideas in that book.

However, it is selling extremely poorly. The paperback and kindle version are both about a millionth ranked on Amazon.

You need to have someone else look over your material before publishing or posting it. Some of the advice in that low stakes book made it look bad. Now you post an excerpt which is ridiculously bad. People will assume that the rest of the book is even worse than the sample you are showing off.

If you think some of the advice in our Small Stakes No-Limit book is poor, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But my problem with your posts, as can be seen by my responses to you, is that you have not been representing exactly what the book says.

For instance, as already noted, the book doesn't say to automatically play Qxs in early position. There are specific criteria given as to when this play would be correct. Now if you're in games where the conditions for making this play virtually never happen, and you want to point this out, I would have no issue.

As for the number of books sold, that number so far is about 1,500. And we were hoping it would do better. However, this type of book should have some sales for many years to come. If you want a comparison, we have two titles in out family of books where the number of sales of each is over 300,000.

There are no conditions where I would limp behind with Qxs, Axo, or an unsuited connector on the button. You clearly need a better hand to open limp in ep than limp behind or raise that hand on the button. Perhaps you disagree with that also, but it is true in PLO, limit holdem, etc., and solvers also confirm that. It doesn't matter what the game conditions are.

Almost everyone here agrees with me on this, but some novice players buying the book might use it as confirmation for limping junk hands, which is what typical loose/passive 1/3 players do.

The standard approach at low stakes is to play tight aggressive preflop. Since the fish will call large raises, raise large with your good hands and build the pot. There are situations where it might be better to open limp or limp behind small pps or Axs and maybe some other hands, although even that is controversial. But pretty much no winning player uses your approach of limping in a lot based on a postflop skill advantage.

Everyone knows you have had books which have sold well. Sklanky's "Theory of Poker" still sells well. However, when you publish excerpts, presumably asking for advice, my advice is to scrap this book, because, based on the excerpts, it will be a disaster. You have a history of picking good authors and formatting and editing books well, so I would recommend doing that with other books.

I would think a $1 NLHE DBBP game would be a lot more profitable albeit higher variance than a regular 1-3 game because the pleasure players are going to be involved much more frequently drawing thin to non-nut hands, frequently one board only.

Plus in general it’s way way more bang for the buck for everyone involved. The bad players will go broke regardless, but they have more chances of winning a big pot and having a story to tell the boys at work about on Monday in DBBP.

How many times have we seen a fish sit down at a grumpy 1-3 table, everybody folds to their pf raises with JJ &AK, so they limp utg with QXs (lmao), it winds up raised five ways, they flop tpfd, get stacked by AQ or KJs, decide $100 was enough and they’re never seen again?

DBBP they’re gonna see some crazy runouts that might put them in a gambling mood, and the table’s gonna be naturally livelier.

The problem with DBBPs is bad players get absolutely wrecked way too fast.

Maybe 2+2 can do a book on DBBPs. Maybe on short deck, 6 card PLO, limit and PL 5 card O8, or badeucey, badacy and weirder mixed games. There are new games with not much information on them.

Lots of book on NLHE. Maybe no books with concepts not discussed elsewhere, like open limping Qxs UTG, but not overlimping it on the button. Or the skill of making sure when you can a shove with 88, the shover has 44 and not TT.

You need to find some new authors and topics. Maybe a book on PLO tournament play. A book on modern high stakes tournament play .with GTO players and deviations from GTO and ICM. A book on when following GTO is bad in practice.

In HOH, Bobby Hoff said the 5-10-25 Dallas game in the ‘70s was ten-handed & very tight.

Have you proof-read this section yet?

The low stakes NLHE book had some useful material and would have been much better if you had had people review the manuscript before publishing it. Much of the preflop advice is bizarre and generally considered wrong.

I don't know if you all are qualified to write a general NLHE book. I think 15 years ago Sklansky played mid-high stakes mixed and you played low-mid stakes LHE. There are many videos by Upswing, etc. influenced by GTO. You can dispense with GTO for live 1/3, but not in general. The excerpts confirm most people's assumptions.

The publishing probably is competing with free and paid videos online and self published books where the author gets a higher royalty. I don't think this project is going to help.

Since someone tagged me on X, I came to look at this thread. I will put aside my not-so-warm personal feelings about Mason, and try to be as unbiased as I can here.

First, if you're going to release a book on NLH, you have to decide upon the audience. If it's beginners, you keep the advice fairly basic, give them some important pointers to remember no matter what (such as you don't cold-call KQo from an early position raiser who isn't loose), and generally direct them to play a style which minimizes tricky spots and allows them to exploit bad players.

A book for beginners would tell them NOT to limp with hands such as QXs and AXo, because these hands require experience in order to both bet for value and to minimize losses when dominated. Tough decisions with top pair bad kicker are the last thing you want a beginner to face.

And if it's a book for a midgrade player, you should not have silly basic discussions of how often KJo wins against other hands, or anything else that people with experience have learned a long time ago. In such a book, perhaps you can introduce some nonstandard plays and explain how to use them to your advantage, but you still have to be careful about giving outright wrong advice which will cost the typical player money.

If you are going to write a NLH book for the midgrade player, first you need to be able to beat the typical midgrade player yourself, and second, you should consult some winning players at low-mind stakes and ask what they think of the advice in the book. If they say, "This isn't good", then you ask for their criticism, and go back to the drawing board.

I have read all three pages of this thread, and am still confused as to who the audience is supposed to be here.

Finally, there's the image problem. I believe Mason is 73 and Sklansky is 77. Many modern players do not know who either of these guys are, whereas in the 2000s, everyone knew of David and Mason. It's just a different time, and you can't pretend you're writing for a 2004 audience, and that you're still in your early 50s.

In fact, I am about to turn 54 myself, so I'm no youngster either. If I were to write a NLH book, perhaps some novice-midgrade players around my age would buy it, but I couldn't imagine a lot of sales from the younger crowd, who would peg me as too old to be teaching them winning modern poker. I can only imagine what people would think about a poker book written by authors in their 70s. Fair or not, elderly players have long been considered to be the weak spot in most games, and I can't imagine many people want to learn 2026 poker from two guys who voted in the Nixon/McGovern election.

There's no shame in retiring. Many players from the '90s and '00s have fond memories of the "Sklansky and Malmuth" books which allowed them to grasp basic concepts of holdem strategy, before they developed their own winning styles. At some point you can take a seat, rest on your accomplishments, and let the newer generations take over.

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Edit/MH:

Pleas.

https://storage.aisongmaker.io/audio/34b...

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There are many older pros who are still winning. Doyle was still beating $3/6K mixed in his late 80s with Ivey, Antonius, and all sorts of young players at the table.

My advice to Mason is to work on how keep the publishing business competitive. Sklansky needs to figure out what game and stakes he can beat for the most profit, probably starting at low or low/mid stakes.

I don't see how you can write a book a general book on NLHE if you can't beat mid stakes, and I see no indication that the authors can. Sure there are plenty of people who can't win much who try writing books and videos instead, which is why some of the beginners material is bad.

I pointed out clear errors in the thread on the 1/3 NLHE book. One was recommending open limping Qxs, etc. in ep in whatever circumstances. Another is recommending open raising to 8. The standard view is to raise large and limit the field. I can see your argument about keeping in players with weak hands. However, a raise to 12 at 1/3 usually gets multiple callers, so build the pot more with good hands.

No one here would defend either piece of advice, except for you. I would recommend revising and correcting the 1/3 book, having people review the manuscript and correcting portions that decent players would object to. I am sure other players could find more clear errors that should be removed. That would not take long and would be more useful than a new book on a subject you are not qualified to write about.

But I've already written or co-written books that many have said I wasn't qualified to write about. These include:

https://www.amazon.com/Gambling-Theory-O...

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Poke...

https://www.amazon.com/Real-Poker-Psycho...

https://www.amazon.com/Cardrooms-Everyth...

https://www.amazon.com/Blackjack-Essays-...

https://www.amazon.com/History-World-Gam...

By the way, when my poker psychology book came out I even stated that I didn't know much about psychology (and still don't).

What I don't understand is that this book is about concepts other authors don't address and then your first excerpt is when to call or fold when a player moves all in pre. There is a plethora of content out there about position, stack depth, opponent tendencies, action prior to the jam and what ranges to call with.

Your sample content doesn't seem to meet the criteria of concepts/strategies that other authors don't talk about.

There’s a good chance the title will change. And that assumes we finish the book, and progress has been very slow.