New Book Announcement

This book will be way better than critics are thinking. They are not wrong to think that because the only two pieces of information they have to go by (an excerpt that might mislead prospective readers about the book as a whole, and the fact that Mason and I have recently been playing small stakes.) Plus, there is the fact that readers of this thread already know many things in it.

The general idea for the book came to me because when I emerged from serious health issues and started playing small at first. I would come upon situations, often rare, that weren't analyzed by others. Sometimes they were situations caused by opponents who did something weird or unusual. And that has always been my specialty because they devolve into logic problems that I am STILL better at than even poker players who play NLH better than me. Sometimes I realized that some of these weird plays could actually be a good play and that fact was included.

The subject matter is all over the place because unusual aspects to cash or tournament holdem can be found in many places. Sometimes the analysis can be understood by a beginner and sometimes not. Dan Druff's criticism of choosing my audience doesn't apply because the main thrust of most chapters was rarely discussed situations regardless of whether they came up in small games or big ones.

The book does not suggest an overall strategy and if you read only that book you would probably be a loser if you weren't already good. But the usual stuff it does discuss is dissected in a logical/mathematical way that you probably won't find elsewhere For instance the criteria you should use to answer a three bettor behind you when you have specifically AK. Or when a beginner bets one fifth of the pot on the flop. About half the book is that and you will be glad you read it.

The other half was belatedly written because I am having trouble finding enough examples of unusual situations (in cases where the analysis is pretty undebatable,) to satisfy Mason's desire for a certain size book. That stuff is good but could be found elsewhere. The excerpt was an example.

We are still several chapters short and the writing has slowed down because new examples of unique stuff don't pop up in our heads that often . Meanwhile my plans are to give a very short summary of every chapter in the next few days plus a couple of full excerpts if Mason gives permission. I am sure they will temper your criticism.

I always find it entertaining when someone who knows virtually nothing about what we're doing and also virtually nothing about how our publishing business works, starts telling us what we need to do, and many people over the years have done this. All it does is confirm to us how little this person knows and why he should be completely ignored.

LOL, come on Mason.

I've been in the poker community for 25 years, with 22 1/2 of them as a pro. I think that's enough time built up to be able to comment on books written for the community, and how I feel about such books and their reception from the intended audience.

I have stated nothing about the process of book publishing itself, as that's an area where I have no experience, so I won't pretend to be an expert there.

But that's fine... ignore my advice at your book's own peril.

Of course the idea is to turn some strange plays you haven't thought about until they come up, into ones that you have sort of thought about. Also some of the chapters are not about strange plays butt also un usual concepts. And again half the chapters are more routine.

Here is a list of a few of the chapters sometimes with a very short summary.

1. WHEN YOU ARE THREE BET WITH AK

Your stack size will often be the determining factor

2. WHEN THERE IS NO BETTING TO THE RIVER AND NOW SOMEONE BETS REALLY BIG

Its often not what you think

3. THWARTING HIS SET MINING

A good way to cut down on his implied odds when you havea big pair

4. THE STOP AND GO PLAY

The math behind it

5. WHY SUPER TIGHT PREFLOP PLAYERS ARE HARD TO BEAT

But not so much if there is an ante

6. BUBBLE MATH

The EV penalty of ignoring the bubble

7.BETTING AFTER CHECKING AND CALLING TWICE

Even if the river is a blank

8. ASYMEMETRICAL HEADS UP HANDS

Times the two players have different risk vs rewards equations

9.RIVER VALUE BETS WITH LES THAN TOP PAIR

10.A MANIAC AT YHOUR TABLE

various ways to adjust

11, OPPONENTS WHO ALMOST ALWAYS CONTINUE WITH THEIR CONTINUATION BETTING ON THE TURN

ways to adjust to them

12 WHEN THEY NEVER RAISE BLUFF

Different adjustments all the way back to preflop

13. ENTERING TOURNAMENTS LATE

14. BOUNTIES

15. THREE WAY ALL IN

16 GTO AND BET SIZING

17. BIG BRING INS

18. TINY BETS

19. PROBABILITY PRIMER

20 SMALL FLOP BLUFFS IN MULTIWAY POTS

I would recommend posting excerpts here and also having people review the manuscript. You want to make sure you are not saying anything that appears wrong, or at least address why you are taking an unconventional view. There is a lot that is known now. It isn't like 30 years ago. If you have good material, you don't want it to be obscured by clear errors, as it was in your previous book.

I pointed out clear errors in your low stakes book. They aren't matters or opinion. You are wrong. Even if you somehow are successful playing that way, they are terrible advice for amateur or novice players, because they encourage the loose/passive preflop play which most 1/3 players do anyway.

One is suggesting you should be the loosest player in a 1/3 game, limping in a lot. Then suggesting limping Qxs, Axo, and unsuited connectors in ep at certain tables. Then suggesting raising to 8 at 1/3. Pretty much no professional player would agree with you on those.

There is much useful information on when to push preflop in a tournament and when to call. Usually, the material is mathematical with ranges and considers ICM effects.

Your excerpt basically gives no useful information. You would prefer to have a higher pp when they have a pp and an ace with a higher kicker when they have an ace. Yes, of course, but unless you are a psychic, you don't know if the shove is a pp, ace, high cards, or maybe a suited connector/gapper.

I would recommend deleting that excerpt from the book and also having the manuscript reviewed for other passages that need to be deleted or majorly revised.

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Mason the more you answer to valid critics the more cringe it becomes. For the sake of your future book, put them on your ignore list or hire someone who is qualified with social media image.

I would recommend posting a significant portion of the book as excerpts, so that you can get feedback.

I hope it isn't belaboring about the previous book. However, the standard approach at 1/3 (and 1/2 and to some extent 2/5) is to play premium hands and raise large with them as fish will call to see a flop. Different good players have different ranges. Some vary raise size based on the hand and some don't. Some raise larger than others. Some have a limping range and some don't. If the raiser is raising with some frequency, it is standard to 3! rather than call with some hands which are not premium (not QQ+/AK or 99+/AQ+), but different players have different approaches to that.

Generally fish at 1/2, 1/3, and 2/5 limp/call all sort of junk hands like you mentioned, Qxs, etc. This is generally considered bad play. Sure you expect to have a postflop advantage, but part of your advantage is building the pot with good hands against wide ranges.

So you give advice to limp in with a wide range and raise very small with good hands, and it seems like it is bad advice. It is fine to have an unconventional view, but you do nothing to convince readers that your eccentric view is correct.

If you publish another book with obviously bad advice, it won't sell, even if you have some interesting ideas about situations that have not been discussed.

You mention the small stakes NLHE book has sold 1500 copies. There should be a big market for small stakes books, as many amateur players and low stakes grinders. There is no way the book is profitable to the publisher or authors with that kind of sales. So I recommend you reevaluate your approach into how you produce these books and whether to write them yourselves or get outside authors.

Another person who knows virtually nothing about how the publishing business works today. Because of Amazon, there are very little expenses, if any at all, to produce a book. Years ago, this wasn't true.

Also, years ago, an author who wanted his book published but didn't want to go through the expense, plus time and effort, to produce a book would go to a publisher. This way he didn't have to put up any money for a book that might not sell. Today, that's not true. And over the past few years I have told several well known poker people that they would be much better off if they just went through Amazon and made !00 percent instead of going through a publisher like us and just receiving a royalty (and, by the way, we always paid much higher royalties than any of our competitors).

I would have bet (and lost) that the file linked to above was going to be the clip where Mason called Todd (Dan Druff) a degenerate years and years ago.

The banter is very nostalgic.

Subway must have refused Todd's request for tomatoes on the side again, and he got his seat-cover in a spin.

Mason and David, don't let all of the t-terrible things people say here slow down progress on your new book.

I think most of disagreement here is because many don't understand the purpose of the "Small Stakes NLHE" book. The authors do state in the introduction that this is not an introductory book to beat NLHE. Nor is it for any level of poker other than the lowest buy-in game. It is not even for competing against the "average" low stakes player. It is for exploiting weak loose players for people who want to make more money but not looking to move up stakes.

If that isn't you, then don't read or follow it.

I do have a self published book on Amazon that has sold more than 1500 copies at a much higher price. You must have some expenses, so I can't see how you can be making much with what Amazon pays you for 1500 books. Can't see how the authors (who are partly the same person) can be making much. Unless they wrote the book in a week, they aren't getting paid much for their work.

The problem with the preflop section of your previous book is you present a completely different approach than what is standard, than what you would be advised to do on this forum. You don't even address what the standard approach is or explain why you are taking a different approach. It is fine to look at things fresh, but it seems like you aren't even aware of the approaches most regs use.

Our only out of pocket expense was $150 with a professional kindle builder that we use for the kindle. Out books are a little too complex for us to use the Amazon kindle creator tool.

You didn't use an editor, proofreader, or graphic artist? No marketing expense? As mentioned, might have been good to pay a poker player to make comments on the manuscript.

It IS rare that authors address how to handle all ins in tournaments from non desperate players, and especially to come to the conclusion that they usually have a decent hand, and even more rare to analyze and recommend that you try to have a better hand.

No. I do it all, and you forgot things like type-setting and art work.

In the past we have done lots of different things including cover design contests and lots of ways to promote our books. (For example, we did for many years have the Two Plus Two Pokercast where we would sometimes talk about our books, especially if it was new.) And depending on the book, we did at times have very knowledgeable people give us detailed comments

As I have said, you have very little understanding of how our publishing company works and also worked in the past.

And yes, that $150 figure for the small stakes hold 'em book is correct. And if you want make a comparison, we have a bunch of books where our production costs were well over $500,000 (and that was years ago). But thanks to Amazon, things are very different today.

As for graphics designer, there's a lot of graphics in some of our books. A good example would be to look at our book the Fundamentals of Craps. I bet you didn't know we have a book like that.

https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Crap...

and if you look at the kindle sample, you can see some of the graphics.

A classic: https://pokerfraudalert.com/mason_remix....

From 2008.

What an era.

I don't know your business, but it is obvious that the authors can't be making much, even with what Amazon pays, with 1500 copies sold.

For my book, I put a lot of money into editors and proofreaders. I used a graphic artist for the cover and a book formatting person. There were other expenses, but I don't want to go into what the book is about. I also spent money on advertising and promotion, mostly for Amazon ads. I use a higher price to cover the expenses. The book makes a profit, but not a lot due to expenses.

The excerpt you posted does not impress anyone. You need to post a decent excerpt to get favorable comments here. If you can't do that, it might be better not to publish the book.

I still don't understand how you can produce a book without paying an editor and proofreader.

It’s clear you find it very irritating, because you end up responding.

Actually, all it does is confirm how incredibly thin-skinned you are. If they should be ignored, then why are you responding to their post instead of ignoring them? (That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is obvious.)

You must not have read their books

In general. our authors made about five times as much as they would have made with our competitors. We paid much higher royalties and our books sold much better, and a bunch of our authors received over $1,000,000 in royalties. And they received these royalties before all the inflation came during the Covid years. We have also sold approximately 2,800,000 books.

Our books go through a very thorough editing process, which includes editing for the writing as well as the content (which includes statistical accuracy). In addition, a lot of proof reading is done. And it's all done by me which is why we don't have outside expenses for this work.

Our covers, except for the small stakes no-limit book where we used a free Amazon cover, were either done by a graphic artist or with the assistance of a graphic artist, or came through a cover contest that we held on this site. The graphic artist and/or cover designer is given recognition in each of our books. Since I do much of this work, the cost was always minimal. And for an example of a nice cover, look here:

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

The idea for this cover came from me and our graphic designer, who did a terrific job, put it together.

Because of this website, which I was the majority owner (before it was sold a few years ago), and which during most of this time period was the dominant site for poker discussion, there was no need for us to spend money on advertising and promotion. In fact, due to advertising that we sold on twoplustwo.com, in a sense we were being paid to promote our books.

As you can see, we didn't have those expenses and this allowed us to pay our authors much higher royalty rates. And as our company became more successful, we increased the royalty rates that we paid for any new books (at that time) that we did.

As I've said to you in this thread, you have very little understanding of how our company actually worked. Now you should have more.

I've played a fair amount of $1-$3 no-limit hold 'em and see this play come up all the time, and in general many players at these stakes don't know how to handle it. So, even if it has no value for you, it should have value for at least some of the potential readers. By the way, at $2-$5, I virtually never see this play.

I explained this in my previous post.

Back in the 1990s, I worked with Lynne Loomis, who was a top notch editor and learned a great deal from her. Sadly, she passed away a couple of years ago, but is a co-author with me on our Fundamentals series:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTHRFKJZ?bin...