Shorthanded play

Anyone know of any good resources for shorthanded play? Limit, pot limit, and no limit play, and various games? If not somebody write some.

This question is regularly asked on the Forum and the gheneral consensus seems to be that any kind of strategy one could develop either relies heavily on game theory or is player specific to your opponent.


In HPFAP there is a chapter on shorthanded play and there the general advice is to bet when your opps have nothing.


There is also some discussion in heads up play of always raising out of the small blind and disregarding the top card in a flop to determine if you will bet or call a bet.


I believe Abdul also has some advice on his website www.posev.com (http://www.posev.com)


Hope this helps.

i contend that its almost the same as playing in a full ring game and the first few fold leaving the amount of players left that correspond to what you are playing shorthanded with. 21st cent. hfap deals with shorthanded.

if i can get 3000 guaranteed buyers i would write one hellava one.

"if i can get 3000 guaranteed buyers i would write one hellava one."


well, actually, I can't buy 3000 copies (at this time, heh) but i would buy one and read it 3000 times...


hillbilly- continueing the march uphill

I'll buy two, the second one to refer to after the first wears out. Seriously, you think you'd have trouble selling at least 3000 copies?

specialty books dont sell well as the players market is limited, thats why i never considered writing one on no limit. plus i am extemely lazy nowadays about trading my time for money.

Well you can certainly count me in for one. I'm sure if you covered all the standard games, and gave due note of differences between limit and big bet play, that they would sell like hotcakes.


Shorthanded games are becoming incresingly popular due to the internet offering full ring games, 5 player max games, and heads up play in most popular poker forms.


Also coming from a city with a very limited player base, it is often hard to get a 7+ player table to stick for more than a few hours. I'd say that about 60% of my live game experience is at shorthanded play, but over 80% of my profit would have been extracted from full ring games.


Therefore, I would love to get some real strategy tips on shorthanded play from a pro that has been very successful in MONEY games like yourself. Very few people have offered more than "be more aggressive and play more hands". While I can hold my own in shorthanded games, i realise that the potential for profit in these games is HUGE.


Another factor that makes a book on this subject worthwhile, is that games will probably stick together longer if people are more capable at shorthanded play. While the tourists won't last long, it will help prevent games from breaking because of a temporary lack of punters. This allows the game to build back to a full table and maintain the action for vastly longer periods.


In short, I couldn't hink of anyone better to write a book, that in my opinion should have been written by someone 10 years ago.

I'd buy it! Maybe if we get 3,000 people in this thread saying they'll buy it, Ray will write it!

...one for me. My friends said they want one each, so that's 3000 by my counting, Ray...


G

I would buy a copy if you promised to use capitals, punctuation and grammar.


I know it was just a short note but I had to read it four times! And now you've made me sound like my wife!


I will buy a copy though. I would also buy a copy of a pot limit Omaha book if you ever wrote one.

Ray,


There is no doubt at all you will sell 3,000 copies. Hold em is driving the poker sales market. There is a much greater demand for hold em books than for stud and hi/lo split games. 2+2's numbers alone will prove this. Moreover, poker book sales are steadily increasing and will continue to do so as the player pool expands.


The question is, can you get sustainable sales of 3,000/year. 30K in 10 years is likely: Kreiger's low limit holdem book sold 120K in much less time, and you should be able to get 15-20% of his sales numbers.


At the usual wholesale and royalty rates, that's $120 to $150,000. Not bad for what'll take you less than a month.

It seems to me that from the good books on hold'em, on good books on poker theory in general, and Internet posts these forums included one could piece together an extensive and winning strategy from this information.

One thing I've found that works for me - but is a little surprising - is to play more passively. I find that I take a lot of money off short-handed players when they turn the aggression up to eleven. The other interesting thing about this strategy is that really aggressive players often assume too much aggression in their opponents.


Once you make a hand and start raising on the turn, for instance, they will still be trying to bully you out of the pot when it's obviously hopeless. A true expert will read you of course, but even very good aggressive short-handed players will often miss it.


As for myself, whenever I play ultra-aggressively heads up or three handed, I get murdered. So I've toned it down and I almost always come away with the money in heads up games now. In fact, my FAVORITE opponent to have is a very aggressive bulldog-type of player, especially in no limit. Although the conventional wisdom says these guys are the most trouble, I find that they are so totally willing to hang themselves it more than makes up for any difficulty they might present.


This is true in both limit and no-limit, but ESPECIALLY no limit.


Don't take these comments to be a treatise on short handed no limit play or some kind of hard and fast rule. There's so much to it that Ray Zee could write a book and sell 30,000 copies.


Ray, if you write that book, I'll offer my editing services. I was an English major and I know when to capitalize, when to stop a run-on sentence, when to use punctuation, and the like.


natedogg

Ray,


You need to self publish it like Bob Ciaffone. Forget about Mason, he will not pay you enough. Just look at how much money you made so far from him.


This is what the guys that sell gambling systems do and they charge alot for the book. So, you could make 1000 copies and sell them for $50 each. Every one of them will sell.


Good Luck


Mark

its like being in the coal mines with mason. he charges me every time he sells one of my books. he tells me i just need more volume to get out of debt. if he sells any more books im going to have to take out a loan.


actually mason is a wonderful partner. i know as he keeps telling me so.

Ray,


Instead of paying to bind a book, burn it on CD on your PC at home. Sell copies for what you think the information is worth. I bet if it's detailed enough you could charge at least $300 a copy.


If you do it this way you will make money.

I will buy one.

Ray, I'll buy two. Just to get the number closer to 3,000.

You said you've never wrote a book on big-bet hold em because of the limited market. With Ultimatebet and cccpoker now offering cheap pot and no-limit hold em more players are being introduced to it. I would imagine sooner or later "paradise"poker will also join in spreading big-bet (READ: Thousands of newbies wanting info). I definitely see the market for this type of book growing. I think it would be a great idea for you and natedogg to get started on this project ASAP.