Hold'em Excellence - Lou Krieger

[mxer7734]

Has anyone read this book, and if so, how did you like it? I play mostly .50/1, 1/2 and small SNG's. I have read SSH, TOP, ITH, HOH1, GSIH and Hold'em Poker. Is this book worth buying or is it just a beginners book? Although I will still read it if its a semi-beginners book I just want to make sure the information contained in it is accurate, like the 2+2 books. Thanks.

[playersare]

I remember the starting hand guidelines to be solid for a beginner, but post-flop there's not really much of substance in either of the HE-E books. with all the books you've already read, you will find little to nothing of value in the Krieger books.

you should be reasonably successful already by following the 2+2 titles you have listed in your OP. what do your PT stats say?

[mxer7734]

Well, I have just seriously started playing this summer and have read all those books in a short amount of time which I know is a bad idea. I have started to re read and study SSH and it has helped my game a lot. I am just getting over a huge downswing and feeling a lot better about my play. Currently I am doing 1.87 BB/100 at Party .50/1 over 18k hands.(I know thats nothing great but I'm looking to improve which is why I'm here).

[Aceshigh7]

It has an excellent discussion on playing AK. I think it is a very good and underrated book.

[benkahuna]

I didn't get a whole lot out of HEE after reading most of the books you mentioned. I appreciated the AK discussion quite a bit. It is a unique treatment, but it only amounts to like one article's worth of reading. I think it's a great first book, but given the books you've read, it would only be a rehash. And the treatment isn't especially unique so I don't think you need it. MHEE, however does have some good stuff in it. It's got more advanced topics, has a great section on card probabilities and deals a lot with more psychological issues of the game.

I kept MHEE and gave the other book to my dad because with what I've read and playing every day, it has nothing in it that I don't already know. I found the writing and presentation pretty good (thoughless technically impressive than Sklansky/Malmuth and less well presented than Harrington) and Lou also just seems like a generally really good guy. He's your friendly uncle.

[binions]

[ QUOTE ]
I have read SSH, TOP, ITH, HOH1, GSIH and Hold'em Poker. Is this book worth buying?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

[gila]

[ QUOTE ]
Currently I am doing 1.87 BB/100 at Party .50/1 over 18k hands.(I know thats nothing great but I'm looking to improve which is why I'm here).

[/ QUOTE ]

This rate is neither great nor not-great; the sample size is simply way to small. You could be anywhere from a small loser to something more along the lines of 3-4 BB/hour winner. Being dedicated to this, like it seems you are, makes me lean more toward the winning side. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that those numbers do not necessarily mean you are playing sub-optimal.

[binions]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Currently I am doing 1.87 BB/100 at Party .50/1 over 18k hands.(I know thats nothing great but I'm looking to improve which is why I'm here).

[/ QUOTE ]

This rate is neither great nor not-great; the sample size is simply way to small. You could be anywhere from a small loser to something more along the lines of 3-4 BB/hour winner. Being dedicated to this, like it seems you are, makes me lean more toward the winning side. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that those numbers do not necessarily mean you are playing sub-optimal.

[/ QUOTE ]

How is 18K hands too small a sample to draw any conclusion?

In the old days, it would take someone 600 hours of live play to accumulate 18,000 hands. Or 75 straight days at 8 hours a day.

I think you can draw some conclusions at 18K hands.

[gila]

Well, in my last 35,000 hands I had a 14,000 hand break even streak, followed by a 21,000 hand streak of winning over 4 BB an hour. What conclusions would you draw if you looked at my stats at 18,000? That I am barely a winner? What if you looked at my last 18,000? I am killing the game?

[binions]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, in my last 35,000 hands I had a 14,000 hand break even streak, followed by a 21,000 hand streak of winning over 4 BB an hour. What conclusions would you draw if you looked at my stats at 18,000? That I am barely a winner? What if you looked at my last 18,000? I am killing the game?

[/ QUOTE ]

There could be a lot of conclusions to draw, but more info is needed

[Rickjohn]

what is ITH?

[gila]

ITH - Internet Texas Holdem. Matthew Hilger.

Binions, I do think there are SOME conclusions you can draw at, say 18,000 hands, HOWEVER, I would not put too much stock in these conclusions. If you are winning at a decent pace, like the original posters 1.89 bb/hr, I think it is fairly apparent you are, at least, a break even or close to break even player. Basically, it would take quite a run of cards for a true fish to be up after that many hands. I guess that is a conclusion. Or at least a semi-conclusion. For a more concrete example of your abilities, I would think, bare minimum, 100,000 hands; or, if playing live, at least a few years.

Peace,
Al

[Erik W]

To get better reread SSHE over and over again a chapter at a time and really try to understand why the plays are made.

When u get better u will learn more and more for every time u study it.

Redo the hand quizzes at the end over and over again too.

Mark the ones you don't agree with and do just those one at times.

[burningyen]

How are you getting these numbers on what the minimum sample size should be? Isn't there some fancy math formula that tells you the margin of error on your BB/100 given n hands of limit hold'em and average variance? What's the difference in the margin of error with 10k hands vs. 100k hands? Without knowing more, my hunch would be that you simply played better over the last set of hands than you did over the first set.

[gila]

There is a website but I forget where it is. You put in your number of hands, your standard diviation, and you bb/hr and it shoots back what your "range" is. I forget the exact numbers but, to give you an example, when I punched my numbers in I had about 32,000 with a SD of 16.something and I was winning over 2/bb an hour. It said I was between a -.21 loser and a 5ish bb winner. Again, these numbers are just approximate (and they are short-hand numbers). But, if you can have that kind of range at 32,000, imagine the range for 1/2 that amount of hands. Your hunch, although maybe physically correct (i.e. I played better), is not at all mathematically sound. It takes many, many, hands to come even close to your true win rate. I would think 100,000 is actually not even close to high enough.

As an aside, Matthew Hilger, in his book, states "A good poker player could only BREAK EVEN, after 1400 hours of play. Given any time below that, he could possibly lose"

I believe he is talking about table hours here, but if this was live play, that would be 7 hrs a day for 200 days. And anything before that, and a good player could even be down. So no, 10,000 hands, 20,000 hands, it does not even scratch the surface.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
Without knowing more, my hunch would be that you simply played better over the last set of hands than you did over the first set.

[/ QUOTE ]


that's possible too of course. but stretches like that are VERY possible.

we recently had a post by Victor in the SSHE where he showed a graph of 150k hands or something of his 5/10 6-max play.
He is a long-term 1.9BB/100 winner over that stretch I believe.
But there was also a 20k hand stretch where he dropped 400BB in there.

The graph is so big that it just looks like a teeny little down-swing when you first look at it. afterall...there are upswings in there that are far more dramatic. and the general trend is up, up, up.
...then you look at it closer...and you go to the sides of the graph and look at the actual numbers and realize that he actually had a 400BB drop in there.


You can say "he probably just played badly" all you like. But the fact is VARIANCE HAPPENS.

18k hands is NOT a terribly high amount to draw TOO many conclusions from.