Super System 2 review

[nate1729]

Folks --

I'm an avid poker-book reader, and bought SS2 as soon as I saw it was available through Amazon. I've read most of it, much of it at least twice, by now. There being very little criticism on this book as yet, I decided to share my thoughts.

Before I get into the specific parts, a quick note: unsurprisingly, the book is terrific.

The History of NLHE (Addington). Entertaining. On to the advice.

Tips from Mike Caro University Good general pointers. Some of them are brief to the point of marginal helpfulness, and some of them amount to "don't go on tilt," but still, good to read. Also, some of them ("don't stare at the flop as it's going down") are uber-canonical by this point, but a good 650-page poker book these days is just going to have some unoriginal information.

LHE (Harman). Good stuff, but all LHE advice is really just Footnotes to HE4AP. In particular, the starting hand advice is good but relatively unenlightening to the 2+2 student. The usefulness, for me, comes in sections like "Playing Middle Pair," which is a topic that HE4AP covers in its general concepts but doesn't explicitly give formulaic guidelines for. Similar comments apply to her thoughts on playing big hands on the flop; it's nothing groundbreaking after you've gained experience and studied HE4AP, but it's a very good set of case studies. Also, there's plenty of good advice about adjusting to specific opponents; again, nothing that general poker knowhow and experience wouldn't cover, but good to read.

O8 (Baldwin/Gregorich). Reading about limit O8 is like playing limit O8; it's great because it's poker, but dear lord, is it dull compared to anything else. I confess I've only read two-thirds or so closely. I've learned plenty, and have every intention of going back and reading and rereading it; it's clear and logical and all that. Indeed, it's one of the few parts of the book that's a real improvement on the 2+2 analogue; the second half of Ray Zee's stud-8/O8 book is, while excellent, rather short, and this chapter has plenty to offer beyond it. Anyone who knows anything about O8 knows that there's a good deal of nutpeddling involved; the beauty of the section is the parts where the strategy goes beyond the nutpeddling basics and actually gives you an edge on the grayhairs that have been playing O8 since 1943. It's good stuff.

Stud-8 (Todd Brunson). This is the other section I haven't read in great detail, because reading the others was a higher priority, and frankly because the stud-8 section of Ray Zee's book is so freaking good. So, it's good that this section is a set of eighteen "concepts," rather than an exhaustive analysis of the entire game. If you haven't read Ray Zee, this is a good start (easily enough to destroy the low-limit games online, for example); if you have, some of the concepts are still well worth reading. In particular, the bit about raising on fourth in a monster pot when you caught bad but sitll must see fifth (in an effort to keep the action to two bets) is good to read about.

PLO (Berman). Now, for some reason, the cartoon depiction of Lyle Berman includes a whimsical facial expression, and three frogs. But that's not so relevant. What's great is that there's finally more reading material on PLO, so that there's something other than Ciaffone/Reuben and the godawful chapter of Hellmuth's book. All the information seems great. It feels a little incomplete to me, but I'd guess that's just because PLO is such a tough game. There's definitely great material on all the streets, on different sorts of hands, and on hand-reading. In particular, there's good insight into when and why to make big laydowns. Anyway, the chapter's not exhaustive, or even close, but it's very good.

Triple Draw (Negreanu). This chapter is awesome. It makes me wish there were more triple-draw games at lower limits. (Actually, there might be more now on UB and Full Tilt, but they'll probably be populated by relatively good players that have read this chapter. Anyway. It's the most comprehensive chapter in the book, and all of the material is logical and very well presented. Even if you're not going to play triple-draw, it's worth reading for the general poker enlightenment value. In particular, the excellent advice about play in the last betting round is a good way to test your river skills in general (if you haven't read that part of Theory of Poker for a while, say.) Hopefully Negreanu writes some books soon.

Tournament Overview (Brunson). It's fine, but short, and familiar to anyone who's read, say, TP4AP.

NLHE (Brunson). Mostly copied and slightly updated. Very good, of course, but not much new.

WPT (Lipscomb). Pointless and crappy, and often just an advertisement. The very little actual advice is hilariously simpleminded and obvious, and maybe even just plain wrong at times ("Mantra 1: It's a Game of Traps.") Well, at least the rest of the book is good.


Hope this review is of some use to someone, somewhere, and not too hopelessly haughty. A final thought: the manic boldfacing, italicizing, and underlining that so charmed readers of SS is absent from SS2. Probably a good thing, overall, but it was kinda strange to see the familiar fonts without it.

Anyone have other thoughts?

--Nate

[gomberg]

Good review - I'm still reading it, but I agree the triple draw section is amazing and much better than the other parts of the book. The PLO section was very solid and the limit hold'em section was interesting at least... didn't learn much, but it's still decent.

The high-low sections i'll get to eventually, but don't play those games all that often and am not as interested in them as say... triple draw or PLO.

[Rudbaeck]

I also liked the triple draw section best. Maybe because it's the only section of the book with anything really new in it. (Which isn't surprising, as it's the first text on triple draw I've ever seen.)

[gila]

In the new cardplayer interview Negreanu claims that he hopes to have a book done by the WSOP that will be the best comprehesive hold-em book available to date.

[johnnybeef]

great review, i tend to agree with the points you make, especially about the PLO section.

[RangerC]

I was hugely disappointed by the PLO section of the book - if it wasn't for Berman's picture at the front of the chapter, I would have thought it was written by Cloutier/McEvoy - it has all their trademarks:

- endless namedropping
- hand examples from ANOTHER GAME
- every hand example has a huge hand up against another huge hand
- disjointed structure
- the distinct feeling that the author is 'holding something back' (Berman's specialty is apparently shorthanded PLO, and he gives up absolutely NO info in the 1 paragraph on shorthanded play; just that it's 'more fun' and 'requires a different set of skills'. Um, thanks.)

The rest of the book was good to great (the Triple Draw and O8 sections are probably the two best works on those two games as of now), but I thought the PLO section was horrid compared to Reuben's How Good is Your PLO? (good thing that book is out there).

[nate1729]

Yeah, it's annoying that the PLO examples are more anecdotal than illustrative. I agree that these are legitimate faults of the chapter; however, part of the problem stems from the fact that PLO is just really freaking hard. The worst fault, I'd say, is the utter lack of comprehensiveness. No matter how tough a game is you'd think there'd be a fuller explanation of, say, the kinds of hands you can call raises with in LMP. (Though, hands run so close together preflop, and PLO isn't really about preflop play, except not being a moron and getting stuck for lots of money with dry aces out of position when there's still plenty of money to be bet, but I digress...) I'd also like to have seen more on how to play various hands on the turn; so many tricky situations arise, especially out of position.

I still say it's worth reading, but it's definitely lacking.

--Nate

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi nate:

One thing I noticed about the limit hold 'em section is that while there is discussion of how to play your first two cards from early, middle, and late position, there is no discussion of how to play your first two cards out of the blinds. I can't believe this wasn't written. So either I somehow missed it or some editor lost this page.

best wishes,
Mason

[nate1729]

Thanks for the comment; agreed. Also, the advice on the differences between the way individual hands should be played from the various positions is quite incomplete (by HE4AP standards); e.g., EMP raises, LMP calls, you're on the button; which playable hands do you reraise with and which do you call with? I don't think any reasonable person would say that there is any reason to have any other source for starting-hand selection in LHE beyond HE4AP, except insofar as someone might have a specific objection to HE4AP advice. Harman does note that the differences between 2/3 small-blind and 1/2 small-blind structure might affect your play from positions outside the blind, because the SB will be far looser. Do people (Mason?) think this is the case? I can't imagine many specific instances in which it would legitimately affect my decision, because:

-If the pot's unraised, I see myself either raising it or having a multiway hand.*

-If the pot's raised, the 1/6-small-bet difference doesn't matter as much.

Thoughts?

--Nate

*Now, if I'm limLping first in with JTs in MP or something, I might have a hand that plays relatively well multiway but (obviously) prefer the SB not have the profitable play of calling Q2o with a single chip. But there seems to my instinct to be a very small set of cases, if any, such that the size of the small blind would actually turn a limp into a raise.

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think any reasonable person would say that there is any reason to have any other source for starting-hand selection in LHE beyond HE4AP, except insofar as someone might have a specific objection to HE4AP advice.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess I am not reasonable then. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] And I doubt anyone regularly posting in small stakes or mid/high plays even nearly as loose as HEFAP recommends. That said I wasn't impressed by Harman's preflop advice.