Getting my head around SSHE

[TimsterToo]

Hi I'm a newbie here and I've been playing poker for nearly two months now.

I first bought PPLTP from Hellmuth as it was the only book for sale in Amsterdam :-) I tried it out and lost a lot of money real quick! Might work in B&M games but certainly not in 0,50/1,- on PP.

After doing a lot of searching and reading on the net I decided that SSHE might be the next best step and I've had the book for aprox three weeks.

It might very well be me who's stoopid but I really have to read a bit, play a couple of hundred hands and read some more chapter by chapter to get my head around it. The loose components all make sense but it's hard to apply them all at the same time without breaking out a sweat and having too little time to act.

What I basically do now is trying to apply things step by step. I've been working on my preflop play intensively lately and I think that I now finally have to discipline to follow the chart and am also starting to graps WHY the chart is smart.

Next is the postflop play. I've read all of it but when I'm rereading it carefully now with more played hands under my belt I get a lot of A-HA! moments and see how I've misinterpreted it the first time around. Better understanding is slowly creeping in.

I still start over every couple of days and reread everything to see if I'm still on the right track with earlier concepts as I tend to stray to the dark side every now and again.

My question is if someone has a better approach in getting your learning curve as steep as possible. I sometimes read posts of people (on different forums and RGP) that have read 5 or 6 books of different authors and have only been playing for 6 months and I really don't see how you can cope with the amount of (often contradictory) information and still be able to apply it consistantly and with a good grasp of why you play like that.

Bit of a ramble but hey, I'm new confused and absolutely sure that I can crack this at least at the lower leves. (it will probably cost me some more first though) [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

So there!

Tim

[flopwell]

I think this is a good approach. I am on my third reading of SSHE, and I still find many of the concepts baffling, or at least, hard to apply.

[Guthrie]

With all due respect to our hosts, SSHE is not a very easy read. I doubt I'm the only one who spent many hours and lost a lot of hair trying to put the starting-hand charts into a usable format. However, the information is good and you are definitely on the right track. Read some, play some, repeat, and those "Aha!" moments will come, and come more frequently as you progress.

[grimel]

Buy Gary Carson's "The Complete Book on Hold 'em Poker". Read it. Then try SSHE. I'll buy it from you if it doesn't make SSHE easier to understand. God knows it made "Hold 'em for Advanced easier" which BTW made Hold 'em Poker easier to understand.

BTW, I'm apparently a minority, PPLTP by Hellmuth worked for me. I don't play at PP very often. Mostly UB. Upon reading the intro to SSHE I think I found the reason - he beats it into your head to play TIGHT.

Try Carson's book. He's a better writer. Says mostly the same stuff in a different manner. SSHE is college, Carson is high school. Hellmuth is elementary school, nothing fancy, nothing advanced - it probably won't work very well at anything but the intermediate level (Hellmuth's intermediate portion) on PP (say just a bit above break even).

[Guthrie]

Carson's publisher also has a much better book designer.

[tinhat]

[ QUOTE ]
I doubt I'm the only one who spent many hours and lost a lot of hair trying to put the starting-hand charts into a usable format.

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't know if you eventually got it, but I made a landscape matrix that's very simple to use. Has the "tight" table recommendations on one side and "loose" on the other. I'd be happy to send it to anyone interested. I don't know if it's copasetic but I'd post it here except don't know how...

[TimsterToo]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

I already have Pokertracker which I'm slowly but surely using more and more. I'm applying it mainly to check out the competition. I've got a 4500 hand database which I'll have to start using to eveluate my play. I just feel that I'm learning so much every day at the moment that hands that are a few days old are obsolete anyways.

The next book I might buy is Theory of Poker as I think it will compliment SSHE instead of get in the way or blatantly contradict it. (I promised myself not to fund Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth any more until they've earned themselves back [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]) As soon as I really grasp SSHE it will be early enough to do some reading by other authors to provide myself with second opinions and different viewpoints.

Tim

[mvoss]

I'm doing it much the same way you are, except I read WLLHE by Lee Jones before I read SSHE. This made SSHE much easier to understand. By the way TOP is even more difficult to read than SSH IMO [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[trfogey]

Yes, I found exactly the same thing. I started off on the Lee Jones book, then I got hold of a free copy of Internet Texas Hold 'em from www.internettexasholdem.com. Read both of these twice, and then I bought SSHE, which I didn't really struggle with at all. I have read it 3 times and am starting to consistently win money at the .5/1 tables.
A very good book, but easier to understnad if you have read simpler ones beforehand.

[swede0530]

I read HEFAP first, then dabbled with TOP, got WLLH and SSH at the same time, read through WLLH first which has made SSH easier to grasp.

I'll go back to HEFAP and TOP at some point but am concentrating on reading SSH and like others I read, play, read, play and see if anything clicks. Things do click now better than they did in the past.

Interesting thing, I found that I had been applying some of the principles of SSH before I read it. Must be the osmosis factor from the first two books I read.

I don't think it is a matter of trying to incorporate everything I read in SSH at once but playing and recognizing situations that are described.

Good stuff.