.01/.02 NL Hold Em on Stars

[gabbahh]

It's not so important what book you read. I read Lee Jones too and it helped me enough. Just get the basics in your head, and understand why these basics apply.
Now start playing lots of hands, until you get the feel for the game.
Read the boards, reply to posts about specific hands...
If they don't call you an idiot you are probably doing alright.
If you are mathematically skilled I recommend Theory of Poker. But I'd wait until you have played like 50K hands, since it would probably confuse you now.

[smoore]

You're right, it's not important what book you read... you could read Lee Jones like I did, try to beat the games and get incredibly frustrated following that advice. Then you could grind out 300k hands of limit poker, discovering that Ed Miller is the small-stakes poker genius for the 21st century about halfway through those hands after reading and applying SSHE. Then you could try his short stack theory while you work on the intricacies of NLHE from a medium or large stack.

Or you could just go buy GSIHE and skip all that other crap.

OP: Unless you're truly set on learning NLHE, limit is where most knowledgeable people recommend you start.... GSIHE and SSHE by Ed Miller, and it's not even close.

[AKQJ10]

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OP: Unless you're truly set on learning NLHE, limit is where most knowledgeable people recommend you start....

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I disagree with this statement and would be interested in seeing it substantiated. (Obviously I realize you can't do a census of all knowledgeable people in the poker universe, but I would expect there to be more than one or two references for this assertion if true.)

[smoore]

It's just my opinion and the advice I followed when I started seriously playing and studying. Opinions may have changed in the past two years.

I believe there is more money to be made at small NL games than limit. The GSIHE plan is foolproof, AFAICT. I don't see a way to gain a significant advantage over such a player. It's boring as hell though.

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I believe there is more money to be made at small NL games than limit. The GSIHE plan is foolproof, AFAICT. I don't see a way to gain a significant advantage over such a player. It's boring as hell though.

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Are you talking about short stack play? I've recently been messing around with this strategy after hitting a LHE 6-max downswing to change the scenery. At what level of NL is this strategy effective (i.e. how high)? I'm a NL noobie.

Also how small is a "small stack?" How much do you buy in for relative to the max buy-in? (e.g. how much would you buy in for on a $25 max buy-in?)

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Are you talking about short stack play? I've recently been messing around with this strategy after hitting a LHE 6-max downswing to change the scenery. At what level of NL is this strategy effective (i.e. how high)? I'm a NL noobie.

Also how small is a "small stack?" How much do you buy in for relative to the max buy-in? (e.g. how much would you buy in for on a $25 max buy-in?)

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ok, first off I'm a total noob to this forum, and a relative noob (1 yr playing) to NLHE, with 0 LHE exp. I cannot for the life of me fathom buying in to a ring game for less than the max. amount. It seems to me, and please feel free to correct if I'm wrong, that buying in for less than max. in a NL game would provide a less-than-optimal chance for competitive play. Of course I see the reasoning for practicing the short stack, but would it not be more beneficial to play short stack because you had lost chips? Triumphing thru adversity? Overcoming tilt?

[AKQJ10]

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It seems to me, and please feel free to correct if I'm wrong, that buying in for less than max. in a NL game would provide a less-than-optimal chance for competitive play.

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Read GSiH. Or at least read a summary of its argument.

My goal in poker is to win money, not to make daring bluffs and push people around. The SSS is terrible for the latter, but quite effective for the former.

It's a learning device and a transitional stage for those of us en route to learning to play the full game of NL well -- nothing more, nothing less.

[AKQJ10]

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It's just my opinion and the advice I followed when I started seriously playing and studying. Opinions may have changed in the past two years.

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Well, I can't speak to the prevailing wisdom, which is why I'm sincerely interested in finding out what the "experts" are saying. But what has changed in the past two years (i.e., my entire poker career) is the availability of beginner-friendly NLHE literature.

When I looked for the best available NL book in fall of 2004, just before Harrington I came out, the weak consensus seemed to be Dougherty and McEvoy. I regret that purchase immensely and wish I had waited another month for Harrington, or better yet, a few months for GSiHE.

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The GSIHE plan is foolproof, AFAICT. I don't see a way to gain a significant advantage over such a player.

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Somewhere Ed went on record as saying that the flaw is, a GSiHE by-the-book player won't defend blinds enough. If the rest of the table were playing equally tight, that would be a serious flaw. As it is, though, everyone's limping in with K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] out of position overestimating their implied odds from the other big stacks, so the tight and mechanical method has to make money.

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It's boring as hell though.

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Agreed. Again, it's a transitional step to prevent beginners from losing their shirt at NLHE.

Even now I dabble with 40 big blind stacks at Absolute, in order to clear bonuses, because Abs doesn't allow shorter buy-ins. But I make bad decisions and only show a small profit before bonus. The educational value of pondering my own mistakes is immense, however. Eventually I want to play larger stacks confidently, but building up bankroll via short stacks sounds fine with me for now.