Kick Ass No-Limit Holdem

[Jedi Poker]

[ QUOTE ]
So Jedi, are you financially interested in this book selling?
It surely seem so.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope. I have nothing to gain from this book selling.

[artman]

I visited the website and read a few excerpts. I must say that i liked it quite a bit. But $29 for 40 pages? I think i'll wait for B.Ciaffone's new NL holdem book due this summer. It's probably gonna be cheaper and have more pages. And i assume at least as good. For now i'll stick with his previous book Pot limit & No limit poker. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[TimTimSalabim]

[ QUOTE ]
I was very intrigued that the author, Kaizen Nguyen, claims to be a neurolinguistics expert. This is a science that is known for making people better readers of body language

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Actually, neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP for short, is much more than a science about body language. It's mostly about influencing people to do what you want. The ad is dripping with NLP techniques ("can you visualize buying this book and how great it will be etc."). Which doesn't mean the book is necessarily worthless, but it makes me highly suspicious.

[William]

Maybe Mason will read it and let us know if it is worth buying.
With the shortage of NL books, it would be great to have something to read, but all the pushy comments and the high price makes me suspicious as well, so I'll wait until I hear some more about this "great" new book.

[Nottom]

Well for all of you guys that think that $30 is too much for a PDF file, I have a feeling you may be in luck if you check back on the KANLH site tomorrow.

[Jedi Poker]

[ QUOTE ]
Actually, neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP for short, is much more than a science about body language. It's mostly about influencing people to do what you want. The ad is dripping with NLP techniques ("can you visualize buying this book and how great it will be etc."). Which doesn't mean the book is necessarily worthless, but it makes me highly suspicious.

[/ QUOTE ]

Tim:

I have studied NLP and I noticed some NLP in the book. The notion that (paraphrase) "All nolimit holdem decisions exist inside mental states. There is no such thing as a no-limit decision that does not exist inside mental states. mental states encompass all no-limit decisions " comes straight out of nlp. So does "In no-limit, your opponents cannot not communicate". The "tilt induction" technique that the author credits Pavlov with is called "anchoring" in nlp. The eye movement tells and the voice tonality tells are also nlp. But the strategy sections do not have any nlp. The nlp stuff are found mostly in the sections about tells and enemy stereotypes, and also in the tilt section. In the last part of the book I noticed some use of hypnotic language but since I'm not advanced in that area I cannot really scrutinize it that much.

About a month ago, I made a post in the Psychology Forum that provided some links to sites that explain nlp. If you do a search, perhaps you can find it. I linked at least 4 nlp sites in that post.

[krazyace5]

I'll buy a copy of yours for $5. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] jk

[Graham]

I went to the Kick Ass HE site and now wonder if maybe this is why you're so impressed with this book's content. The first bit I went and looked at was the underbetting section on the freebie page. It sounded uncannily familiar when I read it:


Firstly (my bold)...

From a Ray Zee post on underbetting from 3 years ago (actually the entire post; I capitalised and put in the punctuation - from a Word doc I saved it as):

"Since it's one of my tactics, I won't go into everything I could. Sorry, but that's the rub.
One reason is that, by betting small into larger pots many times you get to win with nothing at all, with little to lose. Simple formula. It works until they start raising you; so the next step is to be betting small with hands that can stand raises as well. Also soon, they start calling you because they see you can call raises so they can't blow you off the pot with nothing. Since they are now calling you a lot, you can bet an awful lot of weak hands into them that win a lot when called, and hands that you would have to fold if you checked and they bet. All this starts to require pretty good play so you know when to fold to the people that have good hands and call those that are running you off. Also knowing which ones to bet at so you can get called, where if you bet more they wouldn't call at all.
The main money you make comes from winning lots of medium sized pots that you would certainly lose if you checked, or if you bet a lot and got called you would have the worst of it as well. Also because they get afraid to raise you, you bet your draws into them, where if you check they may bet too much. So you get to draw cheaply as well.
So there are lots of ways to make betting small into bigger pots at no limit pay. For most people though it still makes sense for them to bet nearer to the size of the pot because they will get into too much trouble when players take off cheap cards against them. That's one of the major downfalls of betting too little and it can come back to haunt you quickly. The player that controls the betting at the table always seems to make the betting work for him. That's a plus of course."



And this is the section from Kick Ass NL HE:

"The Tactical Underbetting Stratagems is really just one "move", a bet. But it is a very powerful bet because it can achieve so many things, and project to your enemy so many images and intentions, over time and at any given moment. It’s used mainly on…"

It starts when you constantly make small bluff bets into big pots. What can happen here is that you can win many big pots with nothing and do so with relatively small risk. This will work until your opponents find out what you are up to. Then they're going to start raising you. To counter this, you start underbetting with hands that are strong enough to call a raise as well. When this happens, they'll stop raising you because now they know they can't push you off the pot with nothing. As a result, they'll just start calling you. Since they now have become predictable "calling stations", you can begin to bet a lot of average hands (in addition to above average hands) that can win a lot when they call. You can also bet a lot with hands that you would have to fold if you checked and they bet.

Notice that there's a lot of judgement required in order for you to be able to operationalize the very psychological process that I have described so far. Specifically, you have to have enough card sense to know when you can fold to the players that truly have good hands and call those who are trying to push you off with nothing. You also have to have a "feel" for knowing when and against whom to underbet so you can get called in a situation where if you had bet more, they wouldn’t have called you.

The majority of the pots that you will be winning using the underbet stratagem will come form mid-sized pots that you are certain to lose if you just checked. The same ones where if you bet big and got called would be giving you a bad price.

A very important function of the underbet is that it can work as a…"

It is a fact that in NLH, the player who controls the betting will tend to make the betting work for him. The underbet will get you the best of all worlds. You can risk less and win a lot more. It will also make you very deceptive and hard to read which will make the opponent commit forced and unforced errors/mistakes in his reads and in his counter plays against you…"

[Jedi Poker]

Wow! Maybe, this underbetting thing is very common knowledge afterall. I've played with a guy named O'Neil Longson. I've also played with Devilfish Ulliot. And a guy named "Sahid" in small tournaments. And I've seen Gus Hansen on TV. They all do this sort of thing all the time. They'd bet small and bet small, and win a lot of pots. Then someone gets somehow annoyed and starts raising them to counter their play, and they fold. The thing is sometimes O'Neil will have a big hand, make a reraise, and the other person gives him action. O'Neil did this to me in a multi-table satellite and broke me. Sometimes he'd get lucky and flop something big. Breaking someone with a 34 offsuit in the process. I saw him do this to a guy who had KK and he drew out on him. You left out a huge chunk out of the Kick Ass excerpt though. I've heard two guys, one named George Huber the other called "Popeye", talk about this underbetting tactic too.

Ray Zee should write a no-limit holdem book! It'd be a shame if he didn't.

[ZeeJustin]

Wow, this makes me feel bad about paying $30 for this. IThink there's any way I can get my money back?