Is SSH becoming obsolete?

[Daithi]

At the .25/.50 level I actually think play has been getting a little looser within the last couple months.

Last summer I was having a hard time finding tables with more than 40% seeing the flop. Lately it is pretty easy. At the .25/.50 level on Paradise the typical table has 45%-60% of the players seeing the flop (go look for yourself). You can make good money multi-tabling.

However, I'd still say that a B&M is much looser. At Foxwoods the $5/$10 game routinely has 60% of the table seeing the flop. It is much easier than a $1/$2 game online.

[morgan180]

I agree - the B&M game I play in has routinely 7/8/9 players seeing the flop calling 2/3 bets cold PF. Online its much tighter, but the easiest way around this is table selection. Get pokertracker (50 bucks), get playerview (its a free program) open up 4 party windows, go away for 20 minutes, eat, read, play halo, whatever, come back and pick the table that has the stats indicitive of the type of game you like to play. TABLE SELECTION PEOPLE!

And on the Original Topic - no its not becoming obsolete, you just have to adjust its recommendations for the table condition as it says right in there.

[balkii]

i routinely use many of the principles i learned from SSH in small, headsup pots.

[ZeeBee]

Perhaps it's a good thing that the specifics (level of looseness) are changing. That then forces us to really think about the concepts in the book, why the specific examples and advice are the way they are, then to adapt the concepts to the texture of game we're in. Thinking about our game rather than mindlessly applying techniques can only help us.

ZB

Not that I'm much good at thinking though [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[johnnybeef]

well gang,

im here to report that johnnybeef found a game that SSH definately applied to. Currently i have missed out on two big draws in big pots and i am up $35 in a half hour at 2/4 on ub. maybe i just need to start playing in the wee hours of the morning

[slogger]

I've noticed a slight tightening up of the 3/6 games on party, but rarely are games so tight that the value of the SSH concepts is reduced.

Table selection, while a pain in the ass, is a little more important than it used to be, but there are good games all the time.

As an example I 2-tabled 5/10 last night and the VPIP of BOTH tables was 29% for a full hour. Played at least 40 hands with 8 different players whose VPIP was over 30% and 2 players who played about 3 out of every 4 pots. These games were juicy as hell.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
im here to report that johnnybeef found a game that SSH definately applied to.

[/ QUOTE ]


well, that's great and all...but I find games that SSHE applies to EVERYDAY and ALL the time. In fact, it is pretty rare that I find a game that SSHE does NOT apply to.


as stated before, it doesn't HAVE to be 6-8 players to every flop for many of the SSHE concepts to be applicable.

[Kenrick]

It's really day and location specific. I compared the average pot size of Party 2/4 to 15/30 today. 15/30 by far had bigger average pot sizes/bb. Yeah, it's more aggressive, but still. I then started clearing The Gaming Club bonus. For a couple hours, ten-handed $1/$2 was often heads-up on the flop.

But, B&M can be quite different. SSHE's main (only?) problem is that it blurs the two types of games. Funniest part to me was probably that it says it's not a beginner's book, but then it goes on about things such as how cold-calling raises with K10o is not a good idea. Well, yah. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ZeeBee]

Probably the area which requires most "revision" is that starting hands. Post-flop, almost all the advice is of a form that takes into account pot size, number of opponents, etc. Pre-flop, the starting hand recommendations make assumptions about the number of players expected to be in each hand and the quality of hands they are liekly to be playing. 20% VPIP might be fine with 5 players on average seeing the flop, but you're obviously going to need to tighten up if it's more like 2-3.

ZB

[flair1239]

[ QUOTE ]
Probably the area which requires most "revision" is that starting hands. Post-flop, almost all the advice is of a form that takes into account pot size, number of opponents, etc. Pre-flop, the starting hand recommendations make assumptions about the number of players expected to be in each hand and the quality of hands they are liekly to be playing. 20% VPIP might be fine with 5 players on average seeing the flop, but you're obviously going to need to tighten up if it's more like 2-3.

ZB

[/ QUOTE ]

THis is right on. I think the book would have been better served by not even using the charts. His discussion of pre-flop concepts is probably the best thing I have ever read in a poker book.

The post flop information, I think is applicable to any game. I mean how can't it be? In a nutshell it is hand evaluation, pot size, and implied odds. The only situations I think it would not be applicable, would be in a tight game with tricky opponents, where you are usually heads up, by the flop.