matt maroon book???

saw a matt maroon book i'd never seen before yesterday.

anyone have a view on it. the one amazon review is just scathing.... but it looked somewhat o.k to me.

and the price was right C$10 or US$8.

thanks in advance.

Thanks for including all the extra question marks to help identify which book you're talking about.

[maurile]

I've only read the short-handed section so far, but it is quite good.

[Pike]

There are many typos in the book, but I found the book to be actually very good. He discusses some topics that aren't generally talked about in most of the limit holdem books, and the shorthanded section was very good in my opinion. I think this book is geared more towards the mid to higher limit games than the lower limit games however.

[maurile]

[ QUOTE ]
I've only read the short-handed section so far, but it is quite good.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've read much more now (bluffing, semi-bluffing, deception) and the book is very strong. The advice seems a bit less structured than in some other books, but it is full of ideas that are correct and useful.

Despite its subtitle (". . . for players of all levels"), I think there's a fair amount in the book that beginners won't grasp very well on their first reading. Also, some of the topics that are covered (e.g., deception) just don't matter at the lowest limits.

This is definitely a more advanced book than, say, WLLHE (Jones). It's probably more at the SSHE level except that, compared to SSHE, it suffers from a lack of hand examples.

Overall, it's a good book. The advice is strong, obviously written by a winning player.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've only read the short-handed section so far, but it is quite good.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've read much more now (bluffing, semi-bluffing, deception) and the book is very strong. The advice seems a bit less structured than in some other books, but it is full of ideas that are correct and useful.

Despite its subtitle (". . . for players of all levels"), I think there's a fair amount in the book that beginners won't grasp very well on their first reading. Also, some of the topics that are covered (e.g., deception) just don't matter at the lowest limits.

This is definitely a more advanced book than, say, WLLHE (Jones). It's probably more at the SSHE level except that, compared to SSHE, it suffers from a lack of hand examples.

Overall, it's a good book. The advice is strong, obviously written by a winning player.

[/ QUOTE ]

maurile, good report and i concur with most of it.

i like the writing style. very easy to read.

not a basic book by any stretch. you are correct that it doesn't have very many hand examples.

matt seems to think you need the "check-raise" and even says if no one check-raises, you can basically win by playing very little up-front and lots of with good position. i wish he fleshed that out ala sklansky, miller, harrington, yao king etc. it would have been interesting, because i almost never see check-raises at low limit passive games (probably not what matt plays regularly)

very good section on shorthanded games.

i think at least 7 or 8 of the short chapters are very good, and it has some of the best stuff i've seen on certain topics. so definitely a worthwhile book.

my sense is that matt plays very high limit games (and i've read that)

[Dudd]

I picked it up, and what little I've read is fairly good. Right now I think the author is a high limit (Party 30/60 I believe), but has played lower (5/10 short for a while, I believe) extensively as a pro.

[sweetjazz]

Apparently there are a lot of typographical errors (not surprising because it wasn't done by a major publisher). But the author is a winner in the mid/high limit Party games (up to 30/60 I believe) and understands the game quite well, so he's capable of writing a good book.

I haven't actually seen the book yet, but I definitely plan to pick it up at some point.

[Jeff W]

[ QUOTE ]
But the author is a winner in the mid/high limit Party games (up to 30/60 I believe) and understands the game quite well, so he's capable of writing a good book.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here are some gems from his website:

[ QUOTE ]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you can play 30 percent of your hands and still be a winner playing full ring games.

I actually have empirical evidence that you can. And it appears that you can be just as big a winner as the 15s.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
...the 2+2ers who prop up the game and are basically as lucrative to you as any calling station...

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm buying his book anyway FWIW.

[sweetjazz]

Yeah I have read a fair number of his postings on his website. He obviously has a thing about 2+2 which I don't get.

As for the 30% vs 15% quote, I think he was claiming that 30% can still be profitable (but not optimal) [which most would agree with] and the second statement seems to be saying that the profitable hands left out by a 15% VPIP player are worth more than adding the extra unprofitable ones to get to 30% [controversial but not absurd]. Or he was just talking out of his tooshie because it's his own personal blog.

But while most of his blog isn't that interesting in terms of poker theory, I remember coming across a few things that suggested he "got" limit poker. (One thing I remember is that he advocates playing only 1 or 2 tables at a time, focusing on getting specific reads on all players. While this does not maximize hourly rate at the given instant, the ability to continually improve can lead to a substantially higher hourly rate in the future.) The author has played a lot of Party 6-max, so hopefully he has figured out a thing or two interesting to say about SH.

Anyway, I'm not sure how good the book will be, but it seems worth the $10 investment. This book (like any other) should be read with a critical eye, but I think it's worth a read.