Review of The Workbook from DailyVariance Publishing

Posted by Verstehen

December 22, 2009

As I mentioned in my past post, Try Nguyen (Slowhabit) of DailyVariance publishing was kind enough to provide me with a review copy of “The NL Workbook: Exploiting Regulars.”

This is exactly the sort of book I’ve needed, for a number of reasons. First, the majority of my play is at small-stakes (mostly 100NL, sometimes higher) at the major sites like Pokerstars and Full Tilt. At those sites and stakes, there are a lot of regulars; not as many as at mid-stakes, but even 100NL is a level where the majority of players play somewhat frequently, have reasonable stats, and can read hands the tiniest bit. Unlike microstakes, the median player is not a 72/10 fish who just wants to limp-call every hand. There is a set arsenal of plays that most players are familiar with, the so-called “standard” lines that most TAGs learn from training sites or simply from trial-and-error.

Secondly, like many players I’ve had trouble moving past 1/2. I’d like to move up to midstakes but I find myself lacking the winrate at 1/2 to make a move up reasonable.

Finally, I’ve always been aware that there are spots where I’m missing good bluffing opportunities, but I’ve never been able to pinpoint those spots very clearly in my self-analysis. As a result my play is quite unbalanced, especially on later streets (e.g. if I’m betting/raising I have it WAY too often).

Enter the workbook. The format is short and quite direct: there is not a lot of philosophizing about poker, the content is much more applied and specific. The majority of the book deals with several dozen hand histories at 3/6 6max online games.

Interestingly the author takes the tack of always assuming the same opponent: a 22/17 TAG with reasonably high aggression factor. This works well, because usually this is the prototypical “regular” we are trying to exploit or get an edge on.

I gained two major insights from this book: first, that I (and most of my opponents) are playing too passively on too many rivers. Being in position on the river is such a powerful tool that simply checking back most hands and value betting some big hands is a tremendous waste of this advantage. A related point is that there are many situations where you have some kind of showdown/bluffcatcher hand, but raising or betting it may be far more +EV than simply pot controlling or checking it down.

Secondly, The Workbook helped me think much more deliberately about planning hands. Rather than just assessing what I have and what my opponent has, the focus turns to how the board will develop and what that will mean for your opponents’ hand range. Integrating your thinking across streets and planning specific actions for specific later-street cards is something I never managed very well, but this book has helped a lot in that area.

The single most insightful passage deals with a 3-bet pot in position heads up. There are two possible hands you are asked to consider, both of which have a four-flush on a low-card board (I’m not being too specific here because I assume the authors would prefer I not quote directly from the book). The book asks you how you play each hand, and my initial reasoning was exactly the opposite of what is should have been. There’s a uniquely embarrassing and simultaneously satisfying moment when you realize your thinking is fundamentally backward on an important point of hand-reading and equity, and this book would probably be worth its price for that insight alone. My initial thought – that the higher flush draw had more showdown value and therefore should be pot-controlled more – was upon further reflection actually an argument for putting far more money in on the flop. I apologize if this is vague, I’m trying to convey my thought process without the specifics of the hand which is a bit hard to achieve.

If you’re a live player I’m not sure how much sense this book will make, because the passivity of live poker makes a lot of these situations uncommon. Probably half of the scenarios in The Workbook deal with heads-up 3-bet pots with 100-150bb stacks and a fairly aggressive opponent. These situations occur constantly in online 6max games and make a huge impact on your winrate; in live games (which are rarely 6max anyway) these situations may come up once a day. Bear that in mind if you are a deep-stacked live player or someone used to very passive loose games with few heads-up pots.

“The Workbook” gets my recommendation as a worthy investment. There simply are very few books that deal exclusively with NL cash games; those that exist are either out-of-date (super-system), extremely expensive (most e-books written by online pros), or just incredibly low quality (yes, I’m looking at you “Killer Poker”). If you’re someone who understands the basic tenets of the online game – light 3-betting, squeezing, floating and – but lack the ability to move up in stakes, then this is the perfect tool at a very fair price ($99).

You can purchase “The Workbook” through DailyVariance publishing at this link: http://dailyvariance.com/the-workbook.html

It’s an e-book with Digital Rights Management that requires a special piece of software (Lock Lizard) to view the PDF file. I am not an affiliate for this book and receive no money from any sales.

Thanks again to Try and best of luck to everyone at the tables.

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