Uh, oh

Went to a favorite used bookstore yesterday and, as is my usual wont, I hit the gambling/card-games section first.
One book I picked up was The Illustrated Guide To Texas Hold’em, by Purdy. I had seen this book before and was intrigued by its format, which is essentially a graphical discussion of 150 distinct hands of limit cash-game type hold’em, with an explanation of what you should or should not do in each instance. Sounds like a good book for an intermediate player like myself, right?

Uh, no.

I’ve thus far read only the first ten hand examples... and I strongly disagree with one of the hand recommendations and mildly disagree with two more. That’s 30% “wrong” by my count, which is barely a C-grade in most classrooms.
Here’s where I found fault:

The very first hand that is discussed is pocket rockets under the gun.
The author recommends that you limp into the pot in this situation because, he says, “you will build a big pot” by doing this. Uh, yeah, maybe, but you’re most likely to lose that big pot, too. I have never seen another book or credible source recommend doing this sort of thing with aces. Experience shows that limping from UTG with ANY hand just encourages other limpers. If you limp, then pretty soon you’re into a big multi-way pot with a lowly pair of aces. As I posted yesterday, AA really only is a favorite against a single opp. Multi-way, it is just not that great of a hand. Worse, getting off the hand, especially for a beginner, is nigh to impossible. Limping with AA (from UTG or just about anywhere else preflop) is truly bad advice.

The next hand I disagree with is when the author says you should never, ever play 7-2 offsuit because it is “one of the worst starting hands in poker.” Uh, yeah, it is, but that doesn’t mean you should never play it. Imagine for a moment that some bozo limps UTG (with aces!), and 4 or 5 more players limp in behind him. If you’re sitting on the cutoff or the button with 7-2, you’re getting very good odds to make this call, regardless of how weak your hand is. This is especially true if you think the SB will complete and/or BB is going to check, too. If your hand hits (i.e., with 2-pair or better) you stand to make a lot of money with a very well disguised hand. If it misses (which, admittedly it will quite often), it’s very easy to get off the hand. The author evidently does not understand the concept of implied odds.

The final hand that bugs me is where the author recommends limping into the pot from UTG with KQs. He says you have no way of knowing how strong your hand is relative to the others yet to act after you, so raising is a bad idea. Uh, no. Most experts say that if you’re the first into a pot, you should nearly always raise. Now, I don’t agree that you should ALWAYS raise (there are some good example hands where you should definitely limp), but the point is that KQs is a damn strong hand(it’s the 12th strongest starting hand out of 169, according to the author himself), but it’s also somewhat vulnerable. You absolutely have to raise preflop with this hand to protect it, gain info on what the opp holds, and also get some value into the pot.

Guess this just goes to show you that anyone can write a book and not necessarily be quite the expert they profess to be. I’ll continue reading through the remaining 150 hand examples, but am I going to take the author’s advice as the gospel truth? Uh, no.

Moneyed in 3 of 4 SnGs Sunday
24-Hour Bankroll Change: +1.55%
All-in for now....
-Bug