One of the more controversial publishing companies that has ever appeared in poker is none other than Daily Variance Publishing which can be found on their website www.dailyvariance.com, and who bills itself as “The Leading Publisher for Online Poker.” Part of the reason for the controversy is the prices which they initially charged for their books and other products. So the question is: Are their books any good? Well, to help answer that, here’s a review of one of their books. Also, I include a few comments concerning the price of this book at the end of the review. (My book reviews contain a rating of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best possible, and a rating of 8 or better means that this is a book which I recommend, while a rating of 7 or 6 means that the book is recommended for supplemental reading.)
The Poker Blueprint; Advanced Strategies for Crushing Micro and Small Stakes NL (7) by Aaron Davis and Tri “Slow Habit” Nguyen.
This short book is actually an introductory text for someone who is considering taking poker seriously. So in that sense it’s much more than a beginner’s book since it covers many topics in a much more sophisticated manner than a starting guide would. On the other hand, many topics are either covered too quickly or not at all for it to be considered anything more than an introductory text.
The book begins with some basic poker theory discussions that include hand ranges, mathematical expectation, and how often a bluff has to work to be profitable. There’s nothing unique here, but this is the type of information that serious poker players should know.
Then we move on to pre-flop play. Now the material becomes much more valuable since pretty good advice is given on what hands to play and how to play them. This includes starting hands from different positions, how to adjust to players still to act, when you should limp, isolating opponents who have already limped in, three-betting, stealing the blinds, how stack sizes affect your play, and all sorts of playing situations from the blinds. To be a little more specific, I thought the discussion of why you should three-bet from the blinds against a possible steal with a polarized range was strong, and how you adjust your starting hands taking into account the initial range of your opponent was also well done.
The book then moves on to post-flop play where again a number of topics including continuation bets, your opponent’s perception of your range, floating, three-betting, and balancing your range are addressed. Much of this material is again pretty good and should give a relatively new player a good idea of what it takes to be a successful no-limit hold ’em player.
Again to be a little more specific, I thought some of the discussions concerning how “dead money” affects strategy in large pots, “way behind/way ahead” situations, as well as a number of other topics was quite good. In addition, I would be amiss not to mention that the text also contains a number of helpful examples.
So given this, shouldn’t The Poker Blueprint get a higher rating? The answer is yes. It really should based on the strong material it contains. But unfortunately, the book also contains some stuff that is either confused or just shouldn’t be there. Here are two examples.
Early in the book, there is a chapter on “Bankroll Management” which is actually an excerpt from Nguyen’s upcoming poker psychology book. While this chapter doesn’t really belong in this text, I don’t have any real problem with what it states until we get to the following in the “100 Buy-in Rule” sub-chapter:”
“One thing I want to be clear about is that I’m not advocating that you take shots in a tough game full of regulars. I’m talking about the situation where you’re feeling good about your game and luck. If that is the case, go for it. You eventually have to defeat them. Why not start now when everything is going your way.”
Well, for those who know my history, I spent years explaining why predicting your luck for future events is fallacious, and this one paragraph is enough to ruin this whole chapter. Yes, luck can be measured, but relying on good luck to help carry the day can certainly have the opposite effect if it causes you to de-emphasize skill. And to talk a little statistics, your short term standard deviation can certainly be much higher than your win rate, but it’s the win rate where the effort should be made.
Another confused example appears in the chapter on “Pot Odds” under the sub-chapter header of “Immediate Odds.” Here the authors are attempting to give an example of when it would be correct to call with top pair on the end when a bet of $65 is made into a $70 pot- so that the odds are $135-to-$65 or approximately 2-to-1. Thus they correctly conclude that your hand needs “about 33 percent equity” for the call to be profitable. So far so good.
But the example also states “We think we’re good here about 50 percent of the time,” and when that’s the case you should call no matter what the size of the bet or size of the pot. (The only possible exception would be if so much money was bet that your whole bankroll would be put in jeopardy. But that’s another issue and will not be addressed here.) Of course, if the estimate of top pair was something like 40 percent instead of the given 50 percent, the example would be better. But the way it is written, it can make a relatively new player who is weak in concepts like mathematical expectation think it could be correct to fold a hand that will win the majority of the time.
So this brings us to an interesting conclusion, fix these errors, and there are a few more, as well as improve the editing (which I have not addressed in this review) and this book could easily rate a 9. Also, for someone who’s capable of identifying these trouble spots, but may still be new to no-limit hold ’em, this book is certainly worth more than a 7.
And finally, since this is a Daily Variance book, we need to address the price which according to their website was originally $97.00, a price that in my opinion is way too much for this material. But that’s not the case anymore. Today, you can purchase the e-book version or the Amazon Kindle version for less than $10.00, and at this price The Poker Blueprint is well worth it.
