2011 WSOP, Day 34: Connections

Not going to spend a lot of time at the laptop this morning, as Vera is here and our time together is limited. I’ll be heading back over to the Rio later this afternoon to join in on the coverage of Event No. 55, the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship in which 74 of the 128 who entered are still alive.

Had a great day yesterday with Vera. After sleeping in, we met the poker pro and author Tri “SlowHabit” Nguyen for a most enjoyable lunch. I’ve been in contact with Tri for a couple of years now, and we finally had a chance to meet in person yesterday. Some of you may know of him from his CardPlayer articles, his several books (including Let There Be Range, co-authored with Cole South), and/or his Daily Variance website.

Tri is in town to play some cash games, a prelim or two, and the Main Event. He made a deep run in the ME back in 2008, finishing 103rd, and among the several topics we discussed was that experience. Just the other day Julius Goat was telling me about how after nine or ten hours of playing his WSOP event his mind had become totally fried. Tri had done the same thing, only for a whole week, and he, too, experienced a kind of extreme mental challenge to stay focused after so many hands of tourney poker.

Nguyen is a well-regarded poker coach, and I could tell immediately how his students likely appreciate his friendly demeanor and the fact that he’s a good communicator. I got a kick out of Vera and Tri finding a lot of common ground between poker and dressage (Vera’s sport) and the psychological challenges both bring to competitors.

I’ll share one other thing from our lunch, something Tri said about poker that I thought was fairly thought-provoking. He talked about how the game has been very good to him and has improved the lives of many others, including a lot of his friends. But he also noted how the game -- for a variety of reasons -- has not been so good for others. “If I had the power to give poker to the world,” said Tri, “I am not sure if I would or not,” he said, recognizing the various ways the game has affected people’s lives.

We parted with Tri and spent some of the afternoon at the Rio railing the final table of the Ladies event. As was the case last year, there were a lot of folks there supporting the final tablists, who unfortunately had to stand around the secondary feature table as the one on the main stage (in the “mothership”) was undergoing construction in preparation for the Main Event that starts on Thursday.

While there we saw Jonathan Epstein -- the “dude” -- get eliminated in ninth, and the rejoicing that followed. That pic to the left is from just after his elimation, with Marsha Wolak, eventual winner and the one who knocked him out, coming over to shake his hand. I didn’t witness too much of the abusive behavior (from railbirds or staff) Michele Lewis correctly calls out in her post from yesterday, but I will say it was a fairly uneasy atmosphere all around as long as Epstein remained alive in the event.

Vera and I ended up over at the MGM for a nice dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant. We had thoughts of either going down to Fremont Street (which Vera has never seen) or even to the Penn & Teller show at the Rio, but ended up just heading back to the home-away-from-home to enjoy a quiet evening together. I work the next two days, then will have one more day off when we’ll get to do more before she leaves on Thursday.

Definitely great to connect with friends and family, which I guess when you put together our lunch with Tri, the Ladies event, and our pleasant evening afterwards, was kind of the theme of yesterday.

Off to lunch and more quality time with Vera now before returning to the Rio. If you aren’t out watching fireworks, grilling hot dogs, or making your own connections with your favorite people, check over at PokerNews’ live reporting to follow the coverage today.

Poker Book Review: Tri Nguyen's The Pot Limit Omaha Book: Transitioning from NLHE to PLO

Some of you may recall a post I wrote back in December titled “This Book Might Be Out of Your Range.” In that one I passed along some news regarding a new eBook on no-limit hold’em strategy authored by Cole “CTS” South and Tri “SlowHabit” Nguyen titled Let There Be Range.

I’d heard about it on a podcast, then looked into it a little further, mainly intrigued by the book’s prodigious price tag -- $1,850. I had a little bit of fun in that post regarding the book’s cost, and I concluded with a jokey comment about how the authors could send me a review copy.

I ended up getting a bit of feedback on that one, including eventually hearing from Tri Nguyen who sent me a nice note saying he liked the post. A couple of weeks ago Nguyen got back in touch to let me know he had a new book coming out on pot-limit Omaha, and in fact wanted to know if I’d be interested in reading it and perhaps writing a little something about it. I told him I suspected I might not be squarely within his target audience, but I’d be glad to do so.

If you don’t know Tri Nguyen, he’s been a highly accomplished online player for some time now. He also made a fairly deep run in last summer’s WSOP Main Event (finishing 103rd). There’s a short interview with Nguyen in the latest Card Player magazine (Vol. 22, No. 7 -- the one with Huck Seed on the cover) where one can learn a little bit more about his background going to Berkeley and earning a degree in computer science, then his getting into poker and rapidly moving up stakes.

Nguyen tells me the new book targets PLO50 to PLO600 players, primarily short-handed, with a special focus on trying to help the no-limit hold’em player looking to move over to PLO. The title is The Pot Limit Omaha Book: Transitioning from NLH to PLO, and it is due to be released on April 30th. The price tag on this one is going to be $375, with the preorder price being $275. One can find out more about the book and ordering info over at the Daily Variance website.

On the one hand, I’m not that well-suited to review the book, given that I don’t exactly resemble the player profile of the reader Nguyen has in mind for it. I have played quite a bit of PLO50, but am hardly part of the crowd Nguyen is really addressing, both because of the size of my bankroll and because I’m not really one of those NLHE players looking to make a transition to PLO. On the other hand, I have read quite a few pot-limit Omaha books and have written my share of book reviews, and so can probably say at least a little something worthwhile about Nguyen’s book.

The book is relatively short, but packs a good amount of material in its pages, avoiding the usual filler one often finds in longer poker strategy texts. I’ll be honest -- I wasn’t too crazy about reading it on the computer screen, as I’m one of those who likes to mark up books as I read, especially if I’m going to be reviewing them. (The security software attached to the book prevents printing.) But it wasn’t too arduous to get through that way.

After an introductory section, the book starts with a chapter covering preflop play that discusses starting hands and the games people play before the flop with regard to raising, 3- and 4-betting, and so forth. There’s some good advice here about the assumptions many players have about the significance of preflop raising, as well as a couple of points about the equity of certain starting hand matchups I hadn’t necessarily realized before. There are also some graphs illustrating certain observations that I’ll admit to having passed over since such things tend to hurt my brain.

The next three chapters cover various concepts and common situations one encounters in PLO. While some of what’s covered here I’ve seen discussed elsewhere, there are some ideas and explanations that were new to me. A theme that emerges here is the difference between NLHE and PLO, and one of the things I liked most about the book was the way Nguyen frequently uses analogies from NLHE to explain what’s going on in a given PLO situation. For instance, when explaining the ways a starting hand like Q-T-4-5 can get one into trouble in PLO, Nguyen refers to how A-9-offsuit plays in NLHE to make the point clearer. This frequently employed strategy is handy, I think, and is something that might distinguish his book a bit from other PLO texts.

Subsequent chapters cover flop, turn, and river play, and are filled with a large number of sample hands that apply some of those concepts discussed earlier while introducing new ideas, too. It was during this part of the book that I most consciously felt that I might not be part of the target audience. It’s hard to explain, exactly, but has to do mainly with the way Nguyen talks about hands, which I know would make perfect sense to a certain group of NLHE players but was different from the way I would think and talk about hands. (Am I making sense?)

The overall organization of the book could be better, I think, but in the end one comes away with a fairly coherent approach to PLO that I do think will prove useful to Nguyen’s target audience. Is it worth $375? Hey, my name is “Short-Stacked.” How can I respond to that? I’ll just answer that question as any existentialist would and say it’s up to you.

On a personal note, Nguyen and I ended up exchanging a few emails regarding the book and he struck me as a very friendly, smart dude who genuinely has something to contribute to our pokery knowledge. And I much appreciate his good humor regarding my earlier post, as well as his invitation for me to read the new book.

As I say, if you are interested, check out Nguyen’s site, Daily Variance, for more on the book.

(EDIT [added 5/26/09]: If you are interested in reading more about the book, check out this review from a reader better-equipped than I to judge the book, Foucault.)

This Book Might Be Out of Your Range

Was listening to the latest episode of the Hardcore Poker Show yesterday. That’s a live poker talk show that appears weekly on Sirius satellite radio (to which I do not subscribe). Is part of a group of shows that fly under the “Hardcore Sports” radio network banner. I had actually lost track of this show for awhile as they stopped updating the archive page on their own website. Also have no idea how to find it in iTunes, so it is a bit of a hassle to get to the shows.

In any event, they routinely have fairly big name guests on the Hardcore Poker Show, and occasionally I’ll hear a news item or something else on there I hadn’t heard elsewhere. Such was the case with this last episode (12/10/08), when the hosts discussed a new book by Cole “CTS” South, a Team Full Tilt member and one of the instructors over at CardRunners (a.k.a., the “official poker training service of Full Tilt”).

Looked into it a little further, and it appears the book is actually co-authored by South and Tri “SlowHabit” Nguyen. Like South, Nguyen is also a poker coach who similarly possesses some reputation as a successful online player of cash games.

Looking at the FAQs over on the book’s website, one learns it is an eBook, and those who purchase and download it will get a special file with DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection that makes it impossible to copy or print. The book is less than a hundred pages long, “there is barely any math in the book,” and (according to the authors) should prove especially helpful for 1/2 and 3/6 no-limit hold’em players. (I presume they are referring to online play.)

“We’re confident it will improve your game,” say the authors. “Right from the introduction, you will get an idea how this poker thing works.”

As I say, both Nguyen and South are apparently accomplished online players. As far as live play goes, Nguyen finished 103rd in this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event (his only tourney cash), while South has no cashes currently listed on his Hendon Mob page. Of course, since both are primarily cash game players those modest stats aren’t too meaningful here.

Oh, and the book doesn’t have a cover yet. They are currently conducting a contest (with a $500 prize) in which they are asking folks to submit cover art. The title of the book is Let There Be Range! (Erm, maybe they should have had a contest to pick a better title?)

Anyhow, why do I even mention the book at all? One reason. The price. Kind of stands out.

1,850 American dollars.

That’s right. This here book costs $1,850! Of course, if one is a bit unsure about committing that much to the book after only getting to see a couple of preview pages on the site, one can buy the first half of the book for just $850, then come back to get the rest for $1,100. (The authors “are confident you will come back for the 2nd half.”)

So, really, you might as well get the whole thing up front and save that hundy.

The bloated price perhaps recalls the 1978 publication of Doyle Brunson’s original Super/System, (originally titled How I Won a Million Dollars Playing Poker), which sported a hefty $100 price tag that meant only the most serious poker players would be bothering to commit to its purchase.

How does $100 today compare to $100 thirty years ago? Inflation rates suggest it would be equivalent to a little over $330 today. Now that would raise eyebrows, a book costing $330. Wouldn’t it? But $1,850? Whoa!

I suppose there are ways to argue that a poker book could be “worth” that much (or more) to a reader who is able to improve his or her game by reading it and then translating that education into financial gain at the tables. I have dozens of poker books on my shelves, and even though I’m just a small-timer I suppose I could point to one or two of them as having (perhaps) benefited me to the tune of that much or more.

But I still couldn’t see going back and paying that much for any single book. Couldn’t see paying 1/20th of that, actually.

That price tag kind of makes the book into some sort of magic talisman, thereby intriguing folks to the point of actually considering buying it. And it appears at least a few have. Here’s a thread on 2+2 that begins with Nguyen touting the book’s upcoming release, continues with conversations between posters and Nguyen about the book’s content, then eventually arrives at some reviews of the book by those who indeed bought it.

As one poster puts it, “this entire thread is like one big infomercial.” Of course, not everyone posting in the thread who bought the book believes it was worth the price.

Maybe that title -- Let There Be Range! -- is a jokey reference to the book’s cost? Perhaps the title is an abridgement, actually. Perhaps the full title is Let There Be (At Least a Few People Out There For Whom This Book Falls Into Their Price) Range! Of course, one only becomes privy to the full title by purchasing the book.

I sometimes get publishers to send me review copies of books for me to write about. Ya think they’ll send me one if I ask?