Small Stakes Holdem

by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth

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Reviewer: Tiburon41

This is the seminal text on small stakes limit holdem ($15/$30 and below) available today. Not to sound like one of those people giving testimonials on late night infomercials, but this book changed my life. I learned the game early on with a very tight style, and I was a winning player, but it wasn't until I got to read this outstanding book that I truly understood why some plays work, why not to make certain plays, and why aggression is the key to winning poker.

In other books he's written, David Sklansky can come off as sometimes arrogant, sometimes math geek, and sometimes tortured genius, in that you sometimes just don't get what he's desperately trying to explain to you. Not in this text. Between Sklansky's imports from Holdem Poker (another 2+2 book available here at VPP) and Ed Miller's common-sense approach and examples, this book "gets it." When you read it, you'll "get it" too. It teaches you limit hold’em, from starting hands, to varying your play, to almost every type of fancy play you can imagine (and when NOT to use them), and it does it in a way that is exceptionally easy to understand.

Despite that fact, I guarantee you that after you read it, when you go back and re-read it, you'll find something you missed, a nugget of information that when properly applied, will improve your game.

This book is a classic, and belongs on every player's short list of instructional texts.

Reviewer: Piney

If you love low limit poker this is the book that you must own! Ed Miller has an easy to read style and Sklansky brings the same energy as he shows in his books on advanced theory to the world of Small Stakes Limit Poker. This book breaks down your pre-flop card selection and then sizzles with its section on post flop moves and pot odds calculations.

The authors ran the math on every possible starting hand and it includes a chart of which hands to play in what position and whether you should be calling, raising or folding. The beauty of the pre-flop chart is that it is broken down into 2 groups; a tight limit game (3-5 players see the flop) & a loose game (6-8 players see the flop). Basically the old mantra of play tight when they play loose is not recommended in limit because the more people in the hand to start means when you hit your monsters you get paid handsomely for it.

Miller and Sklansky break out 4 Fundamentals of pre-flop play:

#1 Play tight in early position – as it really comes down to you not knowing how many raises are coming behind you.

#2 Raise with your better starting hands (especially if you are first to enter the pot) – So what if 4 people limp before you, if you have a premium hand it is the best way to start building a monster pot for your monster hand

#3 Play only strong offsuit cards – Offsuit cards give you less of a chance to catch a flush which he considers one of the strongest draws in limit poker.

#4 Play tightly if someone raises in front of you – Yes a lot of people play loose and aggressive, but you have to give people credit when they raise until they prove otherwise.

In my opinion anyone can play the right starting cards, it is once you see the flop that makes this book sizzle. Of course because it is a Sklansky book, he brings out his section of pot odds & implied odds. Here is summary of the post-flop section.

Evaluating the Flop – The authors go into detail about counting outs and redraws, including your backdoor outs and calculating your pot & implied odds. Also important is to recognize hands that might counterfeit your strong hand making it weaker.

Large Pots vs Small Pots – The pot size also dictates whether you raise, check or fold in certain situations. The book goes onto describe crying calls. A lot of times it is right to do so in large pots compared to small pots.

Protecting your hand – While everyone cries all the time about people chasing their draws this is where Miller and Sklansky teach you that as long as you make them pay for their chasing ways you will get paid off over the long run. They show where people make mistakes of being afraid of playing their not so strong hands (2nd pairs and top pairs weak kicker). Also, the authors teach to not be afraid to raise with those hands especially if there are a lot of people in the pot. They also go into situations where raising does not protect your hand.

Free Card Play – Along with protecting your hand by raising in late position comes the free card play. It is almost natural for people to check to the raiser. Feel free to exploit this tendency in people.

Slowplaying – With limit poker the authors say that most of the time slowplaying your big hands is a mistake that causes you to miss bets and lets people outdraw you. Very rarely give free cards because that is when you have no right to complain about people chasing on the river for their 2 outer that beats your apparent monster hand.

There are tons of details and examples of all these plays in this book. While I mentioned them there are nuances to each play and how often you can do this. While this book was written more for the live limit games I have had a lot of success bringing these principals to the realm of online poker and hopefully you will to (well, except against me).

Reviewer: pjensen

Small Stakes Hold’em will not help you in every hold’em game you play. It is geared towards the lower stakes casino games that tend to be loose, with 5 or more players regularly seeing the flop. This is also not a book for beginners, since it assumes that you already understand the basic rules of the game. It won’t help you much in a very tight game, which is what you often find when playing online. Rather, it is designed specifically to win money from the mistakes that loose low-limit players make.

The section on preflop play teaches you to analyze the strength of your hole cards in terms of its real value, whether it be high card strength (like Ace-King offsuit), suited strength (such as Ace-Six suited) or connector strength (like with a Nine-Eight). Plus you learn how to play each type of hand properly based on position. Remember that the hand-selection advice found here will not work in any game, and you’ll learn why certain types of hands go up in value in certain games. While “Ace-rag suited” is not playable in a tough, aggressive game, it can be very valuable in a loose game. There are other good pre-flop topics, such as avoiding domination, cold-calling raises, and playing from the blinds.

The bulk of the material, though, is on post-flop play. There are some excellent strategies for protecting your hand (i.e. getting other players to fold). For example, sometimes you should wait until the turn to protect, since a lot of players will call with almost anything on the flop but give up when it gets expensive on the turn. There are tips on how to consider outs, find hidden outs and possible draws, and figure your pot equity. And there is great advice on river play, which is one area where a lot of people lose money by not “value betting” enough, especially when their opponents will call with anything.

You’ll also learn not to be “tricky” when a lot of players see the flop, because it can cost you money. With that many opponents, there is always a chance of getting outdrawn (unless you have an absolute monster). But you’ll also learn how slowplaying can cost you money in other ways, as you’ll lose a lot of bets in the long run. Your opponents will call along with almost anything, so why not charge them for their bad play? Miller and Sklansky teach an aggressive and attacking style that punishes loose, poor players who’ll call any hand to the river.

There are plenty of in-depth hand examples and quizzes, covering all of the different topics found in the book.

This is not a book for beginners. Some of the plays are complex and advanced, and should not be attempted until you have a firm grasp on the fundamentals. It’s not always an easy read, and some of it will take a while to sink in, so be prepared to re-read some of it. Remember, this book is not for any old hold’em game, but is geared towards the loose games. If you follow the strategies found here, you will learn to dominate those games.

4.5/5

Reviewer: B. A. Winterhalter   -   Winning Big in Low-Limit Poker Today

Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth's "Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big with Expert Play” offers excellent advice and a strategically sound framework for any low-limit hold'em player. Although the book assumes a decent knowledge of some basic ideas (like the betting structure of the game, how to identify the nuts, etc.), it serves well as a beginner's text. The book's overriding assumption is that your opponents are loose and lacking in knowledge. When the book was first published, low-limit games overwhelmingly had just such a character. Although the world of poker is evolving, and many players are becoming more skillful, the advice offered in Miller, Sklansky, and Malmuth's text is still fundamentally sound. They emphasize a tight, but aggressive style of play, and offer detailed explanations of many of the conceptual underpinnings of their approach. The reader is taught how to estimate his or her expectation, how to understand pot odds (as well as implied and reverse implied odds), how to count outs effectively, and how to make betting decisions at each round of play. To reinforce concepts and aid mastery of knowledge, they offer useful hand quizzes and a question and answer section. Returning to these sections and studying them after attempting to grasp the ideas presented in the body of the text can prove invaluable to students of limit hold 'em.

Perhaps the only noteworthy caveat to attach to this review is that Miller, Sklansky, and Malmuth frequently assume that your opponents are loose and somewhat passive. Although there certainly still are many such hapless opponents to be found playing low-limit hold 'em, I at least have observed that they are becoming less and less common. While many players still may not understand such important notions as out-counting or implied odds, players seem to be, on the whole, playing tighter preflop and more aggressively after the flop. Whatever the reason for this change, it should prompt a slightly more defensive style of play than is sometimes advocated in this text. Fortunately, however, the conceptual outline of this book is so strong that any player who pays attention to the ideas presented will likely learn to adapt them to different situations. That is, although the game of poker may not be quite as soft as it was a few years ago, Miller, Sklansky, and Malmuth's ideas are still applicable to it, and a good player can still learn excellent poker strategy from the discussion contained in its pages.

All in all, this book is an excellent strategy guide, and will provide anyone who studies it carefully with a solid foundation for playing winning poker. As one advances (which one surely will if one sticks to the advice contained in this book), books like Sklansky and Malmuth's "Hold 'em for Advanced Players" may become more appropriate. But to the novice or intermediate player of the game, this text will doubtless serve well and, if the ideas it offers are taken to heart, guide one toward doing just what its title suggests, "winning big with expert play."

Reviewer: Wixx

This was by far the book that I needed the most when I first started. Like most poker players, I did not start with a $1,000 bankroll, but rather had to play the odds with the rest of the fish at the low limit tables. Had I read this book back then I would have had an even more impressive run to start my poker career. I started with $20 and could have used some of the theories from this book, not so much for my own play, because I was locked into playing very tight, but to help me understand why everyone else was playing suited connectors and drawing against my made hands. I do not think that I would have ever given in totally to the style of play described in the book, but the information would have served valuable.

Armed with this knowledge I may have let a lot of good hands go instead of running my sets against straights all of the time. This book teaches you to loosen up and perhaps is why so many people starting out seem to play too many hands. My take is that the authors are saying that everyone else is playing loose and you should too, so it gives you a lot of odds, typical of a book that Sklansky's name is credited to, of when those draws will hit. I personally think the book makes good, or more precisely, smart, players better at lower limit play, while at the same time making players who are not rationalizing some aspects of how the game of poker works much worse than they would be on their own. It gives them written proof to back up their constant chasing and fishing.

The meat of the book is the odds calculations and explanations of basic poker terms like pots odds, pot equity, over cards and how to play them ( again how to play them in a more loose fashion), and such. It is a great book if you already have a good base, but this is not the book to build your entire strategy around, because if you play as loose as the authors describe at a table with a few tight, aggressive players, you will have your bankroll drained in a somewhat steady fashion. However this book opens up new thoughts and offers strategies that many players who are not used to the loose, passive style of the smaller stakes games would not think of since they would not work well against the more advanced players that they face at the higher stakes games. A tip that I personally use is to play loose the way this book describes in a Multi Table Tournament early when the blinds are low and there are more fish still around, and then switch to my normal, tighter mode of play when the blinds and the skill level of the remaining players go up.

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