For today’s poker players, Texas hold ’em is the game. Every day, tens of thousands of small stakes hold ’em games are played all over the world in homes, card rooms, and on the Internet. These games can be very profitable — if you play well. But most people don’t play well and end up leaving their money on the table.

Small Stakes Hold ’em: Winning Big with Expert Play explains everything you need to be a big winner. Unlike many other books about small stakes games, it teaches the aggressive and attacking style used by all professional players. However, it does not simply tell you to play aggressively; it shows you exactly how to make expert decisions through numerous clear and detailed examples.

Small Stakes Hold ’em teaches you to think like a professional player. Topics include implied odds, pot equity, speculative hands, position, the importance of being suited, hand categories, counting outs, evaluating the flop, large pots versus small pots, protecting your hand, betting for value on the river, and playing overcards. In addition, after you learn the winning concepts, test your skills with over fifty hand quizzes that present you with common and critical hold ’em decisions. Choose your action, then compare it to the authors’ play and reasoning.

This text presents cutting-edge ideas in straightforward language. It is the most thorough and accurate discussion of small stakes hold ’em available. Your opponents will read this book; make sure you do, too!

Indeed, it addresses some topics so well that I wonder at the title. Calling it "Small Stakes Holdem" is really too limiting. The book targets loose games more than small stakes games per se. With loose games and poor playing opponents permeating B&M cardroom games from $3-6 through $40-80, this book really has something for everybody. Yes, newer players will get more from it than mid-limit veterans, but even the mid-limit players will find some critical ideas spelled out in a way that helps them improve their game.

It is an excellent blend that helps the newer players take the next big step to being significant winners, while at the same time it expounds upon and extends HPFAP in a way that addresses the super-loose games that permeate today's cardrooms. In short, it's the book that many have really been waiting for 2+2 to publish for quite some time. I expect this book to quickly move alongside Theory of Poker and HPFAP as a definitive 2+2 work. I recommend it highly.

46 of 49 found the following review helpful:


A Departure For the Sklansky Crew  Oct 05, 2004 By Griffin
I have to agree with many of the things AmericanDane said in his review. If you use this book as your 'poker bible,' and over extend yourself in an expensive (relative to your bankroll), tight and agressive game, you WILL go broke. If you try to invoke this books playing style without fully understanding the underlying logic or fundamental mathematics behind it, you WILL go broke. If you don't take the time to really think through the concepts AWAY from the book, to ingrain in your mind what data was explained to you and what details you will need to estimate and observe for yourself while at the table, you will go broke.

Basically, this book boils down to 'Call when the pot is large. If the pot is big enough, you don't have to win that often to have a long term positive expectation.' That's it. This is not to say that Sklansky and Malmuth don't pepper the text with their standard advice like minding your pot odds and an interesting new (to me at least) concept called pot equity. They do. However, if you aren't careful, this book can definately ruin your game.

With all of that said, I'm definately glad I read this book. It's advice is in stark contrast to that given in 'Holdem for Advanced Players' and rightfully so. The game has completely changed over the last few years and this shift has really thrown some players for a loop. Though I think that a lot of the assumptions this book is based on,(particularly those on an average opponents style Sklansky seems to believe that the average opponent is loose, passive, and fairly clueless rather than loose, very agressive) do not necessarily hold true for today's games, I still find the methodology valuable.

Any player who has read Hold'em and Hold'em for Advanced Players and finds themselves rereading the section on Maniacs trying to determine the best strategy for attacking the wild games they typically encounter these days should pick up this book. Last word of warning though - it's a take it or leave it style - you can't just incorporate certain plays or aspects of the text; It's meant to be taken as a whole or not at all.

31 of 32 found the following review helpful:


The best, most detailed analysis of limit hold'em ever  Mar 18, 2006 By Dennis Littrell
The book is very good. It offers a wealth of information, strategy and "how to" for not just small stakes players but for players at almost any level of limit hold'em. The authors note that some of the strategies wouldn't be right for the big limit games, say, the $100 and $200, and certainly not right for pot limit or no limit hold'em; but I can tell you that most players up to at least the $30 and $60 limits would benefit from reading and studying this excellent book.

But a word of caution: the approach here is very aggressive with the authors recommending leading and raising with second pair in many situations, drawing to inside straights and playing drawing hands like they're already made, calling with third pair with backdoor possibilities, and in general playing a bit looser than might seem reasonable. Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth argue--convincingly most of the time--for some surprisingly loose and aggressive play justified by pot odds. Pot odds, current and implied, are one of their most important fundamental ideas along with "pot equity." They also go into depth about hands that are likely to be "dominated," and they introduce the reader to "reverse domination."

One problem with this approach is that most booked-up players in even games as small at the $3 and $6, especially on the Internet, play a bit tighter than the authors think they play. Miller is the only one of the three who regularly played games that small, and I don't think he was playing anything smaller than the ten and twenty when he wrote this book. This is the book's only real weakness: the authors have, I believe, mistaken the quality of the average small stakes player.

Regardless, the strength of the book is that every single play is illustrated by a concrete example showing exactly how much money is in the pot, who bet, raised and called, what their hands were, and what the board was. There is nothing vague about the recommendations, and many of the hands are analysized to a degree that will delight even the most erudite reader. In addition to the usual "afterthoughts" that are a trademark of Sklansky's books, there are 132 footnotes that work like afterthoughts. No doubt Malmuth, who can worry a subject to death, and Sklansky who likes to be precise, are responsible for many of these little addendums. Personally I find the detailed explanations and counter thoughts valuable. I like them a lot better than what I read in some poker books in which the world class player tells us why he likes AK better than AA, but doesn't fully make his case. Here nothing is left to doubt. Oh, we can doubt the strategy, and prefer a different way to play the hand, but we are not in doubt about why the authors like to play it their way.

Here's an example of a disagreement. On page 123 the authors claim that QQ with the flop, K72 rainbow, is "a strong hand (though it is on the low end of that category)." I beg to differ. If you have pocket queens and a king or an ace flops, you are in trouble. In the example, you can't backdoor a straight or a flush. You have an under pair. As the authors reluctantly allow, "If someone has a king..." you have two outs. Count them. And yet it's tough to release the hand.

Here's another: On page 162 you have AT of diamonds on the button. The flop is T86. The ten and the eight are spades, the six is a diamond. There are ten small bets in the pot from five players. The small blind bets into the field. One player folds. The other two call. What do you do?

The authors conclude that you just call because a raise is not likely to protect your hand since the small blind and the two limpers will most likely call another bet because they are getting good pot odds.

This is correct. But you should raise based on the VALUE of your hand. And if the small blind reraises it, the limpers might fold. One thing fairly clear is that the small blind probably doesn't have a better hand than something like king-ten or a flush draw. Otherwise, he would probably have reraised preflop. ...Of course he could have a set...or even nine-seven... Come to think of it, maybe just a call is correct!

But I'm quibbling. Here are a couple of things I learned that I think are valuable, and I've been playing for decades:

When the flop contains a pair, e.g., JJ4, this is recognized as a fairly good bluffing opportunity against one or two players. Most players know this, but why? Because there is one less card to pair, right? Yes, but it's more significant than that. As the authors put it, "When the flop is paired, only five cards [from your opponents' hands]...connect with the board, instead of...nine..." Check it and see. That's why bluffs into paired boards often work--and why you might want to raise the bettor!

Raising preflop with a fairly strong hand (say, AJs) against a field of players is usually correct even though you will win the pot less than half the time. Why? Because as explained on pages 237-238, you have a "pot equity edge" preflop. I'll leave you to figure that out--or better yet, do yourself a favor and get the book.

One more esoteric quibble: the authors mention "hidden outs" but they don't mention "hidden half outs" or "hidden one-third outs," etc. That would be when you have, e.g., zero, and your opponent(s) have you beat, but the river makes a straight or flush on the board and you split the pot.

Bottom line: the most detailed and most thorough small stakes hold'em book that I have ever read--easily.

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