Book FAQs and Updates

Fundamentals of Playing Online Texas Hold'em

After Reading the Book, I feel like if I should not even play online unless I am willing to buy and use a HUD.

If you want to really get into Online Poker you probably will eventually want to use HUD and Poker Tracking Software. But that should not discourage you from playing online. I would look for a site that does not allow HUDs. That way you can play without a HUD until you are ready while not being at a disadvantage against the other players.


What is the different Shading in the Hand Charts represent?

The paperback book is in black and white while the Kindle and PDF eBook are in color. In both cases, the shaded areas are the hands you should play from that position while the different color shading represents suited vs non-suited.


Why don’t the Hands in the Hand Chart Match the percentage? For example, in Figure 8 you are suggesting to play 51 hands from a total of 169. That equals 30%, but the chart says 25%.

The short answer is each block in the hand charts does not have equal weighting when figuring percentages.
Let me try to explain in a little more detail.
The hand charts show 169 different types of hands. But there are really 1326 different hands you can have. It all comes down to something called combinations. For Pairs, there are only 6 ways to make a pair, while there are 16 different ways to make the other hands. If you take a hand like AK and write down all the possible ways you could be dealt this hand from a deck of cards (As, Kh, As, Kd, As, Kc, etc.), you would find that there are 16 possible combinations. Similarly, if you wrote down all the possible combinations of a pocket pair like JJ (Js, Jh, Js, Jd, Js, Jc, etc.), you would find that there are just 6 possible combinations. That's why you can't just take the blocks in the chart equally when figuring the percentage of hands. The charts combine starting hands of equal strength, like As Kh and As Kd making is much easier to memorize.
For Figure 8, there are 334 combinations of hands out of a total of 1326 possible hands, making the percentage 25.2.

Correction to Page 166 - Unprofitable Pot Odds

The hand on page 166 of Ts 9s on a board of 8c 4d Qh mentioned in the first paragraph is not an open-ended straight draw as stated. The Qh should have been a Jh. The hand should be - Ts 9s and a board of 8c 4d Jh.

That would make the hand an open ended straight draw with you holding 8c, 9s, Ts, Jh – with only needing queen or seven to complete the straight an 8 outs.

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