Some family illnesses have kept me from updating as much as I would like to. I have tried to keep up with the forum a bit. I apologize to those who have been checking back on occasion and finding nothing new.

Speaking of which, there is Forum News. The forum has been reopened to new members. If you wish to join the forum (free), please send your name, e-mail address, and the user name you wish to have on the site to:

I-am-allin AT hotmail.com. It is written that way to fool most spam bots. Please replace the”AT” with a “@” before sending.

And thanks for joining our forum. Please contribute hands and thoughts. Also, Terry Borer, one of the authors of the new book Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies is available on the forum to answer questions about things related to the content of the book.

One of the readers of my book comments that he discovered my book emphasized an exploitative strategy rather than an optimal one. He had just read Mathematics of Poker by Chen and Anekman, and had observed the difference.

I agree. I told him that in my opinion, if you find you must play optimally, you should find another game.

But lets move back a bit. I am not a great expert on poker math, (I do OK for easy stuff) so if I get something wrong, please let me know and I will publish corrections.

“Optimal” strategy is a mathematical construct designed to make you unexploitable. For example, you are calling along in a heads up pot with a straight draw. On the river, a flush card comes. If you never bluff at this, but only bet when you make your hand (if you were in fact calling witha flush draw instead of a straight draw), your opponent observant opponent can simply fold when you bet. If you bet every time a flush card comes whether you made anything of not, you will usually be bluffing too much for the size of the pot and an observant opponent can simply call every time and show a long term profit.

Somewhere in between, depending on a formula that factors in the pot size and your likelihood of making your hand, is an “optimal” number of bluffs. If you bluff at that frequency, you are indifferent to whether your opponent calls or folds. You will still make more money than if you either bet too often or not often enough.

While poker cannotb we solved mathematically, there are several situation where you can invoke “optimal play” and always make more money than if you do too much or too little and your opponent reads you.

This sounds like a pretty good deal, yet I am generally opposed to doing this. Why?

Because my opponents make errors, and I wish to exploit them. By doing so, I abandon optimal play to make plays which I hope in the long run will make extra money for me by taking advantage of my opponents errors. For example, let’s say that in the situation above, you are against an opponent who folds too easily on the river when you bet. You can still play optimally and not care, but if you instead bluff more often than optimal, you will make more money.

Of course, but bluffing more often than you should, you become yourself exploitable to an opponent who sees this and elects to call more often. Thus, you must always be aware of your image, and how each opponent plays, and adjust your play to the specific situation. This is hard work, and you will still get it wrong quite a bit.

The general idea is that you will get it right far more often than wrong, and thus make larger profits (and suffer larger swings). But you will have to know (guess) when to zig and when to zag. Optimal play eliminates all of the guesswork (or opponent reading depending on how you think of it). but at the cost of profit in my opinion.

In fact, if you find yourself in a game in which you opponent s are either so good or so unreadable that you must resort to optimal play to keep from making exploitable error s yourself, then I think you should go get into a better game where your opponents make exploitable errors.

I will figure out a way to make an ad soon, so this will stay on the front page. Maybe even a form.

In the meantime, here is the story: If you want to purchase a custom-autographed (by me) copy of Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy or Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies, here’s how:

Send your name, address and phone number, the recipient’s name and address (if different), which book(s) you want, what you want me to write, and a check or money order to:

Barry Tanenbaum Books
P.O. Box 28783
Las Vegas, NV 89126

Price for one book: $24.95 plus $4.60 Priority Mail = $29.55
Price for two books: $24.95 x 2 pus $4.60 Priority Mail = $54.50

If you just want me to write something sort of standard, I can do that instead.

While I am willing to autograph the short-handed book, please remember I collaborated on that book but I was not the author. They live in Canada and are not available to me for autographs.

Thank you.

I heard from a local Las Vegas wholesaler and reseller today, Mike Minkoff of Professional Poker. He has received both Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy and Limit Hold’em: Winning Short-Handed Strategies, which means other stores, resellers, and venues should get their orders in the next few days as well. I expect to get mine very soon as well. You can order from him or wait for others to offer or post availability. They will also be available from the CardPlayer site.

As soon as I have my shipment, I will give instructions for getting personalized autographed copies direct from me. These will be sold at the cover price (I cannot offer discounts that compete with full price resellers) plus shipping (but not handling…I will drive them to the post office for free). Stay tuned if you wish one, as it should be soon, and “quantities will be limited,” though not very . I am sure it will make a lovely holiday gift, as I will write pretty much whatever you wish.

We will also re-open the forum to new members shortly. I should have an announcement within a week on how to join. It will be a bit complex to avoid the bot-spam problem we had before, but mostly it will require you to send an e-mail to a designated address with your desired username.

Well, I am excited that the books are here. I hope many of you get a chance to read one or both, and that you will enjoy and learn something.

I just got back from a few days playing at the Commerce in Los Angeles. Herewith some observations.

1 - LA is certainly the number one destination for a poker player. LV has more rooms, but greater LA has several poker/card only rooms, including some of the largest anywhere.

2 - Because they make their living from poker instead of it being an afterthought in a casino, LA poker is emphasized and competitive. al of the larger room are comfortable and roomy, with table side food service (there is no incentive to have hungry players leave the area and wander through the casino in search of a snack).

3 - At the Commerce, at least, at any moment in a non-tournament environment, there are more middle and high limit games in that one casino than in the entire state of Nevada.

4 - Perhaps because poker is the lifeblood of the LA cardrooms, the price of play tends to be higher in general (though I am sure there will be exceptions in both directions).

5 - Food is free (for middle and high limit players) while alcohol is expensive in LA, the exact opposite of LV. This is good and bad for me because I do not drink, but perhaps I eat a bit too well while playing in LA.

6 - The games in LA tend to be a bit looser and more aggressive than their LV counterparts, though I certainly ran in a large number of competent players in LA.

7 - Despite the signs stating that the cardroom I was in had a “zero tolerance policy against abuse,” there was far more abuse in LA than in LV. Dealer (verbal) abuse seems more common, as does player abuse. In fact, much of the banter is abusive for fun, but it does not hide the fact that temporarily disgruntled players act up a lot and are tolerated more in LA, in my limited experience. Again, this may be because the cardrooms have no other source of income.

8 - I like the LA games better, but the LV environment, by which mean the city as a whole. So I am glad I visited, and I am delighted to have gotten home.