Small Stakes Holdem

When the Hold'Em explosion hit poker rooms across America, hundreds of thousands of inexperienced players were beginning to play limit Hold 'Em for the first time. The number still grows today, as poker rooms continue to expand around the country. As a result, 2+2 Publishing put their stamp on the low-limit world with this instant classic, Small Stakes Hold 'Em: Winning Big With Expert Play.

In sharp contrast with their previous writings such as Hold 'Em Poker For Advanced Players, Ed Miller and company suggest playing a new brand of poker. Instead of playing relatively weak-tight for the games today, they suggest playing more pots and playing much more aggressively. The fact that you play better poker and don't play marginal-to-hopeless hands means that you'll exploit your opponents tendencies to offset your slightly looser-than-normal play.

For example, they will recommend in many spots to raise with such marginal hands as A-Ts, even from an early position. The reason behind their logic is today's games are so soft that players will give you action with even weaker hands almost like clockwork. They even advocate some plays that might seem strange to the typical middle-limit player, like raising into a crowd on the button with a hand like A-Js.

Again, this is all a drastic change from previous writings, even on low-limit games. The logic in the past about raising with marginal hands out of position was that if you get action behind you, you are beat and are drawing already. The problem with these previous thoughts is that in games today, players are cold-calling two, three and even four bets with almost any two cards. A typical $3-6 Hold 'Em game could have as many as six players on average seeing a flop.

To beat these games today, you must adjust your style of play. Some of the topics and strategies in here can translate into higher-stakes games, but typically these are best kept to the white chip games and loose middle-limit games.

Overall, if you want to stand a chance in the 'no fold 'em' games of today, you must adjust your strategy drastically. This book offers most players a good guideline how to do just that.

Review by Jon Eaton