Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold'em, Volume 1

A lot of poker books promise instant success, screaming “Crush the online games” or “How I won a million dollars playing poker”. They suggest that poker is actually rather easy and that anyone with five minutes to spare can quickly gain expertise in the game. But you know that these claims simply aren’t true.

To achieve mastery of poker is not easy – it requires a great deal of deep thinking. Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold ‘em is a unique and remarkable book, providing a clear framework with which to analyse the game. The author Will Tipton, a PhD candidate at Cornell University, demonstrates how decision trees can be used to model complex poker decisions. Starting with simple preflop-only situations, he moves on to consider deeper concepts such as balance, the analysis of ranges, and the theory behind optimal bet sizing.

Why study Heads Up No Limit? Because a deep understanding of this format is crucial for the modern poker player. It’s a very exciting game in its own right, but it’s also critical for the final stages of tournament or sit’n’go play. If you find yourself playing for first prize, you will be playing heads up for a great deal of money. Perfecting your play will give you the edge to maximise your expectation whether you are competing for the big money or grinding out your profit in heads up cash games or SNGs.

Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold ‘em will give you that edge by:

• helping you identify and maximally exploit opponents’ tendencies
• giving you a clear explanation of the practical application of theoretical ideas
• developing your intuition about game theory so that you can apply its lessons directly at the tables

FOREWORD TO Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold ‘em

I’ve been publishing books for over twenty years and poker books for more than ten. In that time I have commissioned hundreds of books and also received a great many unsolicited manuscripts. As you will probably guess, these have been – shall we say politely – of varying quality. If you’ve ever watched the X Factor auditions, you’ll probably get the idea.

I was therefore not unduly excited when a manuscript on heads up no limit hold’em was forwarded to me earlier this year. I have been a serious poker player for ten years but I had never heard of the author. However, he seemed to have already written the whole book – which is unusual in itself. Unsolicited contributions are normally just a few pages or, at most, a chapter. So, I started to read through it.

Within about ten minutes I had experienced what X Factor aficionados

might call a “Susan Boyle moment”. I was reading one of the very best poker books I had ever seen and I knew absolutely that we would definitely want to publish it. Furthermore I could see that – quite remarkably – the book was already very close to the finished product.

Heads Up No Limit is at the heart of the modern professional game. Will Tipton has taken this variant and stripped it down to the bare essentials - creating a mathematical framework to model all elements of play. It is a quite remarkable book.

Poker is a tough game. If you discern a few leaks in your game and want to fix them in five minutes, you’ll have to look elsewhere. However, if you are prepared to take a good look at your game, and are willing to work hard to improve, then the information in this book is utterly invaluable.

I’ve been a solid winning player in the mid-stakes at the online tables for many years. I thought I played okay. Having read this book three times in the last six months I can see that I had huge gaps in my understanding and I am now improving rapidly. If you want to do the same – you should get this book. 

Byron Jacobs, October 2012

EXTRAS

• HUNL Preflop Charts

• Appendix A - “Big River Game” Equations: PDF, Mathematica, .nb

• SB bet-or-check game: Mathematica, .nb, PDF

• Equity distribution visualization utility for Windows updated 16/03/2015 (md5sum: 7c33702bfb6ac5e35ad2d4c7ba76c9eb): ZIP, 10MB

• Volume 1 Errata (updated 11 July 2013): DOC