Exploiting Regulars Review

I recently received an advance copy of Try Nguyen's (slowhabit) new book The No-Limit Holdem Workbook: Exploiting Regulars and I think it will solidly fill an important niche.

It's only about sixty pages and is comprised of ten chapters of about two pages each followed by a hand quiz that is somewhat reminiscent of the Harrington on Holdem series. As the title suggests it's all about beating tight regulars.

The text is conversational in tone but very dense. I once read a history book that spent thirty pages explaining that young adult males liked to go to bars and watch sports. That this book was about the labor movement in Worcester, MA in the late nineteenth and early 20th century didn't justify the extra 29.9 pages. If you're looking for lengthy explanations with multiple examples this isn't the place to go. Rather, this is the place to go when you're familiar with a concept but aren't sure you're applying it properly. You can read a couple pages, go over a couple hand examples, and get your confidence back.

That's the niche this book will fill, as a confidence boost when you're running bad. The hand quiz is the bulk of the book and it's greatest strength. There are thirty-five questions where SlowHabit outlines the stacks, position, and action to a given point then asks what hero should do. The answers range from one paragraph to several, identifying the optimal action and in some cases more than one action depending on the nature of the villain and whatever history there might be. It's good stuff.

I think it's also dangerous stuff. There's an emphasis on hand reading and pouncing on weakness that strikes me as being somewhat difficult to implement. It's going to be important to remember that we're targeting a certain type of player here and that as much as he talks about bluffing here or check raising the river there it's only in specific situations where you have good reason to believe the villain's range isn't terribly strong.

Ultimately I think this book is going to serve as something akin to a sweat session with a buddy, a mental check up that your thought process is on the right track and in that sense will probably be pretty valuable.