Ed Recommends: Winning in Tough Hold ‘em Games

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“Those who can’t, teach.” As someone who used to play poker fulltime and now spends more time teaching it, I hear that a lot. Frankly, I think it’s bullshit. People ask me frequently why I spend more time writing about poker now than I do playing it. It’s because teaching is in my blood.

I spent an extra year in college teaching introductory circuits to freshmen and sophomores for $1,300 a month. The money sucked, but I absolutely loved the job. After I quit my Microsoft job, I drove to Vegas to spend two months at the 2003 WSOP. During that time I was interviewing at schools for a position teaching high school physics, something I’ve always wanted to do. I won $20,000 in those two WSOP months, though, and I decided to put high school off a bit and give the poker pro thing a shot.

But it wasn’t long before I was teaching again. I’ve found that I have two major passions in life: learning new things and teaching them to others. I’m not sure why, but that’s what I enjoy doing most. No matter where I go or what I do, I will always end up teaching something. I think I was just made that way. I’m proud of what I do, and I admit, it irks me to hear teaching get disrespected.

Meet Stoxtrader

Ok, rant’s over, and now we get to the point of the post. If you still think “those who can’t, teach” then you haven’t met Nick “Stoxtrader” Grudzien. This guy single-handedly blows that credo way, WAY out of the water. He’s one of the top high-stakes limit hold ‘em players in the world, winning big in the nose-bleed games online. And now he’s one of the top limit hold ‘em teachers in the world too.

He runs the excellent Stoxpoker.com site where he publishes videos of himself playing limit and no-limit hold ‘em. Not only do you get to watch him play, but he narrates the videos to tell you exactly what he’s thinking about as he makes each move. Honestly, I think it’s the single best learning resource you’ll find anywhere. I highly recommend all my readers to subscribe to his videos. If you play poker regularly, it’s honestly worth tens or maybe even hundreds of times what you pay for it. Seriously.

Stox’s New Book

And now he’s got a new book out: Winning in Tough Hold’em Games. Simply put, it’s excellent. This book shows you the secrets of the short-handed and high-stakes players like nothing else currently out there. If I had read this book four years ago when I was starting my pro career at that 2003 WSOP, it would have completely blown my mind.

Rather than go on about how awesome it is, I just wanted to make a couple of points about it. I’m going to assume that you’ll buy it and read it yourself because if you play limit hold ‘em and you don’t bother to read it… well, I don’t understand why you’d do that.

First, I think you should read it out of order. If I were you, I’d start by reading the section called “Hands with Stox.” It consists of 50-odd well-selected hands that Stox played and it talks about what he did and why he did it. Unless you’re already awesome, chances are you’ll read that section and think, “Wow, I play nothing like this.”

In fact, I’d read that section a couple of times before moving on to the rest of the book. It will give you a “feel” for how Stox plays that will come in very handy as you read the opening sections of the book. The first part is a preflop rundown, and it is exhaustive (and exhausting). It’s laid out in great detail how and why Stox plays how he does preflop. If you just start with this section, I think you might feel overwhelmed by all the info and not have a context for the advice. That’s what reading the hands first will give you.

The next section is a detailed rundown of postflop play. I especially liked how he broke postflop play down into “betting lines” (e.g., the “bet-bet line,” the “bet-checkraise line,” etc.) and offered reasons to choose one line over another.

My favorite section, naturally, is the “Hands with Stox” section.

The Mind-Blowing Stuff

In particular, two things stick out as “mind-blowers” for the 2003 version of Ed and potentially for many readers today. First, Stox is very aggressive with some seemingly weak hands, but he’s also somewhat passive sometimes with some fairly good hands. He gives really excellent detail about the how’s and why’s of those plays. Most people learn to play aggressively, but they tend to play too aggressively sometimes when they should back off, and they don’t play aggressively enough sometimes with stuff that looks weak. I think most players will learn quite a bit.

Second, Stox is very “sticky.” This is an area that held me back for several months when I was learning. I folded too much. Folding like I did was ok at lower limits where people were more passive and aggression tended to mean strong hands. But when you move up, you have to get a lot “stickier” and hold on when the pot gets large. Stox pushes hard and calls down a fair bit with small pairs and ace-high. IMO, this may be the single biggest light-bulb-moment for many readers. You’ll see all the places where he clings to a small pair and say to yourself, “Wow, I must be getting bluffed out a lot.” And you probably are.

In any event, Winning in Tough Hold ‘em Games by Nick “Stoxtrader” Gruzdien and Geoff “Zobags” Herzog is a total must-read for anyone who plays 6-max limit hold ‘em or who plays in otherwise tight games. Why does Stox spend so much effort teaching others when he could be “doing”? Maybe he feels the calling like I do. I don’t know. But I do know that Stox is sharing something special and valuable, and you should definitely take advantage of it.

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