The reviews are starting to come in for it. So far here are the reviews I’ve seen:

Bill Rini

I really can’t recommend How to Read Hands enough. It’s a true original in a sea of poker books that do nothing but rehash the same old strategy concepts. I can truly say that this is one of the first books I’ve read in years that I’ve felt is a must-have book for aspiring poker players. Don’t buy this book at your own peril.

Bob Dancer

Miller’s book is not meant for skimming. It actually assigns homework![. . .]Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s good. In my opinion this book provides an excellent way to learn an important skill. This particular skill won’t come automatically, at least not to me, but now I have a roadmap I can follow. And it’s a roadmap that makes sense to me.

Get this brand-new e-book by clicking here.

Today I wanted to share with you an excerpt from the book. It’s the first bit of the chapter Hand Reading On The Turn. Enjoy.

Hand Reading On The Turn

an excerpt from How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold’em by Ed Miller

Once you have a flop hand range in mind for your opponent, hand reading on the turn is fairly simple. The turn card will either have improved your opponents’ hands, or it won’t have. Hands can improve on the turn in a few ways:

• Complete a draw
• Become two pair or trips (for a flopped pair)
• Catch a pair (e.g., a turn 6 holding 76 on a 982 flop)
• Catch a second draw (e.g., a turn K♣ holding 7♣ 6♣ on a 9♦8♣ 2♠ flop)
• Catch a brick (for a made hand on a coordinated board, e.g., a turn 2 holding KK on a T98 flop)

There are some other ways to improve on the turn, but that covers the main scenarios.

Tip No. 14. A player who called the flop and improved on the turn will rarely fold.

It’s simple, intuitive, and fairly reliable. Anyone who calls the flop and improves on the turn will usually call again (or raise). There are a few exceptions. If you make a massive overbet, you can get people to fold hands that they would have called a more typically-sized bet with. Nits also sometimes find folds on the turn when the improvement is marginal (e.g., a turn 6 holding 76 on a 982 flop).

In general, however, it’s a good rule of thumb. People call or raise when they improve. When they don’t improve, they generally continue with their flopped strong fits and fold their flopped weak fits. When the turn card hits, count how many hands in your opponents’ ranges have improved. This will give you a sense of how they’ll react if you bet.

It’s a $1-$2 game with $300 stacks. Two regulars limp in, and you raise to $12 on the button. The big blind calls, as does one of the limpers. There’s $39 in the pot with $288 behind.

The flop comes K♠T♥6♠ . Both players check to you. You bet $30, the big blind folds, and the regular calls. There’s $99 in the pot with $258 behind.

What does your opponent’s range look like?

Here’s the regular’s reference preflop open-limping range

[44-22
A7s-A2s, KTs-K9s, JTs-54s, QTs-75s, Q9s-96s
A9o-A2o, KJo-K9o, QJo-98o, QTo]

Let’s add the fringe hands 77-55 to this range to allow for the possibility that this player flopped a set of sixes. Remember, the hand ranges we’ve been using in this book are just approximate reference ranges. In practice, you will have to add and subtract hands from these ranges to account for how specific opponents play.

Which of these hands fit a K♠T♥6♠ flop?

[66
A6s, KTs-K9s, JTs-65s, QTs-86s, Q9s, T7s-96s, As7s, As5s-As2s, 5s4s, 7s5s, Js8s
A6o, KJo-K9o, QJo-98o, QTo]

On this reasonably coordinated flop, a big chunk of your opponent’s limping range will fit the flop. Notice how nearly all of the connected hands made either a pair or a gutshot on this flop. Let’s divide this range into strong and weak fits. For strong fits, we have

[66
KTs-K9s, As7s, As5s-As2s, JsTs-8s7s, QsTs-9s7s, Qs9s, Ts7s
KJo-K9o, QJo]

and for weak fits

[A6s, JTs-65s, QTs-86s, Q9s, T7s-96s (excluding the strong fits), 5s4s, 7s5s, Js8s
A6o, JTo-98o, QTo]

The weak fits on this flop are mainly three types of hands: flopped pairs lower than top pair, gutshots, and small flush draws. The strong fits are top pair or better, nut flush draws, and combo draws (straight and flush draws and pair plus flush draws).

As you can see, the strong fits and weak fits are fairly evenly split. Because there are so many weak fits, the turn card will strongly influence how often your opponent calls the turn.

Say the turn card comes 2♣. How many of the weak fit hands does this card improve? None of them. If you were to bet $70 (into $99) on this turn, I’d expect your opponent to fold a good percentage of the time.

How about a K♣ on the turn? Same story. None of the weak fits have improved, and I’d expect a good number of folds.

How about the 5♠? Now we have some improvement. Specifically, the following weak fit hands have improved: 65s and J♠8♠. You could also consider 87s (not spades) having improved, since it picked up an open-ended straight draw, but this is an example where the improvement might not be enough to get a turn call. And 5♠4♠ and 7♠5♠ disappeared from the range since the 5♠ appeared on the board.

But wait, you say, didn’t every flush draw just improve?

Sure. But because of the connected nature of the flop, nearly every flush draw in our opponent’s range qualified as a strong fit. They were either nut flush draws, straight and flush combo draws, or pair plus flush draw combos.

While the flush card improved the overall strength of your opponent’s range, most of the weak fit hands didn’t improve. Thus, the 5♠ might be a decent card to bluff, especially if you held a hand with outs such as A♠J♣ .

How about the 9♦ on the turn? That would make the board K♠T♥6♠9♦. This card improves most of the weak fit hands. 87s improves to a straight. T9 (offsuit and suited) and 96s improve to two pair. JT, 98, 76s, QT, J9s-86s, Q9s, and T7s all improve to a pair plus a gutshot. J♠8♠ and 7♠5♠ improve to combo draws. Only a few of the weak fits didn’t improve: A6, 65s, and 5♠4♠. Since this card improves so many hands, if you bet the turn you should expect at least a call.

Tip No. 15. Turn cards that are lower than the lowest board card and turn cards that pair the board improve relatively few hands. Turn cards that put three cards to a straight on board (e.g., a 9 on a KT6 flop) improve many more hand combos.

In the above example, the 9 improved so many hands becuase it connects with both the KT on the flop and the T6 on the flop to make three to a straight. Thus, both JT and 76 improve to a pair plus gutshot. Cards like a Q or a 7 would also improve a number of hands, but not quite as many as the 9.

Exercise No. 10. Write out which of the weak fit hands improve on a Q♥ turn. Do the same for a 7♥ turn.

I’ll be honest. I’m surprised that no one else has written this book already. Hand reading is the single most important no-limit hold’em skill. Really it’s the single most important poker skill, period. If you can read hands better than your opponents, you’ll win. If you can’t, you won’t. Maybe it’s not quite that simple, but it’s close enough.

Yet here it is, nearing the end of 2011, and no one has written a book on hand reading yet. Really?

Well, the wait is almost over. How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold’em breaks down this holy grail skill in painstaking detail. I start at the beginning and guide you step by step through the hand from preflop play through the river. At each stop I show you the process professional players use to figure out the cards their opponents hold. Sprinkled throughout I share with you exclusive tips and hand reading shortcuts I’ve developed throughout my playing career.

You know what made me want to write this book? Well, besides the fact that it’s on the most important and valuable poker skill there is and no one else wrote it first? I decided to write this book because I got sick and tired of reading accounts of voodoo hand reading.

How many times have you been reading a hand a pro wrote up when you come upon a line like this. “At that point, I could just feel like I had him beat.” Or something like this, “I wanted to call, but something about the situation told me it was time for a big laydown.” If you read about poker as much as I do, you’ve probably read lines like these a million times.

They drive me absolutely freaking crazy.

What is that supposed to teach you? That you’re supposed to have premonitions when you play poker? That professional poker is about being a claravoyant or having ESP? That if you don’t have the “feel” for poker, you might as well rack up your chips and head over to the roulette wheel?

No no no no no. That’s not what hand reading is about at all, and I can’t help but think that some of the guys who write this stuff do so because their own hand reading is shall we say a bit fuzzy.

Hand reading is a simple, straightforward, logical process. No voodoo. Believe me, you don’t have to be Miss Cleo to play top-notch poker. In How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold’em, I show you how mere mortals like us can use plain old logical deduction to draw seemingly supernatural insights into what our opponents hold. And, as I do in all my books, I use plenty of example hands so you can see how this process unfolds in the heat of battle.

There’s one other thing that made me want to write this book. This information is going to be brand new and absolutely eye-opening to a whole lot of people.

I don’t like to waste my readers’ time with rehashed info they’ve heard a thousand times over. I like to zero in on the areas my readers need the most improvement on and hammer, hammer, hammer. I know this book is going to hit the mark.

I’ve worked with dozens of students over the past six months or so, and I’ve given them a sneak preview of some of the ideas in this book. It’s been eye-opening to nearly every one of them. These are people who have paid hundreds of dollars to learn from me, many of whom already win consistently at the $2-$5 and $5-$10 level, and this stuff was brand new to them.

And you can learn it for just $49.99. It’s an incredible value. In just one session of $1-$2 no-limit hold’em, you can easily win enough to make the book pay for itself.

You don’t have long to wait. Preordering starts on Tuesday, October 4th, and the book will be released to the world two weeks later on Tuesday, October 18th.

Make sure you get your order in before the 18th, though, because if you do, you get the follow bonus perks:

• All electronic formats for no additional charge. You get a PDF version for the computer, a PRC version for an Amazon Kindle, and an EPUB version for Apple iPad and iPhone, Barnes & Noble Nook, and most other e-reader devices. If you order after the 18th, it’s $5 extra for all the versions.
• A $5 off coupon for Flopzilla software. Flopzilla is a terrific and inexpensive software package that will be an invaluable companion as you learn to read and analyze hands logically. I show you how to use it in the book, and if you preorder you will get a coupon for $5 off Flopzilla.
• $60 off a 4 hour coaching package. This is good for new students and also for my existing students. You can get a 4 hour coaching package for $60 off the normal price. If you take advantage of this offer, it more than pays for the whole book.

Ok, enough sales pitch. I’m sure you’re convinced, and you’ll head on over to notedpokerauthority.com on Tuesday to be one of the first to preorder your copy. Until then, here’s the table of contents to help you wet your whistle.

• INTRODUCTION 7
• PART I: CORE HAND READING 9
• PLAYER TYPES 11
• THE THREE PRINCIPLES OF HAND READING 14
• HAND RANGES 17
• HAND COMBINATIONS 22
• PREFLOP HAND READING 24
• HAND READING ON THE FLOP 34
• HAND READING ON THE TURN 56
• HAND READING ON THE RIVER 78
• PART II: HAND READING VARIATIONS 89
• WHEN YOUR OPPONENTS DON’T COOPERATE 91
• WHEN DON’T THEY BET? 100
• GETTING RAISED 109
• DISCOUNTING HAND COMBOS 126
• POLARIZED HAND RANGES 128
• HAND READING IN MULTIWAY POTS 135
• USING FLOPZILLA TO PERFECT YOUR HAND READING 140
• PROFILING PLAYERS USING BAYESIAN INFERENCE 148
• QUICK CONCEPTS AND KEY POINTS 160
• PART III: HAND READING IN PRACTICE 167
• CONCLUSION 189

It’s called How To Read Hands At No-Limit Hold’em. It is, as you may have guessed, about hand reading in no-limit.

In January I got the idea for this book. I’d been talking to a number of small stakes players about the game, and something became clear to me. A lot of people who have read my other books, read this website, watched videos, and so forth, are familiar with the basics of hand reading. You put an opponent on a range of hands. When you get new information, you adjust the range.

But when pressed, many players were fuzzy on exactly what this process entails. They know what a hand range is, but how do you adjust it? And, more to the point, how do you use this theoretical list of possible holdings to make real decisions in real time?

Hand reading is perhaps the single most important no-limit skill. Players with some bad habits but excellent hand reading skills will destroy players with more solid fundamentals but sketchy hand reading. These players that I had been talking to simply didn’t have the hand reading skills to break through to the next level.

This book is focused like a laser on improving your hand reading. It’s extremely detailed, as you might imagine given that I wrote a whole book about the one topic. It starts at the beginning, explaining hand ranges, how you construct them, and how you use them. Then it walks you through the hand reading process. Preflop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river. It talks about hand reading where you have the initiative and hand reading when you’re responding to aggression. It talks about hand reading in heads-up pots and in multiway pots. It talks about reading your opponents’ hands and reading your own hand (to help you balance your ranges and become a tougher player). Better hand reading means better continuation betting and barrelling decisions, better bluffs, better value bets, better hero calls, and more.

It’s a relatively straightforward read, but it’s absolutely packed with critical information. There are lots of exercises and hand quizzes throughout that let you test your newly learned skills.

One read-through won’t make you a hand reading master. But this isn’t the sort of book you read once and put away forever. It’s a book you work through many times. With practice, practice, practice, you will improve your reads and improve your confidence too.

The book is geared toward reading opponents who aren’t tough pros. It is written with live games in mind, but online players will get a lot out of it also. It’s not going to teach you how to outlevel a Cardrunners pro, but it will teach you how to reliably put your everyday opponents on ranges and then make sharp decisions against them.

The book will come out first as an e-book in PDF, Kindle, and EPUB (iPad/iPhone/Android/most other e-readers) formats. It’s going to sell for $49.99, and I’m going to run a preordering period for about two weeks prior to release. Those who buy during the preordering period will receive some extra goodies including a coupon for personal coaching and a discount on another book or product.

After the e-book is out, I will look into making a paperback version available via Amazon.

I’m still finishing it up, and I’m not going to release it until I’m satisfied. Right now I’m planning for preordering to begin sometime in early July with release near the end of the month.

I’m very excited. If you have any questions about the book, ask them in the comments or on my Facebook page.

• Those outside the United States can now get the paperback. I’m told that you can buy Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em at ProfessionalPoker.com as of today, and they ship internationally.
• Within a few weeks the book should appear at hundreds of bookstores B&M and online, and you should be able to get it wherever you normally buy poker books.
• There is a new cover and updated layout. The content is not changed significantly for those who have the v1.1 e-book or the “fish” paperback.

In other news, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em is now available in translation in Russian. Buy the Russian version. We also have translation deals for several other languages, and we should see these versions come out soon.

1. We are now shipping a paperback edition of the book (unfortunately to United States residents only at the moment) in addition to the e-book versions.
2. We’ve dropped the price to $29.95 for the e-book versions and $34.95 for the paperback.

So if you’ve been waiting to buy for whatever reason, now’s your chance! Check out what one reader who was making his way up $0.10-$0.25 no-limit to $1-$2 no-limit had to say about Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em:

I had read quite a few poker books and watched a lot of videos prior to purchasing the SSNLHE e-book. I don’t want to say they didn’t help because they definitely did, but something about the way the e-book was written just clicked with me. I’m a much better player because of it and wanted to thank all of you for writing such a clear, logical explanation of no-limit that can be applied quickly. I play full ring NLHE about 20 hours a week (anywhere from 25NL-200NL) and found the concepts very applicable to my games. I included a graph as its the best praise/review I can really give. I think you will notice a significant slope change around hand 186k/beginning of June.

Download the free excerpt to get a feel for the book. Then get your copy today!

To celebrate the New Year and also the release of the updated Version 1.1 of Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, we are offering a limited-time 35% discount. Until January 15, you can get your copy for $64.95. Here’s what you get for your money:

• A comprehensive guide to the main skills needed to win at micro- and small-stakes no-limit games. This is the stuff you need to master to move up from 10NL or 25NL to 200NL. Mastering these skills will also help you to improve your results at $1-$2 and $2-$5 live games.
• The 300+ page PDF version of the book. In Version 1.1, this format comes with improved navigation and clickable Table of Contents to make finding the part you want much easier.
• By request, PRC and EPUB versions of the book. These versions will let you read the book on any of a number of e-reader devices like the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Google Android phones, and many more. You can take Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em with you wherever you want.
• Free e-book updates. When Version 1.2 comes out, you’ll be able to download it at no additional charge.
• “[A] well written, high-level discussion of no-limit hold’em that does a masterful job of explaining difficult, complex concepts with clarity and precision.” (link)

This 35% discount is the best deal we’ve offered in a long time. Take advantage of it and get your copy today. If you want to take Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em for a test drive, we are now offering for free download an excerpt chapter from the book. You can check out any of the three versions of the book to see how it will read on your device.

IMPORTANT: When downloading an excerpt, please choose the SAVE button in your browser, not Run or Open. Save the file to a directory on your computer that you can easily find. Doing so will help conserve our server resources and will allow you to read the excerpt whenever you want.

Download the PDF excerpt. This is the primary version of the e-book. You can read the PDF version on any computer running Windows, MacOS, or Linux. You may need to download the lastest version of the free Adobe Reader software to read it.

Download the PRC excerpt. This version will work on the Amazon Kindle and the various Mobipocket readers. To read the excerpt on your Kindle, please download the PRC file to your computer using your web browser, and then transfer the file to your Kindle using the USB cable.

Download the EPUB excerpt. This version will work on most e-reader devices including the iPhone, Google Android phones, the Sony Reader, and many more. To read the excerpt on your iPhone, please install a free e-reader app called Stanza from the iTunes store. Then, in Stanza, select “Get Books” at the bottom, and “Downloads” at the top. Then hit the plus sign and type in the download URL (exactly as written including capitals) from the link above. This will download the excerpt directly to your phone.

So there you have it. Free excerpts, and 35% off until January 15. Don’t wait until the special pricing is over. Get your copy today.

Amazon and Kindle aren’t the only ones on the e-book wave either. Smart phones like iPhones and Google Android phones are all over the place, and most of them can act as e-readers. And there are other popular e-reader devices like the Sony Reader, the Nook, and more.

So given the speed with which e-books have seen adoption lately, we decided to focus our first major update on bringing Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em to as many devices and platforms as possible. We wanted to improve the SSNLHE e-book experience. In that vein, the update features the following:

• Support for the most popular e-reader devices such as Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, and many more. Most devices will work with either the PRC or EPUB formats now available for download. You can, of course, still read the book on any personal computer.
• Upgraded PDF interactivity including bookmarking and a clickable table of contents. The PDF version is now much easier to navigate. Note to Mac users: Installing the latest version of Adobe Reader, while not required, may enhance your reading experience.
• A number of bug fixes including fixed typos, layout problems, awkward wordings, and so forth.

If you buy Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em today, you will receive the new updated version 1.1. If you have already bought the book, you should have received an email at the address you used to buy the book (usually your Paypal email address) with links to download the new version. If you have not received your email, please check your spam filter. If you still can’t find your email, please contact support@smallstakesnolimitholdem.com to receive your update. The update (including the new e-reader formatted versions) is free to anyone who has already bought the book.

We have some items still planned for the future:

• A paper book release. We plan to release a paper book, and we’re already in the stage of negotiating with a printer. We had hoped to get the paper version done earlier, but the process has moved slower than we’d have liked. We still plan to do it and getting these books ready will be our top priority.
• New content. We are working on new content (including new chapters) for the book. When it’s ready, we will release it in another update.

More Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em news is soon forthcoming, so stay tuned.

The Update

Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em was released in June of this year as an e-book in PDF format. The most common request we have gotten since release is that the book be more accessable and available in different formats. So this is the focus of the update, version 1.1. Specifically, the update will include:

• Dozens of fixes to the text of the book to correct errors, make things clearer, and overall improve the book.
• A paper version of the book! Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em is no longer just an e-book. It will soon be a book available in both paper and e-book format.
• A more navigatable PDF version. We’ve upgraded the original version with navigational tools including bookmarks and contextual links to make browsing and finding particular parts of the book easier and faster.
• Better support for e-reader devices. E-readers like the Kindle, the Sony Reader, the iPhone, and more have exploded in popularity recently. The original release provided provisional support for these e-reader platforms, but the update will provide cleaner support for the most common e-reader file formats.

How Can You Get The Updated Version?

Anyone who has already purchased Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em will receive the updated PDF for free automatically. You will receive a download email at the email address you purchased the original book with, and it will provide all the instructions necessary to get version 1.1 of the book. If you would like e-reader versions of the book, you will be able to request and download them for free also as they become available.

Paper books will not be free, but will be available at a heavily discounted price to anyone who has already bought the e-book.

More information, particularly about how to order your paper copies, will be coming soon. So stay tuned!

In fact, the book has sold so well that we dared to compare our sales to those of traditional poker books. We’ve come to a startling conclusion. Using the metrics we have available (which are admittedly not entirely precise), we believe that Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, an e-book available for sale only at our website, was during the release period the #1 selling poker book of any type anywhere in the world. Given that the book isn’t available at Amazon or major bookstores, that fact is simply amazing. So I’d like to thank all of you who have helped to make our non-traditional book release a stunning success.

Early Reviews Are In

For those of you who haven’t yet gotten your copy of the affordable poker e-book, you might want to read what some of the early reviewers have to say about it:

“Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em is a well written, high-level discussion of no-limit hold’em that does a masterful job of explaining difficult, complex concepts with clarity and precision. It is a book that requires – and rewards – multiple readings, and will likely join the trio’s earlier volume as one of the more significant contributions to strategy books on no-limit hold’em cash games.”

Poker Book Review: ‘Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em’ by Ed Miller, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn, June 21, 2009, by Martin Harris.

“There’s clear logic and reasoning behind all suggestions, strategies and tactics.” [...] “If your bankroll allows, buy it. If it doesn’t, consider setting aside a bit each week until you can afford it. At any reasonable stakes, this book should pay for itself in short order.”

Book Review: ‘Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em’, June 24th, 2009, by Chris Grove.