I think you’re jumping to conclusions about the strategy we advocate. This is merely the introduction… its main goal is to pique your interest and raise questions, not answer them or provide a complete strategy.

In short, I agree that if you raised to 6BB with only with AA and KK you’d be ridiculously easy to read. But that’s not remotely the strategy we advocate.

To my mind (but I do play way too much short-stack ratholing nonsense), if you are not sure how to play KK in the above example – either because you are new to the table or outmatched – it would be a lot better to just buy-in for 50bb. That way you can make the same 3bb with KK as with all your other hands yet deny your tricky / set mining opponents proper implied odds.

You’re right that you don’t know how many callers you’ll get, so you have to make an educated guess based on what you’ve seen so far in the game, your position, and so forth. And sometimes you’ll get it wrong and end up in a situation that’s not what you wanted. But honestly, that’s going to happen sometimes no matter what criteria you use to make poker decisions.

I think SPR is overall a fairly flexible system. It definitely doesn’t assume everything will go “just right” for it to be helpful.

I’m looking forward to the book which I’ve already pre-ordered.

These are all good questions, and I assure you they are answered very thoroughly in the book.

I’ll try to answer some of your questions briefly, but for a satisfying and thorough answer, you’ll have to check out the book, because that’s really what it’s for.

First, big pots for big hands and little pots for little hands isn’t out the window at all! In fact, SPR relies entirely on that principle to make sense. I think the confusion is in the definition of what a “big pot” is compared to a “small pot.” We define a big pot as one where the pot size is large compared to the remaining stacks. And a small pot is where the pot is small compared to the remaining stacks.

Pocket kings is a big hand preflop, so you’d love to build a big pot with it AT THAT POINT. But if you don’t raise enough preflop, then it can become a marginal hand postflop, and you can be forced to play a small pot with it. You’d prefer the big pot because it’s a big hand. Even worse is if you build a medium pot with it, where a lot of money is at stake, but your hand weakens after the flop to the point that it’s no good to get all-in. That’s when you’re most vulnerable.

The central idea behind all of this is that it’s a bad result if you put a lot of money in the pot (say 1/3rd of your stack), and then get raised by a range of hands that puts you to a tough decision. You either want to make sure that enough money went in early (when you had a clear edge) that you have an easy call, or you want to make sure the pot is small enough early that it’s an easy fold.

BTW, responding to JJS’s comment about “If you’re all-in anyway, why does it matter how you get there?” Well, it doesn’t matter IF you get all-in. But most hands you won’t get all-in, and it makes a big difference if you win 25BB on those hands versus 5-10BB. You don’t want to get into a “win a little, lose a lot” situation. A “win a lot, lose a lot” situation is great, though, as long as you have a hand as strong as KK.

Did you, Matt, or Sunny choose the excerpt?
If not, what would you have chosen instead?
Also, did Mason pay any royalty for use of that excerpt in the magazine?

I was talking about this hand with a friend of mine and he was bothered by the post flop play as well. To me, the key here is:

…snip…
The button plays loosely when he has position, so his range is wide. However, if he gets all-in, you expect him to have a better hand than kings.
…snip…

Give that assumption, there’s 18BB in the pot pre-flop, You bet another 18BB and the villain raises to something like 75BB total. Right now, you’re in the pot for 24BB and the villain is committed to being all-in. If you were to ship it in, you would be putting 76 into a ~205BB total pot. I don’t think you are married to this pot, but I think you need to refine your range estimate because the villain is committed. If you have more than 40ish % equity against the villains range, the it’s a call. From those 2 sentences above, it’s hard to know if he’s capable of making the play with 89, 86, JJ, AT, QT or other hands like that. If we can rely on the notion that if the villain gets all-in, he has KK beat, then we probably need to fold.

Example 2, flop raise, you would be too committed and have to call?

I think betting so close to the pot leaves u pot commited, and you only get called/raised when you are beat most of the time.

would betting half the pot or 2/3 of the pot be better because it is good enough to let u know where u r in the hand.

btw, what happened to big pots with big hands, small pots with small hands.

If one page from the book causes this many comments, I wonder what will happen when the book comes out?