In this blog entry I'm gonna talk a little bit about the e-book currently on the internet market written by Tri "SlowHabit" Nguyen and Cole "CTS" South being offered on http://dailyvariance.com/. I assume that after I write this review some changes will come about with the book (some re-editing) so some things I critique may no longer be an issue once you have purchased your copy (if you choose to do so).

For those wondering why I worded my title the way I did, I made it so someone reading from the main page of the website could see that I was reviewing this particular book and not any book. I only get enough room :P

Regarding price, as the site says: "The cost is $1850 and you can pay by site transfer / MoneyBookers / PayPal / cashier check. If you are unsure whether the book is worth it, you can buy the 1st half for $850 and the 2nd half for $1150; we are confident you will come back for the 2nd half."

The e-book is 80 pages long and covers a very wide array of topics with regard to no limit. I think seriously studying this book and taking in everything it has to offer will definitely help one's NL game drastically. The book is chock-full of information that has personally helped my NL game a good deal. 20 chapters are covered, and although they dont exactly progress linearly (Its more a smattering of topics) the information in this book is way better than any other poker book that I have read (but note that there are some other e-books out there I haven't gotten my hands on). Furthermore, the information was presented in a way that made it pretty easy for me to understand, which other books typically fail on (Sklansky's NLTP, Chen's Math of Poker).

As far as topics go, the book addresses almost every relevant aspect of poker theory, but it's mostly ingrained in 6-max NLHE examples. It doesn't get into specific topics on certain types of games or play (like how to play HU), but rather the range-based math and thought processes that lead a player to make the best reads and plays in any kind of poker game. This mostly means the optimal ways to play against certain player types in and out of position, on what kinds of flop textures, in 3-bet pots, play and lines on later streets, polarizing, exploitability, etcetera.

But as any consumer would want to know, the question comes down to "Is this worth the cost?"

I think right now for certain poker players it's a MASSIVE +EV INVESTMENT, but only under some strict guidelines

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- You must have the bankroll to buy a $1850 book. DURRRR.

- Whoever buys the book has to be the kind of person who will legit study it. I count myself as someone who doesnt fall into this category. I read it, I took in the concepts, but I'm just not the kind of person to bust out pokerstove and make combinatrics range-based calcs to improve my game. Part of this is laziness, part of this is being content winning at midstakes against droolers.

- If you buy the book, you have to learn from it and be good at thinking on your own. Some people read books or watch training videos and then apply the "concepts" taught in said videos in hilariously bad fashion. A simple suggestion like "tightening up in the cutoff is one solution if the button is a habitual reraiser (frequency of top 1/3 strong range, flatting middle range)" could result in some readers tightening their entire vpip by 10 points and being pissed that the book turned them into a nit fish. That's not the greatest example, but I mean to say that it draws back to the "studying hard" aspect. Simply reading a book does not guarantee improvement, you have to actually apply it.

- You have to be a receptive individual who is capable of self-critique and highlighting ones own strengths and weaknesses. There are lots of people reading this blog, and all of you have different personalities. A small amount of you, in all likelyhood, are more stubborn than others. Studying this book hard means questioning every aspect of your own game, and if you are too quick to assert that some parts of the book just "wouldnt apply to you" because "they dont play in my games, yo", then this book is a bad investment. I'm not saying that there are lots of people like this out there, but I'd bet there's a nonzero % of the internet poker playing population who act like this, so I felt the need to put this in anyways

- You should combine the book purchase with hiring a top-level coach. Knowledge in theory is way different from knowledge in practice, and applying the 2nd part is way easier longterm if you have a top-level player holding your hand for the first few steps of the way.

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So if you're a good poker player who wants to take a step up, as far as books go I'd recommend "Let There Be Range" so long as the reader can qualify in the above points. The information in this book + good coaching can result in lessons and knowledge learned in 2 weeks that would have otherwise taken 2 years on your own, in some cases. The right people can jumpstart their poker career exponentially and immediately multiply their hourly. It's the basic definition of knowledge capital.

That's not to say the book doesn't have problems, though, because it definitely needs tweaking in a few different areas. I'll list them in order of importance:

1) The most important problem with this book is that most of the time you don't know who the hell is writing the passage between SlowHabit and CTS. I'd like to think a major part of spending so much money on a book (multiple times more than other poker player's e-books) is so you can get information more from Cole and less so from Tri. This isn't to say Tri's writings are useless, just to say that a book from Tri alone in my opinion would probably be worth 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of this particular project. Tri has told me that Cole is responsible for 35 of the 80 pages, but it seems like that's something that needs to be explicitly identified before purchase. Also, there needs to be some kind of major edit to identify which passages belong to Cole and which passages belong to Tri.

Reading this from the get-go, I had no idea if I was reading this in Tri's voice or Cole's, and I can imagine as an uninformed purchaser I would immediately become kinda peeved at the nonzero % chance that the book was mostly Tri and had Cole's name stapled on it to increase the price by 2x. Only when I saw some passages which included hands from "MUCKEMSAYUHHH" did these feelings subside a little, but that comes halfway into the book.

2) There are a hilarious amount of grammatical errors and misspelled words (editor's note: if i did not spell this correctly, DONT JUDGE ME). I understand that the book's clientele is mostly online poker players who wont care so much (since they are paying for poker knowledge and not grammatical clarity), but it borders on being unprofessional. I anticipate this to be changed in future rewrites.

Lastly, I haven't read BobboFitos e-book or any other kind of e-book that takes a major step up from most NLHE books published (because unless I'm writing a review for a free copy I'm unlikely to buy a book for multiple hundreds because, as I said, I'm not the type to study the book in great detail and get everything out of it).

So, while I would say that "Let There Be Range" is a good investment under the right circumstances, that doesn't necessarily make it the best option. I know Rob's book costs just under a third the price right now. Rob isn't CTS, obviously, but these kind of things need to be addressed when looking at the price of the book.

Overall cliffnotes: Is "Let There Be Range" worth the money? A resounding yes, but only if you are the kind of person who can get the most out of the reading. If you're the type to study training videos closely, study your hands played for an hour on non-playing days, etcetera, then you should probably buy the book is the cost doesn't lifetilt you/it's in your budget. If you are a lazy poker player like me, then buying this book is definitely not worth it. The price of $1850 basically deems it so, since it's a good deal more expensive than any other e-book.