Finished Reading "Winning Low-Limit Hold'Em"

I enjoyed the book overall, and I would recommend it for beginners. I learned a lot about the different types of starting hands, and which hands are worth playing and why. I also learned about pot odds and how to calculate them and use them to make decisions on whether or not to call a bet. Other valuable topics included the importance of position and aggression. The book teaches you how to play a tight and aggressive style, which can be very profitable at low-limit hold'em games. For anyone who is relatively new to poker, limit hold'em is the best game to start with. You can familiarize yourself with the basics of the game, and start to apply some of the important concepts and strategies in this book, without putting your bankroll at too much risk. The strict betting structure will help to level the playing field somewhat between a novice and more advanced players, by preventing a novice's mistakes from being punished too severely.

I've tried applying the concepts that I've learned, but one problem that I've run into is that I'm finding it difficult to break some of my old habits, especially in regards to playing too many starting hands. The thing about limit hold'em, and low-limit hold'em in particular, is that if you make a theoretical mistake, you aren't punished severely for it. The worse that can usually happen is that you check and call a few more bets than you really should have. There is no risk of losing your entire stack as there is with no-limit hold'em. Because of this, I am finding that I still tend to play some of the mediocre starting hands like KTo or QTo despite the recommendations in the book.

Also, lately I have been finding the play in limit hold'em to be too "mechanical". Without the need to figure out a suitable bet size, there doesn't seem to be enough thinking involved in playing limit hold'em to keep me interested for long periods of time. Also, bluffing is not very common or effective, since with low-limit games there tends to be a lot of people seeing a flop, and it can be difficult to bluff them all into folding.

I'm going to be ordering two other books on no-limit hold'em, and will be switching over to NL games after I finish reading them. These books are Harrington on Hold'Em: Volume I and Harrington on Hold'Em: Volume II, which seem to be the most recommended references for learning no-limit hold'em.