Book excerpt: How hard are you prepared to work to improve your No Limit Hold’em? The Education of a Modern Poker Player documents the efforts of a serious amateur as he pursues his ambition of rising through the stakes from NL10 ($10 game) to NL100 ($100 game) and beyond. John Billingham is an English maths professor, and a keen player of games. In the summer of 2009 he discovered online poker and was hooked. A year later he decided to trick a couple of impressionable young poker pros, Austrian Thomas Tiroch (TwiceT) and Romanian Emanuel Cinca (EmanuelC16), into teaching him how to play poker on the promise of writing a book with them. Little did he know what he was letting himself in for. The Education of a Modern Poker Player is the product of JB’s cunning plan, and documents his progress from being unable to beat NL10 to establishing himself on NL100. Over the course of this entertaining book, TT and Manu explain how to beat these small stakes games, aided and abetted by JB, and illustrate all the important concepts with real example hands. There is a particular focus on Fast Fold Games, such as Rush and Zoom, in which JB eventually became a specialist, and practical explanations of how to take advantage of weak players in this format. The Education of a Modern Poker Player includes: An extensive set of real example hands Practical advice on strategies to beat 6max No Limit Hold’em A basic strategy for Fixed Limit Five Card Draw Clear explanations of the Mathematics of No Limit Hold’em Specialist advice on Fast Fold Games (e.g. Rush and Zoom)