CardRunners, home to the largest archive of poker instructional videos online, will be without the services of South starting May 1st.

South, commonly known by his PokerStars handle CTS, primarily made mid-to-high-stakes No Limit Holdem videos for the site. Over his career at CardRunners, South produced 22 videos, often mixing heads-up and shorthanded play.

The word came from Cole himself in a blog post from this week:

I have had an amazing experience as a lead instructor with Cardrunners over the past few years, but today I am announcing my departure from the company. At the end of April I will be moving on both as an instructor and as an owner of the business.

South declined to offer a specific motivation for the exit, instead simply citing a feeling of being “spread too thin”. In addition to being an instructor at CardRunners, South was also a partner in the company; he’s vacating both positions at once.

In an effort to head off the ever-present online poker rumor mill, South clarified in his post that the parting was completely amicable:

I am sure there are people who will ask questions or speculate about my departure from Cardrunners. I want to make it clear that I have loved my experience here. My favorite part about being here has been the people and the community. I’ve been lucky to make great friends with Taylor, Andrew, and everyone else involved with the business. I have full confidence in their ability to run the company and they understand that this is a personal decision that is best for me.

Related, and funny: This image, created by a 2+2 user in this thread reacting to South’s departure:

In other CardRunners news, the site will be launching a massive overhaul at the end of this month. The good news for players: tons of promised new features and goodies. The bad news: slight downtime. Details, from a release posted on the CardRunners website:

Effective 11:59 PM EST on Friday, April 30th, we will launch a new and improved version of CardRunners! The current website will be unavailable beginning 11:59 PM EST on Wednesday, April 28th when we begin this update. In order to get your CR fix during this downtime, we recommend you download any content you’d like to view and store it locally on your hard drive.

We’ll bring you news regarding the update as it happens.

Play at Full Tilt and you can earn free CardRunners memberships. Learn how here.

Tip: Get poker books like this free with PTP Rake Rewards.

Overview
Small and midstakes NL makes up the fat majority of online poker cash games, so it’s no surprise that a variety of training aides are focused on that market. LTBR is a focused course on how to beat a limit range that roughly spans 1/2 to 5/10.

The book is only available as an eBook (DRM protected) and is about 80 pages long.

Pros
Cole South is one of the more respected instructors at CardRunners, and his presence on the writing team allows average players access to some proven insights about no limit specifically and poker in general. Nguyen is also a proven player with a history of articulating tricky concepts in concise, understandable terms. The result: an effective author pairing that blends the esoteric and the execution to good effect.

The content is generally presented with a very tight focus, so even though the book is a bit short by most standards, it still measures up quite well against your typical poker book in terms of quantity of ideas. As far as content quality goes, LTBR outshines most of its peers by investigating the modern no limit cash game from some intriguing, yet ultimately pragmatic angles that yield applicable conclusions.

The book does a good job of presenting a mix of logical, empirical and ancedontal support for the author’s take on the game. The book really shines in the parts where South and Nguyen don’t only offer you a strategy, but also articulate the internal struggles you’ll likely face when attempting to implement the strategy and how to combat those as well. That’s a multi-tiered approach that owns up to the fact that there’s a real gap between book-based strategy and actual application, a fact most texts simply ignore (at the reader’s expense).

Cons
The price of this book simply puts it out of reach for a good chunk of its intended audience. Some midstakes players are no doubt ballers, but a good amount will flinch at the $947 price tag.

You can also buy the book in two parts, with Part 1 costing $297 and Part 2 coming in at $697.

Value is a tough thing to judge since it’s pretty relative to what the individual can afford. What we can say is that you’re certainly paying more dollars per idea for this book than for competing titles.

Another complaint: The book is littered with hand examples, which is a good thing. However, their dry layout – while possibly appealing to forum readers used to a converted HH format – often renders them awkwardly separate from the accompanying text, and misses an opportunity to engage the reader.

Conclusion
The ideas and advice in this book are bound to improve the game of anyone who reads it. Whether that’s worth the price is up to each individual.

Focus: 8/10
The book is tight in each individual chapter, but sometimes jumps from idea to idea inbetween chapters without a clear motivation.

Quality of advice: 10/10
Some interesting insights backed up with an arsenal of varied support.

Examples: 7/10
Sufficient, but not always integrated well into the text.

Readability: 7/10
It’s picky, but there are a number of small grammatical issues with this book that interrupt the flow for the reader.

Overall (not an average): 9/10
Cost issues aside, this is an excellent book.

VERDICT: If you’re a break-even player or small winner at 1/2 to 5/10, this book will improve your game. If you have the money to spare, consider a purchase.

Learn more about the book and how to purchase at DailyVariance.com