Advice on poker books

petethebrick

I've been playing poker a while and have decided it's time to read up a few books as most of the winning players I've met seem to have done so. I seem to constantly be finishing 5th or 6th in live tournaments (when I do well!) and so want to tighten up my game in order to progress.
I've heard of the popular titles such as harrington/sklansky etc
What advice would you have on the best of these books to get and the order in which to read them etc
I am familiar with the basic concepts such as position/opening hand rankings/outs etc I hope to improve my game in general but mostly play live tournament poker at the moment. Depending on improvement/bank roll plan to progress to cash games further down the road
Thanks

strewelpeter

Pocketdooz to thread :cool:

It appears to be mandatory to read Harrington. This will probably have the effect of messing up your game for a while but what it achieves is to get you a thorough understanding of the ABC Tournament game, once you have mastered it you can gently drift back to your own ways but now you have the advantage of knowing what you are doing wrong.

Sklansky provides the mathematical framework that most of the theory you will come across is based on.
After that, IMO, good threads here, on 2+2 and elsewhere are much more valuable than the one worldview that you get from most of the other books I've looked at.

KevIRL

strewelpeter wrote: »

Pocketdooz to thread :cool:

lol, my first thought when I read the thread title

Mellor

petethebrick wrote: »

I've been playing poker a while and have decided it's time to read up a few books as most of the winning players I've met seem to have done so. I seem to constantly be finishing 5th or 6th in live tournaments (when I do well!) and so want to tighten up my game in order to progress.
I've heard of the popular titles such as harrington/sklansky etc
What advice would you have on the best of these books to get and the order in which to read them etc
I am familiar with the basic concepts such as position/opening hand rankings/outs etc I hope to improve my game in general but mostly play live tournament poker at the moment. Depending on improvement/bank roll plan to progress to cash games further down the road
Thanks

Based on the fact that ou mostly play live tourney,
you should get harringtington on hold 'em 1, and when you finish get Hoh 2
they are essentially part 1 and part 2 of the same process,
HoH 1 deals with position, odds, early stage tourney games, stack to blinds ratio etc
HoH 2 deals with poker endgame, shorthand, widening your range, stealing, shortstacked play, final table and heads up.

Other books are good to get an understanding of the game theory, Sklansky theory book, and his no-limit book for example. But be careful, most of the early good books were based on limit poker, so are useless in parts for NL tourneys, when the world switched to no-limit, new books came out and most were dire. .


My advice stick to Harrington for now. theres a good 1000+ pages to get through there first.

mickc

Anyone read Kill everyone by Lee Nelson?

Its supposed to be good.

Mellor

mickc wrote: »

Anyone read Kill everyone by Lee Nelson?

Its supposed to be good.

Its apparently good book, deals with some of the more modern tourney ideas, esp regading endgame. But, its better for a beginner to reaf HOH, then get in a few months of play before getting involved with more thoery imo.

Grafter

mickc wrote: »

Anyone read Kill everyone by Lee Nelson?

Its supposed to be good.

I have Kill Phil and have started it twice but lost interest both times by about half way.

mocata

I really liked gus hansens book, didnt BS or spin things, explained his decisions with plenty of reference to stacks/image/opponents. Very aware of game theory too and how it applies to tournies.

Rigmincedeal

Read hellmuths book which was dire, basically just explained the rules of the games and best starting hands. Alrite for total beginers or if you want to learn the basics of the mix games. Harrington is good, defo be the best place to start. That reminds me giv me part two of his tourny book mellor!!!! :D:D

pocketdooz

KevIRL wrote: »

lol, my first thought when I read the thread title

Nice one - good to see you're looking out for me

If you decide you want some poker books, I have some remaining - I had over 70 but now have only 11 left

They are:


1) Inside the Poker Mind - John Feeney and David Sklansky

2) Championship Satellie Strategy - Tom McEvoy

3) Championship No Limit and Pot Limit HoldEm - TJ Cloutier and Tom McEvoy

4) The Psychology of Poker - David Sklansky

5) Bobby Baldwin's Winning Poker Secrets - with Mike Caro

6) Poker Wisdom of a Champion - Doyle Brunson

7) Caro's Book of Poker Tells - Mike Caro

8) HoldEm Poker for Advanced PLayers - Sklansky and Malmuth

9) Powerful Profit from Tournament Poker - Victor Royer

10) Read Em and Weep - John Strawinsky

11) Aces and Kings - Michael Kaplan

12) Killer Poker Online - John Vorhaus


All Brand New - All €10

PM for details - good luck

Boosh

Id also recommend after reading HoH to try a pretty recent one. "Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a time" by Pearljammer, Apestyles and Rizen is very good.

baz2007

ace on the river by barry greenstien.then if u need a break from theory aces and kings is a fun read about the different characters in the game.just can't remember author sorry.

keane2097

But there's almost no theory in Ace on the River?

doke

baz2007 wrote: »

ace on the river by barry greenstien.then if u need a break from theory aces and kings is a fun read about the different characters in the game.just can't remember author sorry.

Ace and Kings good fun all right, even if the author dosn't seem to have much of a clue about poker, as evidenced when he starts trying to translate strategic ideas into layman's terms. Section on Chris Ferguson was a shock to me because it looks like I was inadvertently ripping off his approach to the game right from the start, right down to having binders of stuff on short stack and deep stack play.