Which of these poker books would you recommend?

kingme620

kingme620

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I've borrowed alot of poker books from a friend and I don't want to waste time reading one if its just trash. Have any of these really helped your game? Here's the list:
  • Insider Secrets To Playing Texas Hold'em Poker Online (Theo Cage) {interesting what I've read so far, but I'm skeptical.}
  • Play Poker Like the Pros (Phil Hellmuth)
  • No Limit Hold'em Secrets (Roy Rounder)
  • Internet Texas Hold'em Winning Strategies From An Internet Pro (Matthew Hilger)
  • Ace On The River (Barry Greenstein)
  • No Limit Hold 'em Theory and Practice (David Sklansky, Ed Miller)
  • Caro's Book of Poker Tells (Mike Caro) {is this applicable to online poker?}
  • Bluffing Beyond Poker (Johannes Horner, Nicolas Sahuguet)
  • Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold'em(T.J. Cloutier & Tom McEvoy)
  • Playing Texas Hold'em Online - The Professional's Guide (A.J. Mills)
  • Poker Brain
  • Poker, A Guaranteed Income for Life (Frank R. Wallace
  • The Intellligent Guide To Texas Hold'em Poker (Sam Braids)
  • The Education Of A Poker Player (Herbert Osborne Yardley)
  • Tournament Tactics (Roy Rounder).
Also I was given links to these online articles:
  • An Investigation Of An Adaptive Poker Player (Graham Kendall & Mark Willdig)
  • Game Theory And AI - A Unified Approach To Poker Games (Thesis) (Frans Oliehoek)
  • David Sklansky - The Eight Mistakes In Poker
These are the books that I haven't heard of. I am going to read/reread other books that I know will help me like Harrington, Little Green Book, and SuperSystem.

Which ones are a must read and should be read first?

thanks
 
momoney2

momoney2

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You left out the best one, Harrington on Hold'em Vol 1-3.
Over the last 4 years I've read or viewed 30+ poker books and DVD's, and HOH is truly the BEST of all poker material I have come across. The depth and detail that Dan Harrington provides is second to none.

Just to make sure that I hadn't missed anything from some of the previous books that I had read, I started re-reading Championship No Limit and Pot Limit Hold'em by TJ Cloutier and Tom McEvoy. This has been a somewhat frustrating waste of time. TJ talks almost solely about feel for the game and the players. Sure maybe after 40 years of poker, we will be able to determine what cards a player is holding after only watching him play for 15 minutes, but until then, us mere mortals have to know what things to look for, and how best to put a player on a range of hands.
Also the chip stacks are not provided in the sample hands, so it makes it very difficult to know if you would check, bet, fold, or check-raise based upon who has who covered.

Now with HOH Vol 1-3, you have to plan on investing some time in your reading because there is probably around 1,000 pages total. But it will be well worth your time.

Caro's Book of tells is better on DVD than trying to read it. You get a much better sense of the "tells" he is describing.

Ace on the River is pretty good. Though it seemed to be more about the poker lifestyle than about the actual playing of the cards. One of the messages I remember from Barry was something along the lines of, "Don't lend poker players money unless you do not plan on getting it back."

No Limit Hold'em Theory and Practice is pretty basic. It discusses the stuff most of the intro to poker books do. It's not bad, but I had read this same stuff in other books. But it is hard to go wrong with anything Sklansky has to say. (I thought Ed Miller and David Sklansky did a better job on their Small Stakes Hold'em book.)

Good luck and enjoy your reading!
 
reglardave

reglardave

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From you list, the following are all worth the time(in no particular order):

Internet Texas Hold'em Winning Strategies From An Internet Pro (Matthew Hilger)
No Limit Hold 'em Theory and Practice (David Sklansky, Ed Miller)
Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold'em(T.J. Cloutier & Tom McEvoy)

The Theo Cage book left me meh, Anything by Roy Roubder is okay. Ace on the River is basically a memoir, and is good as such. If you play mostly online, the Caro is of limited use to you, but a good read.

I can't hoestly recommend Hellmuth's book to anybody. Unlike many' I enjoy watching him play, but as an instructor he's his own PR man.

Sklansky's Eight Mistakes is very brief, and useful Read Gordon's Little Green, the 3 vols. of HOH, by all means. They are MUST reads, and IMO, should be read in that order.

Super System is a classic, but if you play mostly NLHE, you won't honestly get that much good out of it.
 
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