Good Poker Books

My officemate Fendy was asking me about which poker books are useful, so I thought I'd throw together a post. I started reading poker books about 10 years ago, starting with Winning Low Limit Hold'em, Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players, and The Theory of Poker.

For limit hold'em beginners, Winning Low Limit Hold'em by Lee Jones is the best book. By the way, it is a lot easier to learn how to play limit poker before moving to no-limit.

After you learn, understand, and use the material in Jones' book, then you should read Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth.

A must read is The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky. If you understand poker at all, then you can read this book.

Thursday Night Poker: How to Understand, Enjoy and Win by Peter Steiner describes how to play in your home game. There are a lot of details about how to play draw, stud, hold'em, and omaha against your typical home game players. There is some useful information here for beginning players, especially for how to play against different types of players (like loose or tight).

Another general poker book for very serious players is Ace on the River: An Advanced Poker Guide by Barry Greenstein. This book does not contain a lot of poker strategy. Instead, it addresses advandced topics like money management, how to treat other players, your image, etc. It has a lot of great information. Just don't expect it to be a "how to play this hand in this situation" kind of book.

If you play live poker, then you may be interested in Caro's Book of Poker Tells by Mike Caro. I met Caro in 1996 and have a signed copy of this book. No other book contains 10% of the information about players' tells. if you are a beginner, then it is more important to read strategy books first, and read this book later. If you have already been playing for awhile, then you should read this.

The best no-limit hold'em tournament books in print are Dan Harrington's Harrington on Hold'em: Volume 1 and Harrington on Hold'em: Volume 2. If you play in no-limit hold'em tournaments, you absolutely must read these books. Harrington describes in great detail exactly how much you should bet and why in different situations. He explains when you need to go all-in based on your cards, stack size, stack sizes of the other players at your table, how many players are left in the tournament, etc. I can't emphasize enough how much these books have helped my game.

TJ Cloutier and Tom McEvoy's book Championship No Limit & Pot Limit Hold'Em is for no-limit and pot-limit tournament players. The book has a few too many stories in it, and their strategy is very tight, but it has some useful information, especially if you are too loose. Championship Hold'em Tournament Hands: A Hand By Hand Strategy Guide to Winning Hold'em Tournaments is another book they wrote, but there is a lot of overlap with the first book.

The only book for learning how to play many different games is Doyle Brunson's Super System II. Various authors contributed to this book. You can learn expert theory on No limit Hold 'em, Limit Hold 'em, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud 8 or Better, 7 Card Stud High-Low Split, No Limit Omaha, Omaha 8 or Better, Limit Lowball Draw, High Draw Poker, Chinese Poker, and Triple Draw Lowball.

The Pyschology of Poker by Alan Schoonmaker is a good book for learning how to play against the different types of players: loose passive, loose aggressive, tight passive, and tight aggressive. Which one do you want to be?

If you want to read poker stories, then you must read One of a Kind : The Rise and Fall of Stuey "The Kid" Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player by Nolan Dalla. Stu Ungar may have been the best poker player ever, and he was such an amazing, talented, complicated, and self-destructive person.

Another good narrative is Aces and Kings : Inside Stories and Million-Dollar Strategies from Poker's Greatest Players by Michael Kaplan. It's a lot more inside stories than strategies, but is a really interesting book about many of today's professional players. I met Kaplan at WSOP 2005 and he was very friendly and engaging, just one more reason you should read his book.

Tales from the Tiltboys is a great book about some guys playing poker and goofing off with on trips to Las Vegas with their pals. It's hilarious!

- schneid