 One of the best ways to improve your game is to read every bit of expert poker advice you can get your hands on. There are hundreds of books on poker, so how do you know where to start? The list below should help you select the books you'll want for your poker library. If a book does not reside in the list below, we do not wish to infer that it is not a quality tome. We simply feel that if you are limited in the number of books you can buy and/or read, the books listed here provide you the best foundation for your game. Click on the link of any book to purchase it through Amazon.com. We greatly appreciate your patronage of the Poker, Inc. website! For Starters... Poker: The Real Deal by Phil Gordon - This book touches on nearly every aspect of a poker players life, whether novice or pro. I like the way it is written in "chronological order", starting with a brief history of poker to a player just starting out on the internet to the decision to turn pro. This book is an easy read without loads and loads of strategy. The book's effort to convey the mindset of a good poker player makes it a very nice start for the common man's poker library! Hold 'Em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner by Lou Krieger - I am a huge Krieger fan, I must admit. He is able to convey complicated strategies into layman's terms and leaves the reader with an understanding of why you make the play you should make. This book along with his other in the series - Hold 'Em Excellence: A Winner for Life - are strongly recommended for the novice and expert alike. Topics range from playing in live casinos, to starting hand strategy, to money management, to deciding if you have the stuff to turn pro. Ken Warren Teaches Texas Hold 'Em by Ken Warren - This book has some sentimental value. It was the first poker book I ever read cover to cover and helped to guide me through those formative first months when I thought position only applied to sports teams and that any starting hand with an ace was great!! Warren's conversational style helped correct my thinking and saved me a great deal of money. All the basic strategy tenets are addressed here regarding limit hold 'em. As your first strategy book, this one or the next one will serve you quite well. Winning Low-Limit Hold 'Em by Lee Jones - A bible for low-limit players, this book provides a solid foundation on which you can build more advanced strategies. Pre-flop and post-flop play are covered as well as money management and patience, two virtues usually missing from many a low-limit poker player's game. If low-limit stakes ($4/$8 and below) are where you play, this book is definitely for you! Going to the Next Level... Internet Texas Hold 'Em: Winning Strategies from an Internet Pro by Matthew Hilger - (STRONGLY RECOMMENDED) This book provided me with the biggest "ah-ha!" in my first year of playing online poker. I can not promote this book enough. It is written in great detail about pre-flop starting hands as well as play on the flop, turn and river. Hilger also covers general concepts of probability, odds, bluffing, raising, and check-raising. He also discusses the differences in strategies between Internet and live play. To top it off, there are countless practice hands provided so that you can begin to put the concepts into action. If you only bought one book off of this list, this one should be the one!! Small Stakes Hold 'Em: Winning Big with Expert Play by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth - Anything Sklansky is a part of will be a solid work and this book is no different. Ed Miller, the primary author, takes many of the concepts from Sklansky and Malmuth's earlier works and applies them to the loose low-limit stakes games you find everywhere today. There are over 50 hand quizzes as well, which are great tools. One word of caution I will give is that these books are not as easy of a read as some others on the list. The concepts are fantastic and considered by many players as the foundation for their game, but in the hands of a novice player who does not understand the logic and math behind these concepts, these advanced concepts could lead them into trouble. I am a numbers geek and love all of Sklansky's works, but I also can see where they may not make a connection with all players. Championship Hold 'em by Tom McEvoy and T.J. Cloutier - Tom McEvoy is another Poker, Inc. favorite as he, like Krieger, imparts poker knowledge in a easy-to-understand manner. Teamed with poker all-star, T.J. Cloutier, the book is a can't miss. In fact, the entire Championship Series is fantastic and if your library was full of nothing but books from that series, you would be in good shape. All of the typical strategy information is covered here specific to limit hold 'em as well as advanced strategies on the flop, turn and river. A great deal of discussion is given to tournament play, a feature not seen much in the previous books on this list. Middle Limit Hold 'em Poker by Bob Ciaffone - This book is underrated and overlooked. It is a fabulous book that addresses the necessary changes one must make in their game when moving up from low-limit games to middle limit games. Ciaffone provides real-life examples (a feature, by now you know we love!) to support the theory in the book which is arranged in a logical, thematic format. Do not be one of those to overlook this book! Advanced Play and Tournaments... Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold 'em by Tom McEvoy and T.J. Cloutier - When you are ready to take on the Cadillac of Poker, No-limit hold 'em, you need to be prepared with a new set of skills in addition to what you bring with you from the limit tables. McEvoy and Cloutier teach you those skills in yet another fine book in the Championship series. T.J. Cloutier is arguably the greatest no-limit tournament player in history with more no-limit and pot-limit titles than any other player. He not only shares his winning strategies but a number of personal poker experiences as well which add a great deal to the book. Phil Gordon's Little Green Book by Phil Gordon - In Gordon's second book, he tackles the subject of No-Limit Hold 'em tournaments. Gordon shares with readers his style of play in great detail and it is a fascinating look into the reasoning of the professional tournament player. He covers all the material one would expect in a book of this sort including pre-flop and post-flop play, tournament strategies, psychology, etc., but he gives the reader insight into why he makes the plays he suggests. This one along with Harrington's books are the best books on no-limit hold 'em tournament strategy. Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky - As I mentioned earlier, Sklansky is not for the casual reader. His attention to the mathematics of the game can be lost on some readers, but his concepts are spot-on. This book is another that fits that bill, but I must give it some props because it provided me another "ah-ha!" with regard to my tournament play. Sklansky discusses the Gap Concept and this concept opened my eyes to a shift in strategy I did not make moving from cash ring games to tournament play. Since that time, my return on investment in tournaments went up significantly. This book covers more than hold 'em in its examples, so if you do not play stud, you will have to wade through those examples. Harrington on Hold 'em by Dan Harrington - We will post a more formal review on this tome at a later date, but for now I included it in our list, because "Action" Dan Harrington is the player I most aspire to be like. He is a tight pre-flop specialist who has managed to make the final table at the main event of the WSOP three times in the last ten years, winning in 1995 and cutting through nearly 2,600 players in 2004 to make it to fourth. Harrington has since come out with volume 2 of this set and together these books will open a player's eyes to strategies not often considered when playing no-limit tournaments. Other Good Poker Reads... Bad Beats and Lucky Draws by Phil Hellmuth - In this book Hellmuth, the self-proclaimed poker brat, shares with readers a blow-by-blow account of many of the biggest hands in tournament history. He provides insights into what the players were thinking and what he would have done differently (Phil always has an opinion). A very entertaining book and a look inside the world of high-stakes professional poker. Positively Fifth Street: Murderers, Cheetahs and Binion's World Series of Poker by James McManus - Rough sex, murder and poker...what could be more intriguing? In 2000, McManus was sent to Las Vegas by Harper's magazine to write a story about the World Series of Poker held annually at Binion's Horseshoe. But then, as so often happens on trips to Sin City, something kind of ... happened. Rather than becoming an objective report, McManus's article evolved into a memoir as he put his entire advance on the line, got lucky with his cards and won a spot in the competition, and came much closer than anyone expected to winning the darn thing. The result, Positively Fifth Street, is just as dazzling, exciting, and disturbing as Vegas itself. A fun read! Poker Nation by Andy Bellin - Journalist and poker fanatic Andy Bellin takes you on a journey into the shut-up-and-deal world of professional poker. From basement games to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, you'll look over his shoulder as he learns to count cards, read a legendary player's body language, hang in there when the chips are down, and take his beatings like a man. Bellin keeps you entertained with his portraits of the colorful players, dreamers, hustlers, and eccentrics who populate this strange subculture. Along with learning what goes on behind the scenes in illegal poker clubs, you'll get some advice on how to play Hold'em. Honorable Mention... Super System 2 by Doyle Brunson - I would be terribly remiss if I did not pay homage to what many professional players consider to be the bible of all poker play. Super System and now Super System 2 are comprehensive discussions regarding all poker games. You will want to read this at some point, if for no other reason than that many of your good opponents will have read it. The reason it does not make the main list is simply because it is so comprehensive it can be quite daunting to the common player. Also, each chapter is written by a different contributor, so the book does not necessarily flow well. Jennifer Harman's chapter on limit hold'em is exceptional, but is better suited for the higher stakes games as opposed to the low-limit loose, calling station games. Doyle's chapter on no-limit is considered the gospel, but it is a VERY aggressive style and recreational players should use it at their own risk. Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth - Ah, Phil Hellmuth, the player everyone loves to hate. Well, love him or hate him, there is always action surrounding him. I read this book when it first came out and enjoyed it very much. In hindsight, there are several books better when it comes to no-limit strategy, but Hellmuth does a good job of touching on a number of hand situations. I particularly enjoyed his defining of the types of players you will face and how to beat each of them. He categorizes players as Jackals, Elephants, Mice, Lions, and the one we all aspire to - the Eagles. | 
