Just North of Wrigley Field

posted by James - 4:13 PM

Here's a couple snippets about books I would recommend to new poker players:

Read Daniel Negreanu's Power Holdem Strategy... for Evelyn Ng's section on beginning play. Not necessarily because it's the absolute best advice (somebody earlier hit it on the head with Phil Gordon's Little Green Book... best book for beginners), but her chapter will let you know what other people at your level and below are trying to do and will help you play accordingly against them. At your level, you need to know how to identify and beat those players before you try to take on the players who are actually better than you. Good Luck!

Super System is a must read... although it can be too advanced for newer players, BUT it does a great job of setting up the basic structures of the various poker games before moving on to tougher and tougher concepts to master. IMO, you can get a lot more out of a book like Gordon's, Negreanu's... even Harrington's, than Super System... at least for a beginning player.

I was remiss earlier not to mention Harrington. If you're getting to the point where you're making final tables, but not breaking through to big wins consistently... then you read Harrington on Hold'em II. Fantastic advice and strategy for taking down tournaments.

I started with Online Ace, because I was mostly an online player to start (at least for money, otherwise just playing with my friends or in leagues) and then moved to Little Green Book and Little Blue Book. I also read quite a lot online and CardPlayer articles and columns. Honestly, there's more information out nowadays than you'll find in any books. Books are still great! Please don't misunderstand me on that. But between the forums and the training videos and the quizzes and magazines... there's so much more out there these days. If you're still just reading books, you're missing out on so much.