Hello Players,

After reading or studying books, which books you found...

1. Greatly improved your winrate?

2. Had no effect on your winrate?

3. Greatly worsened your winrate?

(It can be for any kind of poker games or even non-poker venues)

good questions....

i think question 1 needs to be separated into two parts: beginners vs. intermediate/advanced books

tons of books teach the basics of tight/aggression which you definitely need.

i think most people are interested in books that improve your intermediate skilled game... i don't have tons of insight but i like dan harrington and ed miller works.

worsened your winrate = no realizing some early poker boom books assume very loose passive games where people pay out on river i.e. flop that set and then protect it the whole way against higher hands and then also someone might pay you with top pair at end anyway... probably not a good working model today.

@rivercitybirdie, thanks for your insights!

My favorite beginner's book is Getting Started in Hold 'em which didn't improve my winrate but definitely prevents me from losing.

I agree that the intermediate books (Ed Miller and Dan Harrington) seem to get a popular vote. However, I admit I haven't read all of their books yet.

As for advanced books such as Philip Newall, Matthew Janda, Will Tipton, Bill Chen and Lee Nelson seems to geared toward to GTO direction which I've seen some posters highly recommended them. However, I haven't seen anyone mentioned if those advanced books really did help their winrate / performance.

sorry, i don't have much insight on advanced books.

that's probably the dominant question on this forum: what are the best advanced books?

it seems to me like too many poker books are all about setting up dominant positions and then milking them i.e. 2003-2006 era play. but it seems like more and more it's important to play "grey areas" well.

even though i dislike what i judge to be ed miler's "self congratulatory" style of communicating i do think his books are very good. can't remember the name of one i read but the other was hold-em course or something like that... i think his books really get into the nitty gritty of grey area poker.

When I was a newbie, Blackrain's 'Crushing The Microstakes' was hugely influential, and reading it had a pretty much instant effect on my winrate at 2NL.

More advanced stuff I read later on didn't have such a big effect, partly because higher stakes than nanostakes have smaller winrates to begin with, and partly because the overall skill level has increased over time, so reading a book isn't going to generate a huge edge. In contemporary games, you have to keep studying (more with software and videos rather than books) just to maintain a winrate.

Well about you tell us what kind of game you play ?
Poker that great but a ton of variation exist and cash game or tournament are different animals too.

@ArtyMcFly: Interesting about advanced books didn't have such a big effect ... As for videos, I wish I could fully benefit them. I'm deaf and I am missing out the audio part. Sometimes Youtube's subtitles aren't perfect either :-/ As for software, so far I have:
LeakBuster
PT4
Equilab
I admit I haven't used them fully yet. Do you have some recommendations on which software I should invest into?

@Montrealcorp: I joined this forum about 1.5 year ago...reading and learning part-time. Then I started to play poker part-time about 6 months ago. I'm on a roller coaster and breaking-even overall. So far I've played:
(Online Cash)
2NL
5NL
10NL

(Live Cash)
1/2NL

(Online SnG)
$1 to $10

I haven't tried tourney yet...I do not have a preference in which game to focus on yet. However, what I find is that online is tougher than live but it's nice to play in your pj .

Back in 2005 the STTF forum and the 1st Harrington took me from never played to solid STT winner in about 2-3 weeks. Sure miss those days.

It then took videos and coaching to become a half-decent cash game winner at low stakes.

After black friday the games got too tough for me to make it worth the time trying to keep up. I can't imagine what it's like breaking in now.

You can learn a lot just from the tools you already have. It's just a matter of putting the hours in. I used to spend up to 45 minutes before each session looking at about 5 "big" hands from the day before, and crunching the equities of the perceived ranges with my tracker and Equilab. Until you've got a better idea of what ranges and equities look like, the more advanced software (and books) will likely go over your head somewhat.
You can probably find some YouTube videos that explain how to get the most out of Equilab and your tracker. Good luck!

If you really want to invest time into poker, and don't mind spending some good cash on training and learning. I suggest you sign up at any superb training site, Such as Cardrunners. Or perhaps, the Upswinglab from Doug Polk.

I often learn faster and understand things better when it gets explained to me, instead of reading a book myself. They will show you ranges for all positions for example. And how to play in certain positions. And so much more.

Just google them and see it yourself. I'm sure there's some free content available aswell. To give you some idea of how these poker pros teach beginners poker.

Good luck!

i owe everything i have to the genius that is Tri Nguyen.

Years ago, pre no-limit boom, 2+2's book on 7 card stud and Omaha 8 or better for advanced players took me from being a contributor in the local poker scene to a modest yet consistent winner. Thank You! (special thanks to Ray Zee)

AW

FWIW, I think the poker learning curve and also a results graph would look something like this:


Exactly which book/video is best for you depends where you are currently on the graph. There were several books that got me on to the "steep acceleration" part of the graph, but it feels like a long time ago. (I was most passionate about poker at that point, because it was still new and exciting, and I was having 'Aha moments' on a weekly basis, and results quickly followed. It's really hard to find new ways to marginally improve once you've got through the fundamentals and have reached the plateau stage.)

Weird, I can see ArtyMcFly's graph on my iPhone but not on my laptop....anyway...you guys made me think of something...coaching! I am looking at the coaching sub-forum. It looks like CFP is a nice concept, however, so far I see a small sample of mixed reviews posted here in 2+2 forum.

If your intention is to play 6max cash games then I'd recommend 'The Grinders Manual'.

Coaching will be difficult, but not impossible, if you're deaf. To be honest I think you'd be better reading up a bit and woking on your game yourself intially before thinking of coaching anyway.

Good luck!

No Limit Theory and Practice was huge for me