was moving some book boxes out of storage.... came up tons of poker books

two i think are very good and underrated are barry shulman's 52 tips books. great for beginners and intermediates. small but chockful of info

most obscure book: i'm sure it isn't the most obscure... but i nominate angel largay's book.

forgotten really excellent book: king yao... very nice book........ multi-millionaire options trader who also played poker.

we should have poker book awards here.

Largay's book? I am not sure it is even obscure. Much more the most obscure.

Going through Professional Poker's website showed me some books I had never even heard of like Poker Farce.

Not sure awards would be possible given the influence this site probably still has and it is the site of a poker book publisher. I don't think awards would be any benefit to 2plus2 and might be a negative. If I were the owners on here, it would be a non-starter.

Winning Poker Systems by Norman Zadeh

Mason

Was it obscure when first published or is it obscure now due to age and the games under discussion not being widely spread anymore?

Norman Zadeh used to date Joan Rivers.

I believe it was always obscure. Math based poker books were not widely read in the 1970s.

Mason

Are there any 2plus2 books not written by you that you consider underrated? Are there any of the ones you have authored, or co-authored, that you consider underrated?

Hi AI:

I think a number of our books are considered underated in the sense that they're not widely read any more (even though at one time this was not the case). these include Analytical No-Limit Hold ’em; Crushing Mid-Stakes Short-Handed Games by Thomas Bakker, The Intelligent Poker Player by Philip Newall, Inside the Poker Mind: Essays on Hold 'em and General Poker Concepts by John Feeney, Ph.D., Getting the Best of It by David Sklansky, and my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics.

An interesting thing about my Gambling Theory book is that I see lots of stuff in print today which is wrong but was all covered correctly in this book when it was first published 30 years ago. An example, which I think you might be familiar with, was Johnathan's Little advice on how large your bankroll should be.

Also, if you're havn't read these books and now were to, I suspect you would learn a lot.

Best wishes,
Mason

I don't own the first two you mentioned, but I am thinking about getting Analytical. Of the last three, the only one I don't have is Getting the Best of It, I think. I am not sure because most of my books are currently in storage. I know I have the other two older books because they are on a shelf within arm's reach.

When I was looking through PP's store, I noticed you and Sklansky each have blackjack books. Is either one good for a non-counter? Based on description, I am thinking your one probably isn't, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

Wow.. you can always count on mason getting some kind of shot in on Jonathan Little, even when he's not in the conversation. Whats the backstory here on all the jabs

I was going to say what does it matter, but I suppose if you think a dispute caused one side to put forth information in opposition to the other just because it was the opposite of what the opposing side said, it could matter.

Not that I am saying this is occurring between Mr. Malmuth and Mr. Little. Just saying that your question does matter.

As I am not either party, I cannot shed light on the "backstory."

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/33...96/?highlight=

Mason

He wasn't asking about the disagreement of bankroll requirements specifically. He was asking about the digs at Little in general.

for real, if someone went thru all these book and strategy threads and culled together a compilation of all the dumb digs mason keeps getting in at little. Its way beyond obvious there is some **** that has gone down under the surface, otherwise you would have mason slamming ed miller, matthew janda, harrington (heaven forbid), etc but no its just lets attack jonathan little even in this nonsense thread

Again, it doesn't really matter unless one of them is taking an opposing view simply because of the position of the other.

I would like to nominate Heads up NLH optimal and exploitative strategies volumes one and two by Will Tipton as being underrated. I do realize that they have, eventually, recieved a good bit of attention but I still think they are highly underrated. I have read easily 100 books on poker and I would say that those two books are number one and number two (volume on prob is slightly better than volume two) and that whatever the number three book is, it is a distant third place.
Once I read Tipton's first volume I continued reading other titles like the Jonathan Little Crap, I'm with you Mason, his strat is so bad but every book i've read since has seemed to me like time I should have spent re-reading the Tipton books.

OK, so, even if you don't play Heads Up,.. read those books because they are the best out there in my opinion.

I'd also like to nominate The Education of a Modern Poker Professional for best obscure book (I think I'm the only person who ever read it). I think this is a great book too. It is something of a remake if I understand correctly, of an old book but with a modern twist. The book chronicles a math professor who is a new poker player and his conversations with the two young internet pros he hired to coach him. They, all three, decided to make a book out of the journey and I think it does an amazing job of being accessible and useful and entertaining all at once.

If I was going to teach a new poker player and he asked me what books he ought to read I would say, in this order;
Theory of Poker
Education of a Modern Poker Professional
Tiptons HU volume 1
Raiser's Edge
Tiptons volume 2
Applications
and that is it.

Or maybe just How to Play Poker like the Pros.. I mean that is a good one. Seriously, don't read it. It's a joke, I don't wanna risk anyone taking it remotely seriously.

This is an extremely inaccurate post. It's our policy on 2+2 not to insult other people and this includes Little. On the other hand, we do point out flawed material to help steer our readers away from it, and this of course includes the poker psychology stuff from Cardner/Little which we think is highly flawed.

It may be unfortunate that some people take our criticisms of their flawed work on a personal level. But we think it's more unfortunate that this flawed material exists and that some of our users purchase it.

Mason

Hi Donovan:

I'm familiar with Tipton's first book and agree it's good.

I'm not familiar with The Education of a Professional Poker Player so have no comment on it.

As for the Little books, I have only read a couple of them, and the first one he did with Cardner in my opinion is terrible. I also read one of his cash games strategy books and thought it was okay.

I also think Hellmuth's book is better than you do. I thought the limit hold 'me was quite poor, and it had no no-limit section. But tthe chapters on the other games were in my opinion okay for a beginner.

Best wishes,
Mason

An old one (2007) but a good one.

"Killer Poker No Limit" by John Vorhaus.

I keep going back to this book again and again. It's got lot's of great advice in it (esp; related to live games) plus the author has a quirky humorous writing style which makes it enjoyable to read.

I see you will have some pages on Zadeh in your upcoming ebook.

In my looking through old threads, I came across a mention of Vorhaus in a post. Paraphrasing, the poster didn't like the writing style as he felt Vorhaus was trying too hard to be funny and so reading the book was tiring.

I like his writing style, but it is clearly not for everyone.

Mason enjoys pointing out that I suggest you should keep a large bankroll if your win rate is tiny, that I think you will make better decisions when well rested compared to when you are sleep deprived, and that I think virtually every world-class poker player has a ton of experience. He even wrote a book attempting to explain why he thinks these statements are not true.

Who am I to argue with someone whose experience at no-limit hold'em comes from playing a few hours every few days in soft $5/$10 live cash games? Personally, I prefer to learn from players like Fedor Holz, Brian Rast, and Daniel Negreanu, but I completely understand that a few people enjoy learning from those who lack experience in the games they discuss.

This is what you wrote in your Card Player column:

That's a lot different from what you just wrote above.

At least you now admit that I've played some no-limit hold 'em. Also, this implies that I teach how to play no-limit hold 'em which is something I've never done.

However, when it comes to bankroll, there are well established formulas/equations based on standard statistical theory, and these formulas/equations can be applied to any form of poker. It just so happens that I was the first one, over 30 years ago, to do some of this work and it's available in my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics, which was first published in 1987, in case you want to study up. I would think that someone who was giving bankroll guidelines and charging a lot for poker information, as you do, would have been aware of this and other similar material before giving out inaccurate advice.

MM

This is the most inaccurate post in two plus two's history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp_fjnxsjFA