I did a search but didn't really find exactly what I was looking for.

Under what circumstances would do people typically recommend HEPFAP over WITHG or vice versa?

Or do people typically recommend reading them both because part of the skill of learning poker is reading other people's advice and determining under what circumstances their advice is good?

If you need more specifics, suppose the person to whom you're making the recommendation has read SSHE cover to cover 3 times including the questions and hand examples, has read Theory of Poker rapidly but hasn't really studied it to where he needs duct tape to hold the pages together, has played 4/8 live several times and has about 20,000 hands of online experience from .02/.04LHE to $1/$2LHE, most of which is around .25/.50.

Hope the question made sense.

Thanks
DTXCF

WITHG, though if there were no WITHG, then the answer would probably be HPFAP.

Also, "Intelligent Poker Player" and "Further Limit Holdem" were both awesome, but they probably require some level of study and experience for the reader. If you don't have preflop opening and 3 betting down to a science, then I'd suggest working on that, which brings us back to WITHG, which has the best preflop section I've read.

I think you just need to dive into 8/16? 20/40? i'm confident you will be fine.

This is something I've talked to ontherail about a few times and I think we both agree that your best off trying to figure it out on your own.

There are pros and cons to this. For instance I'm sure my 4-8 Winrate would have been higher had I picked up a book first; ok the other hand I think those same books would have been very harmful toy personal development as a poker player.

I think continuing to play small stakes online and examine your own database will be most helpful exercise you can partake in to get better.

I'd watch a bunch of the full ring small stakes videos on DC. BBB has a bunch of good ones at the micros (Peanut Collector comes to mind) that are pretty applicable to the live small/mid-stakes games you'll find at the B&M. WITHG was structured well and IMO did a thorough job going over some postflop lines, but it probably emphasizes a bit too much isolating with hands that are going to end up too multiway in your standard no fold'em live games. You'd be fine without reading either book.

Jon, can you elaborate on your point about "figuring it out on your own?" I think OP, like many of us, are trying to figure things out on our own, and we consider books/videos/etc to be part of that. I'm guessing the OP wants to read a book because to a lot of us new-ish players, that is part of figuring things out on our own. I don't think you are saying "don't read books," I think you are saying something in between "don't read books" and "just memorize what the books say and play by formula." I little more explanation about where you stand in between those 2 extremes might be helpful to a lot of people here.

Not Jon, but I feel the same way so I'll throw my two cents in.

The main problem with books is that they are quickly outdated. SSHE was written in the middle of the poker boom, WITHG while online games were widely available, and HEFAP before Moneymaker made poker cool (!).

So, while books are better than nothing, they often make assumptions about Villains that no longer hold.

I always suggest people start with a book. It's like biking with training wheels - you can't fall down, but you can't do anything cool, either. But after reading, go play some and note all the hands that befuddle you, and re-analyze them. Post the ones that you can't figure out. Take all the information and make adjustments, then go play some more and repeat.

At some point you should go back and re-read books, and know enough to disagree with them.

op,

i think a more thoughtful question that might elicit more meaningful responses would be:

"to those of you who have studied the game and have seen positive results: what did you do to get better? how did you get to where you are today? tell me about your poker journey."

Please only speak when spoken to . Seriously though, this is what I was thinking and just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. I think I actually have a thread from a while ago where I asked people what they did to get better. I can try to dig it up later, the responses were good.

For me, SSHE and DC videos were necessary to jump start the learning curve and at least cut down on the biggest mistakes I was making.

Moving slightly off topic for a moment, I don't necessarily agree with the bolded part. A GOOD poker book will be very clear about its assumptions. For example, SSHE is very clear that the advice is designed for the type of game where most pots are multiway and multiple villains play too many hands and go too far with them. Those kinds of tables absolutely still exist at .05/.10 online (I play them all the time), and I'd bet they still exist at 4/8 live - maybe not ALL tables, but I'll bet they exist.

From the small parts of HEPFAP that I've read, the authors do a lot of "when the villain is this type of villain, you can attack them this way, when it's X type of villain use Y attack etc." and while the villains of those types are probably rarer now than when HEPFAP was new, I'll bet they exist, and it's a good skill to be able to recognize them.

I think it's a skill in and of itself to try to understand under what conditions the advice works, and WHY it works under those conditions, and also recognize those conditions when they appear in your tables and adjust appropriately.

Stepping off soapbox.

It's similar to the introduction to law school when they tell you, you are not going to learn the law, rather how to think like a lawyer. I think if you took a smart person that's never played a hand of poker you could teach them to beat 20-40 in like 3 months, but that doesn't mean they necessarily leaned how to think about poker and would have trouble moving up.

I'll try and make a longer post later, but I think books do a good job of explaining things that should be a constant , like preflop hang selection, but do a poor Job of dealing wjth how our particular actions affect our overall range in other spots, mainly balance considerations and similar. (Although it seems the IPP is good about this but I've never read it)

This is a good example of what I mean. Don't say lets identify The game condition and then decide who strategy is best to implement. You should just try and understand the game jn a way where you think, this makes sense to me so ill do it. Eventually after you play enough you will realize you were wrong about some spots and fix it, but more importantly you'll fire out why you were wrong which will help in other areas as well. Obviously this isn't easy to do, but if you can pull it off it will help in long run

think of poker literature as the water that primes the pump.

study play analyze repeat..

HPFAP is the book you want to read if you have access to a time machine and plan to play in the Mirage 15-30 game in 1996.

WITHG is the book you want to read if you have access to a time machine and plan to play in the mid-stakes games on Poker Stars in 2005.

Thanks Jon, appreciate your thoughts.

Alan, I only have this hot tub time machine. Will that do?

Just make sure you don't bet too much on "The Drive".

fyp

Dal, I would recommend continuing to work on the basics. Post hands, get feedback, give your opinion in other threads. Keep going thru SSHE and then look at some useful vids on a training site. I'm most familiar with DC, having been with them for a while, but there are lots and lots of series where you can follow them and have a nice progression upward.