Ed Miller's The Course, also Small Stakes No Limit Poker. Harrington on Cash Games is fine too. Also, search this thread for "poker books" and you'll get a ton of answers. SplitSuit aka James Sweeney's stuff on YouTube is great too. Phil Gordon's Little Green Book was decent. The Grinder's Manual is good. I've heard Easy Game is good.

Thanks to quarantine, I've been starting to pick up some newer Poker books. I picked up Johnathan Little's new book Excelling at No Limit Hold'em. I stopped playing regularly years ago, so by hope is for any recommendations for seeing how poker has changed recently.

Plus one to all the Ed Miller suggestions. The Course is outstanding and I'd follow that with Playing the Player.

I've read that one and three other of Little's books and it changed me from a losing player to a dominator at 1/2 and a winner at 2/5. I prefer his "Live No-Limit Cash Games" which has a second volume that is a work book. If you pause and really work thru the scenarios he gives, it will up your hand reading ability, smart bet sizing, and seeing proper bluff zones. When you're done with that, read his book on bluffs.

For years I had played based on the basis of Harrington on Hold 'Em. I was making $50 to 90K per year (charted in a spreadsheet) in rec home games, just by being tight aggressive, with no real hand reading skills. I thought I was good, but really it was that my opponents were bad, had deep pockets, and didn't mind spewing off a few grand every session.

Harrington has great books, but out of date thinking. The game has moved on and I went down to a break even player when home games ended and I had to move to card rooms with better players. If you play Harrington's style now, the aggro kids will take you to the cleaners. The real problem with Harrington is he mostly teaches you how to play your cards, but JLittle teaches you how to play your opponent. Harrington's books are great for learning the basics, but J Little changed my poker life for the better.

Another big delta of Harrington vs Little. Harrington teaches you to play scared - protect your good hands. JLittle teaches you to get paid with your good hands, which means that sometimes you'll get outdrawn, but you'll make more bank in the long run by getting paid.

All of J Little's books have lots and lots of hand range charts. It's easy to skip them, but spend time on them trying to understand his points. I found a range calculator on line and played with it until I knew exactly what a 15%, 20%, up thru 50% opening hand range is. Then I came back to Little's books and his charts and strategies started making more sense to me.

Study Little's books carefully and you should definitely improve your game. Then study all his videos on Youtube, join his site pokercoaching.com and do all the quizzes, study all the videos on his site and do the classes and you'll be a helluva lot better still.

I read Little's Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Cash Games and wasn't impressed. It was basically "I've never played 1-2 before, but I just tried it for 10 hours, and here's what I did." He was recommending small opening sizes and playing multi-way flops, which most people here seem to disagree with.

Does Mastering Small Stakes No Limit Holdem have more depth to it?

Not sure, because Bluffs and Mastering Small Stakes No Limit Hold 'Em are the only two books I read by Little.

I have long credited Mastering Small Stakes No Limit Hold 'Em as the book that moved me from being a small winner to a big winner at 1/2.

There were definitely things I disagreed with it - the two big ones that stand out are he advocates opening/raising pre to pot sized amounts, and the other was that he gave some really bad 3 bet bluff candidates (IIRC QTo and K4s were two of them.)

All in all, I can't say live hold 'em has changed at all since then, so I would definitely recommend it to anyone from a losing player to a small winner. If you're a medium to bigger winner, it probably wouldn't be of much use.

Q10o and K4s are not particularly bad 3-bet bluff candidates. It just depends on your strat. Also, a lot of it is randomized so not 100% freq. If you only bluff the same hands than it becomes more transparent what boards you hit etc. Like for example, if you only 3! the suited wheel aces as a bluff than the textures you hit most often (A-high) you'll really only get action against better. So you want to add hands like K4s, Q10o etc at a 25% freq etc.

A lot of great players use the top of their folding range as a bluff. This is in part because if a hand is good enough to call it should just flat.

Top of the folding range likely to have better blockers and higher EV when called.

SIAP- but The Course and Playing the Player (both by Ed Miller) are the "best" books on low stakes live NLHE I've read. Mostly because they're easily digestible.

Splitsuit advocates betting bigger on the flop so you can bet bigger on the turn.

Johnathan Little advocates betting small on the flop to realize equity.
ie: bet small to suck in those people with inferior that normally wouldnt normally call if you bet bigger


Who's right?
Who's strategy is better for 1/3 NL?

That's been debated ITF multiple times. Try "the old question, why bet so much" thread in the Best of LLSNL sticky and the c-betting Concept of the Month.

Live I c bet 1/3 range on most boards v most opponents. Their ranges are way too wide and they won't be able to defend properly. My turn bets tend to be a lot larger, but it's also dependent on the turn .

thx. reading c-betting Concept of the Month.

link to 'the old question, why bet so much'?
i cant find it in https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...llsnl-1168186/

unless you mean why RAISE so much?

Read in this order

1st Matthew Janda: Applications of No Limit Hold'em
2nd Matthew Janda: No Limit Hold'em for Advanced Players
3rd Michael Acevedo: Modern Poker Theory

Total price around $100USD or less and it has basically all the information you need to be a winning poker player in today's games (even online). Applying that information is a different story...

That's the one I meant, sorry. It's mostly about preflop, but the issues of the debate on getting maximum fat value versus protecting one's range is basically the same.

This is kind of like saying that you should pick up an advance calculus book when most are just trying to figure out algebra.

It's more like you can choose to study challenging calculus or instead you can get really good at your times tables

I plan on reading all three now, I mean, what’s the worst thing that can happen? I wouldn’t expect it to make me a worse player.
Thanks Jarretman.

Or find out the hard way that playing 2 levels above your opponents is really the same as playing a level below them.

But do let us know how those books help you crush 1/2.

If Jarretman says those are the best books, I shall buy them

This is a lol worthy post/take on multiple levels.
I’ll leave it at that.

Tanqueray has been sarcastic w/ me on multiple occasions.

Not surprised he’s the same way with Jarretman.

I honestly prefer to not list the 4-5 reasons why that’s such a awful take on a forum like this. It’s a main reason why I don’t use this forum anymore.

I will vouch for Jarretman as being a solid poster though. I have played against him and I see the the stakes he regularly plays. I’ll leave it at that.

What you continue to fail to realize is that I meant no disrespect to Jarretman nor the books he recommended.

This forum just like most things in life, it’s only useful to those who know what they are using it for.

I suppose I could just flat out say that if you don’t already know about those books, you aren’t ready to read them. If you aren’t ready to read them, reading them has no value.

But hey, I am curious what those 4/5 things are. Do share.

Ok, I’ll try again. Janda’s first book has been around for 7 years. It was a big deal when it came out and was very math heavy around GTO. Coming across the book is part of a natural progression for anyone that is interested in reading and learning about poker theories.

If this thread is the first time that you know of the book, or that because of Jarretman’s recommendation that this is the first time you are interested, then you probably have not had any serious experience reading poker books.

In other words, the book will likely be too difficult for you to grasp and the application of the theories will be confusing and potentially harmful in a low stake game. It requires pretty decent math background to really execute some higher level poker theories. Most players in low stake games do not have such background.

Again, when you play 2 levels above your opponents, you end up outleveling yourself and making adjustments that are -EV.

Yes this forum is LOL, but mostly because everyone is just posting and hoping others will agree with them.

The Poker Mindset
Playing The Player
The Course (specifically 2-5 section)
Some COTMs here