is there anyone who genuinely went from losing poker to big profit winning poker after reading and implementing a book's advice?
If so which book?
what specific advice changed your game?

Would be interesting to see if there are some people on here making a killing thanks to some info!

Cheers guys

I went from losing to breakeven player after reading Harrington on Cash,but that was about the 30th poker book I'd read and that book just seemed to make things click.
I still go back and read the section on turn play when I'm on a downswing/playing poorly but I can't see 1 book doing it for anyone you have to put in a lot of work on your own too.

Most of the stuff I've read has been more like building blocks that make me less of a donkey or a bigger winner than before I read it (not necessarily a book, also includes articles, videos, etc).

The one exception might be Poker Tournament Formula, which brought home the value of position better than anything else I'd read and did immediately have a positive impact.

In my opinion poker is a game where you have to train many different areas of knowledge and increase small edges gradually. Let me give an example.

Say poker is 30% luck in say.. 100k hands and 70% skill. So in 100k hands your profit will be 30% due to luck, 70% skill

That 70% skill is composed of different elements where you compare to an opponent.

Let's say three of those elements are: Ability to read, ablity to play OOP and ability to calculate math.

Your edge may be 0.4%,0.5%,0.1% respectively, but together they comprise 1% advantage.

When you read a chapter in harringtons book about how to play OOP perhaps your OOP edge increases to 0.6-0.7%, increasing your total edge to 1.1-1.2%

This is just an example and there are many more components, but basically this is my theory on how a player gains a skill edge over opponents.

So the effect of reading a book may be that you increase a bunch of small edges, which in the end will increase the total edge you have, and in the end may turn around a losing player to a winning player.

Personally, I have found "that one book" that has really increased my skill, and I feel I play much better now due to that book.

Care to share what that book is ?

FWIW-I read Moshman's SNG book before a trip to Vegas. When I got there I played one SNG and finished in the money.

Don't get me wrong, I think experience is much more important than book learning. But books can often help explain concepts that then have to be witnessed or experienced at a table. This book helped me with the idea of pushing with almost any two cards when your chips get low relative to the blinds. I had read this concept in other books, but for some reason it took the best when I read his book.

There was a period where I read HOH 1 or 2 for second time and then won two home tournaments back to back. Granted that's not a huge accomplishment but I felt like a stud. Winning the home games and the pride is a good feeling. I think reading the HOH book at that time helped me focus my play to do well.

As many have said, don't overdo it with number of books. Find a few poker books you like then study ONE of them for some time and try to grasp its contents while playing lots of poker.

My 2 cents

Poker books just help a little at a time. The better ones focus on concepts, and leave you to connect those concepts to real-life play. That doesn't happen right away, it takes a little time to stew and to recognize the concepts for what they are at the table.

And beware the advice of anyone who says, "I read so-and-so book, and the next day I won _____!!!" A more realisitic and helpful thing is something like, "I read so-and-so book, and it helped with balancing my range here, or my bet sizing there."

I started poker after reading a book I picked up in the airport by Phil Helmuth (something like the pros). Not a great book but it was enough for me to sit at a live 2/4 LHE table without making a complete idiot of myself. A month or two later I read SSHE and that was another leap forward.

But I think once you get past beginners' level the effect of specific books will be hard to detect.

I can thank SSHE for some very nice live winnings.

I was a break even player in LHE and used to read articles on various poker websites. I use to sign up on various websites to receive the no deposit bonus, would play fine for some days and then I would go broke as I tried to progress through the limits. Then one day I received a complimentary $2 credit from stars (Although there was no such offer when I signed up on their site). Then I decide to take up a book and felt that SSHE was the best book to read going by the talk about that book on various forums. Now after a couple of months of grinding through the limits today I have turned the measly $2 credit to over $400. And there is still a lot that I have to learn.

WLLH won me money back in the limit days. HOH2 improved my MTT results tremendously.

i went on a huge HEATER after reading HOH1 and to lesser extent HOH2 (probably HOH2, it just seems like such obvious stuff now).

i look back and i wonder how much was luck vs. HOH1/2 learning. i've never been able to get it back. i think alot was luck.

I went on a 30 BI upswing at 10 man SNG's after reading SNG Strategy by moshman. I then went on a massive downswing but the book is excellent.

Winning Poker Systems won me a lot of money in 5-card stud and 5-card draw against players who obviously hadn't read anything about those games. That really taught me the advantage that reading certain books can give you.

I agree with Gonso, poker books add a little at each time.
But I found Colin Moshman's SNG Strat book very applicable as soon as I started the STT. I started playing with this book and I at once became a winnig STT player. Of course we can have variance but I had really a liner results curve on my firts 2k µSTT built on this book.

It was mathematically proven that poker is 12% luck and 88% skill.

How?

The way I figure, the longer you play the more skill. So if you play an infinited amount of hands then its 100% skill.

But over a reasonably large sample, 10k hands, there has to be at least 30-ish % luck

30% of what?

Interesting do you have any articles or anything to back it up? I'd be interested in reading about this subject.

You were both leveled. But Bojangles figured it out:

I've had direct help from a book before. Two books, actually. Caro's book of tells and NAvarro's Read em and Reap