Planet Mark's Blog. Thoughts, News And Strategy For Poker Tournaments Of All Size

Poker Book Mini-Reviews - Part #1

Decided to clear one of my bookshevles today... and found a whole bunch of poker books which have been sitting there for a while. Now, these are only a small selection of my total number of poker books (hey I started in the days when the video training was not so common!). Anyway, going to take the opportunity to write a 1 or 2 line mini-review of each, will continue with the rest of the collection another time...

1) Pot Limit And No Limit Poker - Reuben and Ciaffone. One of my all time favorites, written before the internet and focusing on Pot-Limit Omaha, and Pot Limit + No-Limit Holdem before these games were popular. Some absolute gems of strategy advice, focused towards how you think about what your opponents are thinking, rather than as an instruction manual.

2) Super System 2 - Doyle Brunson. Classic text and still one of the best for beginning players trying to understand the wider concepts out there... lots of chapters on different poker variations written by different big-name players. Wonder how long before we see SS3!

3) Harrington On Holdem vol 3 - Workbook - Harrington + Robberty. Based on the first 2 tournament books by Harrington this is a quiz format book, featuring hands from online and live tournaments. I like this one, some good insights into how to approach tournament hands at different stages of the game.

4) Harrington On Holdem vol 2 - Harrington +Robberty. This one was a huge influence on many players when it came out (2005?), short handed and short-stacked play and end-game situations... and how to approach them. Probably dated for the online games these days, but a solid grounding for aspiring tournament players none the less.

5) Kill Everyone - Lee Nelson. Not my favorite in terms of writing style, though the content is solid, strutured and mathematical in nature. Covers tournaments and SNGs and is the follow up to the widely acclaimed  'Kill Phil'... as a side note I remember getting some strange looks reading this one on a flight one time!

6) My 50 Most Memorable Hands - Doyle Brunson - This one is signed by Doyle who we met at an industry conference. Not a strategy book, but an insight into Doyle's colorful past... the 50 hands introducing characters from the old Texas road games and some of the biggest names in poker history... an entertaining read.

7) How Good Is Your Pot Limit Omaha - Reuben. Dated PLO book based on a quiz format for live high stakes hands. Very entertaining writing style and solid advice about equity and the need to play PLo aggressively make this worth reading at least once... not directly applicable to todays online games though. Anyway, those books are now going into storage, I have many more for another post like this at some point soon!

Gl at the tables, Mark

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