I've read a whole bunch of poker books, quite a few of the famous ebooks, made a bajillion posts and watched 100s of poker videos. I'm also a critical son of a bitch, so here's what you need to read/watch to make you a sicko.

I think in my career I have learned the most in order from 1) playing, 2) studying my play all by lonesome 3) forums/aim conversations 4) books 5) videos 6) coaching and giving coaching. That being said, I think this more refers to how you should should break up your time, as in you should be spending by far the most time playing, then studying your own play etc and on down this list. I think I get nearly the same returns from everything on the list, but just need to do less of some things than others.

Poker books are an especially strange beast because to get to the few great ones you have to wade through mountains of mediocrity and bullshit. I'll attempt to expedite this process for you, and hopefully draw your attention to a few gems you might have missed thus far. There are also various subgenres, and I will try to break them up since they don't really overlap or have the same aims. Without further ado:

Practical Books:
By this I mean books which give you specific advice about how to play hands in specific situations and attempt to tell you how to play a certain form of poker, say nlhe, by covering as exaustively as possible, all the various situations you will encounter. Famous examples of this would be Harrington on Hold em, Bobbo's Ebook, Learned from TV's ebook, and most other poker books on the market, I think you guys get the idea. I know people also love shootaa's book, Rizen's book, Baluga's book and Supersystem is very good as well.

I think all of these books are missing the point a bit, even the ones (like Bobbo's) which approach their task with rigor and intelligence. The thing is, a book is an especially bad form of media to cover something like poker, way superior forms are things like videos, forum posts, and aim conversations as well as private study. The reason for this is that a book is especially suited for presentation of long, complex, integrated ideas which take an extended sitting to understand. For example, consider a novel or an academic work or a historical narrative. Breaking those things up into chapters and looking at them in different places and different times defeats the unity of the work; a chapter in a novel might not be compelling or make any sense at all in isolation. This just isn't true of poker situations. Talking about 3betting a button raiser from the small blind is it's own confined sort of topic, and the sum of all these little poker situations requires so much memorization and repetition and critical thinking that it isn't really effective to read and implement the strategies in a poker book at all once- there's just too much to handle.

Trying to lump all these situations into one big book gives both too much and too little complexity all at once. With literally millions of strategy posts on various forums there is infinitely more bullshit to wade through, but that is balanced by the fact that there are so many interesting perspectives, so many different minds working on problems and the situations can be broken down to the highest level of specificity possible: individual hands between individual players.

The other massive problem for a poker book is that it's very difficult to revise, whereas the games it's trying to describe are constantly changing. Poker is historical, strategies which worked well in the past may not work in the future and we really aren't too close to solving poker no matter what people may say. This is a good thing, it means there is still a lot of game to be played ! Imagine trying to learn to play no limit hold em from Doyle's section in Supersystem 1 in 2010. Doyle is talking about games which don't exist anymore. Writing a poker book you run the massive risk that with each day/week/month/year that goes by, your book becomes less correct and less effective and less worth the time of your readers and this is even more true now than ever before with the Internet.

Cliff notes: don't read any of em, or if you do, read a new one from someone who is a good writer and who is winning a ton of money currently.

Poker Theory Books

These are a hell of a lot better because the book is a good form for theoretical thinking. Unfortunately, unlike the practical books, most of the content passing for theory is random musings from people who win a lot of money and then make up their own stories about why they did and call it theory. Also unfortunately, there are books with elegant theories and good writing from people who are just plain wrong and who's seemingly convincing arguments will end up losing you money playing poker. But there are a few gems, ok, well two.

1. Theory of Poker by Sklanskinator: It is slightly dated now, but it gets you all of the basic probability theory stuff which you need to get somewhere and it's boring to read a math textbook so read ToP instead. About half the book is superfluous, but the good stuff is really good and it is relatively straightforward and therefore a good place to start.

2. Mathematics of Poker by Chen and Ankenman: This is, in my opinion, the best poker book ever written and it just isn't close. There are a ton of powerful ideas in the book with quantitative work to give them backbone. Just don't take the book as the gospel, there are problems with it, but its originality as well as the erudition of the authors makes it my favorite.

How not to be an idiot at poker books

Winning at poker isn't all about odds and strategy, you have to avoid hookers and blow too. Sometimes we need smart people to tell us this and make it stick, a few people are especially good at it.

My favorite here is definitely Elements of poker by Tommy Angelo. Tommy is very practical and a great writer and all around cool guy.

Honorable mention to Barry G's Ace on The River which is just a strange book, but strangely fascinating.
Poker books which are not even marginally poker books

Sometimes I read articles in other places and they strongly influence my thinking about poker without saying anything about poker.

1. The Black Swan by Taleb. Poker is full of Black Swans, and just about the only thing in poker which is Gaussian is all in equity and combinatorics and the most basic stuff. Add in a drop of human psychology and strategic play and welcome to the land of the Black Swan. That goes for your (supposed) winrate too !

2. Reductionism by Alan Garfinkel (http://books.google.ca/books?id=pEzc...finkel&f=false).

Often it doesn't make sense to subsume one theory into another even if one theory can explain everything that the other theory explains but with the supposed advantage of being more parsimonious. The poker application is subtle but unbelievably important. If I ever write a poker book, that will be a chapter.

3. Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. By Kahneman and Tversky.http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc...=rep1&type=pdf
Some strong empirical research and analysis on why we behave so irrationally under uncertainty.


Check em out guys, and as always good luck.

Ben