Would like opinions of various poker books

[beernutz]

I was browsing the games section at Books-A-Million today on my first day of vacation (thank the creator) and was surprised to see how many poker-related books that I had never heard of were on the shelves. The card gaming section is really not very big but what was kind of odd is that none of the titles I saw were 2+2 or any the other of what I think of as 'quality' books on poker (the Lee Jones book for example).

Of those that looked most promising after a quick scan:
Thursday Night Poker by Peter O. Steiner
Starting Out in Poker by Stewart Rubin (I have the Ciaffone/Rubin NL/PL book which I really like)
Ken Warren Teaches Texas Holdem (I read the first Ken Warren book and didn't think too much of it but this looks to be better)

I'm also curious about Silberstang. He has about 3 books on poker, in addition to a number of other gambling related books, and though I only skimmed through them they didn't seem to have much in the way of valuable information.

Any opinions on the above titles/authors?

[Andy B]

I like the Steiner book. It's geared towards the semi-serious home game player. It's not going to teach you how to squeeze every last nickel out of your friends, but it's not designed to. It has a pretty good discussion of most of the games you are likely to find in a semi-serious home game. The main drawback, I felt, was that there is no discussion of Omaha/8, which was the second most popular game in my old home game, and the one that I was the slowest to learn how to play.

Ken Warren's first book was bad enough that I have a lot of trouble imagining that his current book is any good.

Silberstang seems to have written much the same poker book about four times now. The advice tends to be elementary, and sometimes not entirely accurate. There are certainly worse books on the market, but there are much better books, too.

I bought a novel by Silberstang for a dollar several years ago. I almost never read fiction, but I did enjoy it.

Two Plus Two apparently has some difficulty in getting books into some retailers. Barnes and Noble, for example, doesn't always have a good selection of their books, although it's been better of late. Borders always seems to have an excellent selection of Two Plus Two books, but my wife doesn't get a discount there.