[ZootMurph]

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I agree Lee Jones's book is great, despite some minor flaws pointed out on these forums. I haven't read Helmuth's book, but rarely have I seen a piece of work as pilloried. If so many posters think its a load of crap, I'd be careful using it as a guide. As far as HPFAP...I'm not sure its a great thing for a new player to muddle their thinking with its sophisticated, contradictory, and often inaplicable to micro limits advice.

Just my 2c.

--Zetack

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Phil's book, as a whole, is not very good and you can buy Hold Em Poker by Sklansky (not to be confused with HEPFAP), and get much better and more useful technical information. However, there are things in Phil's book that I found useful, which is why I recommend it. Specifically, reading players (his categorization of player types into animal types really helped me learn to read players better), and discussion of proper tight play make the book worth buying.

I recommend Sklansky AFTER Phil so that Sklansky can clear up a lot of issues Phil messes up or doesn't explain properly.

So, I think it is a good natural progression to go from Lee Jones, who gives a lot of good basic information and sets up a solid foundation, although offers a weak/loose approach, to Phil who helps with reading players and a tighter approach, to Sklansky, who offers up more calculations, information, and a better tight/aggressive approach.