Non 2+2 Book Reviews

[Pokey]

There are too darned many poker books on the market right now, and that leaves us, the poker students, with an unpleasant predicament: wade through them all and waste countless hours on useless books or skip them and potentially lose out on a wealth of information. I propose a third option.

Given that we've all read several books on poker, let's make a "Book Review" post where we can add our thoughts on any poker book not published by 2+2. I limit it to non 2+2 books because (a) we've all read the 2+2 books and (b) we all know that if it's a 2+2 book, it's good and you need to read it. Let's look at the outer circle of poker books and see if we can sort the diamonds from the ruff.

I'll start.

<font color="blue">Killer Poker, by John Vorhaus</font>
This is a marvellous little book: well written, well thought-out, and a wonderful complement to the 2+2 circle of knowledge. It includes standard fare, obviously, but it also puts lots of new spins on old content, and he's a wiz at making pithy aphorisms like "if you're not steadily getting better, you're steadily getting worse," "don't bite the hand that feeds your bankroll," "it's not the end of the world; it's not even the end of the week," "short money equals lost money," and the classic "don't challenge the strong players, challenge the weak ones; that's what they're there for." He's got several unique and interesting poker exercises to try at the tables that can really shape the way you think about the game. Definitely worth a read.

<font color="blue">Killer Poker Online, by John Vorhaus.</font>
A truly disappointing followup to Killer Poker, this book spends half its pages teaching you to hide from the unique boogeymen of online play, promoting irrational fear of online collusion, shady casinos, and virtual banking. Everything useful in this book is already in Killer Poker, and everything else in this book is not useful. Skip it.

<font color="blue">Winning Low Limit Hold'Em, by Lee Jones</font>
This was the first poker book I ever read, and I thought it was outstanding. Luckily, I bought SSHE at the same time and read it directly afterwards before I could implement the Lee Jones method. The book basically teaches you to be a weak-tight player. While this might make you some money at the 0.5/1 tables, it's not good poker. Following this advice will doom you to mediocrity at even the low-limit games, and failure at middle limit stakes. Most of what this book advocates is too passive to be a successful strategy. Save your money and skip this book.

<font color="blue">Super System, by Doyle Brunson</font>
The first ever classic book of poker, this book remains fresh and useful a quarter century after it was first published. The real "drawback" of this book is its lack of focus: rather than writing a book about Texas Hold'Em, Brunson's book covers EVERY major poker game in existence. He managed to get the greatest players alive to write each section, and all together the book reads like an expert's manual, but for a true Hold'Em afficianado the book is too scattered to be a must-have. That having been said, you WILL learn from this book and your game WILL improve after reading it, but at 600+ pages, this tome might be more trouble than it's worth. I haven't read the Super System II, the very recent remake, and I'm curious to hear if it's much of an improvement on the original.

<font color="blue">Internet Texas Hold'Em, by Matthew Hilger</font>
I only made it about half way through this book because much of what it contained was redundant with the other books I had read. Also, it tries to be all things for all people and winds up short-changing everybody in the process. The book purports to teach you how to play 2/4 Hold'Em AND 20/40 Hold'Em, and I just don't think that's possible -- the proper strategy for 2/4 is vastly different from the proper strategy for 20/40. I may someday get around to finishing this book, but for now I just don't see much that it uniquely adds to the collection.

<font color="blue">The Tao of Poker, by Larry Phillips</font>
Not much new in this book other than the format: the entire book is written as 285 "rules to transform your game and your life." The "life" part is overplaying its hand, but the rules themselves are good ones. Since it is written so episodically, it's a great "bathroom poker book" that you can read in short *ahem* sittings and still get everything out of it. Consider buying this one for brief poker reviews when you only have a few minutes to kill at a time.

Please add your own non 2+2 book reviews to this post.

[istewart]

Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold 'Em
By TJ Cloutier and Tom McEvoy

Worst book ever.

[CallMeIshmael]

[ QUOTE ]
Worst book ever.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then you SOOOO havent read Hellmuth's book

[27offsooot]

Ken Warren Teaches Texas Hold'em... Simply a masterpiece, far superior to SSH.

[istewart]

Yes, I have.

There is a difference.

[Willluck]

Poker Wisdom of a Champion by DB is a very entertaining book with great poker anecdotes and just some basic poker concepts that are reinforced within each. I reccomend it as a quick fun read.

[shant]

Couldn't this be accomplished by saying all poker books that contain actual advice on how to play suck in comparison to 2+2 books?

The only non-2+2 books I would read about poker would be that Feeney book everyone talks about, or maybe Vince Van Patten's autobiography.

[istewart]

The Feeney book is a 2+2 book.

[shant]

[ QUOTE ]
The Feeney book is a 2+2 book.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
The only non-2+2 books I would read about poker would be none.

[/ QUOTE ]

[Liam Carver]

The first book I read about Hold'em, was "HOW TO PLAY TEXAS HOLD'EM for 5 BUCKS"...It was quite simply...shocking. I gave it to a guy I play home games with...

I read Lee Jones...weak tight, folding mentality type stuff.
I read Supersystem..it annoyed me.
Caro's Book of tells was fun.
Hellmuth's book is a MASTERPIECE
-OF-TEXTUAL-DIARRHEA

Liam

PS - anyone read Johnny Chan's Book? Looks silly.