David Sklansky’s Theory of Poker is often – correctly – considered to be the best book on poker ever written. Applying mathematical and psychological theory, this book is truly the “Desert Island Disc” of poker books. I can’t reinforce that enough – if you only ever read one poker book in your life, make it this one.

At first the mathematical processes can be overwhelming but in all honesty there’s nothing overly challenging there – it’s around a high-school level of mathematical problems, and even people who struggle with numbers should wrap their heads around it after some time.

He expresses complex points in a very simple and understandable way, and while you might (nay, will) need to read it several times to fully understand the meanings of what he talks about, once you absorb even a small fraction of what he is getting at you will be a better player.

Some people may be put off by the fact that he draws on examples from lesser-known games such as Stud and Draw poker, but even those examples are explained well enough for novices to those games – and in the back of the book he includes a brief run-down of the rules of Stud, Razz, Draw and Hold ‘em.

In short, if you don’t get this book you are quite literally burning money. It’s as valuable a tool to a player as cards and chips.

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A large part of what I’ll be writing in this blog involves reviewing poker materials. Poker books are a large part of said materials and as such you’ll be seeing a lot of advice on what not to read and what to read. It is the former I’ll be talking about this week.

Phil Hellmuth is almost undoubtedly the best NLHE tournament player in the world. He ranks with the likes of Chan, Brunson and Gold. OK, I was kidding about the last one. However, he does not even fall into the same league as Hemingway, Joyce and Dickens nor Sklansky and Harrington. His Play Poker like the Pros and Phil Hellmuth’s Texas Hold ‘em are, sadly, abysmal.

“If you can absorb most of the information in this book,” he writes. “Then I may see you sitting across the poker table from me soon.” Despite what he would have you think, these books will not get you good enough to play $300/$600 in Vegas. A total beginner (that is, someone who has never even picked up a deck of cards before) will get a decent understanding of the game from this book, but sadly its teaching ends there.

Limited to a super-tight style, Hellmuth takes no account of the various situations that make QQ foldable pre-flop and his philosophy in the book can be summed up as: “Play only the best hands really aggressively but if the board is too dangerous fold.” Good advice for a hold ‘em newbie, but if you can already play the game then this book is certainly not for you. Literally no sort of advanced tactics are discussed in this book.

I hope Phil’s tournament success is built on better fundamentals than he teaches in this book, or I will be forced to conclude the WSOP is rigged.

Categories: Poker Books
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