Poker Tournament Resources: Part 1 Books

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This will be a three-part series covering some of the resources and learning tools that are available to tournament poker players. I’ll try to offer up the pros and cons of each, and how to get the most out of each resource.

Contrary to what they may claim, these resources aren’t going to make you a world beater, so get that out of your head right now. Nobody reads a poker book or buys a piece of software and is instantly transformed into a winning player.

What resources like these can do is get you started on the right track.

Books, forums, and different software tools can build your foundation, but to really take your game to the next level you’re going to need to further build on this foundation with coaching and experience. But you probably already realize this as a TPE reader/subscriber.

• In Part 1 I’ll take a look at the current crop of relevant poker books available for tournament players, and offer up some thoughts on each, and how to get the most out of each entry.
• In Part 2 I’ll shift the focus to software and other study aids that can assist you both at and away from the poker tables.
• In Part 3 I’ll discuss other online methods that are available to tournament players from poker forums to articles to training videos.

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What can a poker book do for you?

As I mentioned above, reading a book on tournament poker is not going to turn you into a winner if you are a new or casual player.

After reading the books you’re going to improve a lot (mostly because you have a lot of holes in your game that can be fixed, which is a nice way of saying you probably suck at poker) but at best a poker book will just make you less bad.

You can thank the book for letting you hold on to chips for a little while longer, but you’re still going to be a new or casual player, you just won’t make the egregious mistakes you were making before you picked up your poker book.

If you’re already a decent player a poker book will be far less transformative, in fact you might not even see a noticeable improvement in your game, but at this stage of your poker career every minute improvement is extremely important, even the ones you can’t see.

Poker is a lot like golf in that respect, it’s not all that hard to go from a 40+ handicap to a 20 handicap ( a weekly round of golf coupled with a few lessons and some visits to the driving range could actually accomplish this in a season), but every stroke after that gets progressively harder to shave off, to the point that when you get into the single digits it’s about microscopic improvements, and dropping from a 4 to a 2 handicap is like going from AAA to the major leagues.

The same holds true in poker.

Once you go from terrible to almost break-even, subsequent improvements are harder to come by. Most poker books are really goods at taking you from terrible to ok, while others can actually offer up some incremental improvements beyond that point.

Breaking down tournament poker books

Tournament Poker for Advanced Player

This is a very good introduction to tournament poker and tournament poker principles.

I wouldn’t bother with this book if you’ve read any of the others on this list, but for a new player this will certainly get you going without doing any harm to your game in the long run –which is something some of the older books on tournament can in fact do.

Harrington on Hold’ Em (3-part series)

A more recent, more in-depth version of TPfAP, and a solid recommendation as the first series new players should read to get a good foundation built.

Volume 3 of HoH is simply a workbook, and since it was penned well over five years ago the specific hand advice is not as sharp as it would be today, but the scenarios are still interesting to read through, and experienced players can always improve on the answers given, or post them to a forum to see what players of today think about the specific hands.

Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker (3-part series)

Secrets is an updated version of Harrington on Holdem but penned by someone else, Jonathan Little. It’s still geared towards new and struggling players, but it also goes further than HoH, so experienced players will also get something out of this series, especially part 3 which is another workbook.

When it comes to explaining different aspects of the game Jonathan Little is very good, he’s also good at demonstrating how a slight change to the way a hand is played can dramatically alter the way you should play your hand, and I praise anyone who uses the “it depends” line –It depends is good analysis, not a copout.

If I was tasked with teaching someone tournament poker fundamentals this is the series I would turn to.

Kill Phil, Kill Everyone, The Raisers Edge

Another series (seeing the pattern yet?), but this time by a bunch of different authors,

Kill Phil et al. is the perfect complement to Secrets or HoH in that it will get you thinking about situations from a purely game theory perspective. Kill Phil assumes that you are up against a better player, and it teaches you how to frustrate these players and reduce the chance of being outplayed by using non-standard plays. As you get deeper into the series it switches to you (the reader)being the superior player.

The Kill series is by far the most interesting and thought provoking of the bunch, and since the first two volumes call for a seismic shift in standard poker theory this is a great food for thought read.

One final aspect of the Kill series is that it will help you understand and implement a push/fold strategy when you’re stack starts dwindling.

Every Hand Revealed

This is a great book to help hone your skills, not simply because Gus Hansen explains every hand on his way to the Aussie Millions title, but because you are put in real-world scenarios throughout a major tournament. So even if you don’t agree with Gus’s assessments, you can formulate your own strategies for each scenario –you can do the same with Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker Part 3 as well as the next series on this list.

Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time (3-part series)

Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time is another 3-part series, but this series is a bit different in that it’s essentially a hand history review by three tournament pros, Eric Lynch, Jon Turner, and Jon Van Fleet.

With the three authors all offering insights into each hand you can see where there are points of agreement, but more importantly, where they differ, which should instill in you the idea that sometimes there simply isn’t a right and a wrong answer.

If nothing else this series will get you thinking of the different possibilities for every hand you play.

Final thoughts on poker books

As I mentioned already, don’t buy a poker book thinking it’s going to turn you into a poker pro. At the same time don’t be one of the cynics on the poker forums who thinks poker books are a waste of money either. They have their pros and cons.

Even if a poker book fixes one minor leak in your game, or helps you better understand a particular concept it will be worth the $10-$25 price-tag in the long run.

Furthermore, you don’t have to implement the entire strategy laid out in the book, in fact you shouldn’t, as you’ll be little more than a parrot and easily exploitable. But you can pick and tinker with the strategies from all of the books listed above, which will allow you to either tweak your already solid game, or adjust on the fly based on the situation.

For instance, perhaps you think Jon Little is a great deep stack player, but prefer the short-stack strategies of another author. Or perhaps you found a particular bluff run by Dan Harrington usable in your games, wouldn’t that one bluff be worth $20 to you?

Finally, poker books also allows you to enter the head of particular players (the author) to see what they are thinking and why they might be making a certain play.