Product Reviews

Many poker professionals have been catapulted to fame by their performance on televised poker.

Amarillo Slim Preston, among others, has been quoted as saying "Poker is a game of people," and to a lesser extent about cards.

If this is true, and poker players generally take this as an axiom, then we must conclude that the history of poker is much more about the people who played the game than the hands they played. Certainly, this is the approach taken by Des Wilson throughout his examination of the history of the game in his book, "Ghosts at the Table."

Worth Reading More Than Once Russell Fox, co-author of two previously well-respected poker books, Mastering No-Limit Hold'em and Why You Lose at Poker-both with Scott Harker-has now teamed with Nick Christenson for a book that could be this year's blockbuster. It's Winning Strategies for No-Limit Hold'em, focusing on some advanced concepts that few books have yet covered in depth.

The game of poker consists of two entities-fish and fishermen. The fish could be newcomers who don't know much beyond what they've seen on TV or old timers who never wanted or never bothered to learn the tricks of the game. The fishermen are the players who have watched the fish, learned how they swim, and then baited hooks and cast nets to catch them one by one.

That is precisely the focus of James McKenna's newest edition to your poker library must-haves, Beyond Traps-The Anatomy of Poker Success.

Mike Caro is one of poker's most prolifi c and most readable instructors. He is the author of more than a dozen poker strategy texts and several very helpful videos that focus on beginning to advanced poker strategies. His latest title, Most Profi table Hold'em Advice-The Complete Missing Arsenal, is well worth reading.

Online poker has introduced many new developments to this beloved game.

One of these is the advent of intentionally short-handed tables. Despite the popularity of these games, few books have been devoted to examining the special circumstances surrounding short-handed play. One of the few to do so is Limit Hold'em: Winning Short- Handed Strategies by Terry Borer and Lawrence Mak, with assistance from Barry Tanenbaum.

In 2005, the book Kill Phil caused quite a stir in the poker community. It advocated a "push or fold" nolimit hold'em tournament strategy that, while sounding simplistic, is remarkably effective. In late 2007 a new volume appeared from most of the same team that brought us Kill Phil. This book, Kill Everyone, provides even more advanced information on playing strategies in nolimit tournaments, as well as suggestions for playing sit- 'n-go tournaments and short handed cash games.

You have probably already read Super System by Doyle Brunson-the book poker players like to call "The Bible." I'm sure you've also read the followup titled Super System 2, along with the Theory of Poker by David Sklansky and anything written by Dan Harrington. I always recommend those books to novice players but I also give them a few non-poker titles, because there are many valuable lessons that poker players can learn by reading them. Here are three books that you might like...

Sam Farha is considered to be one of the best Omaha players on the poker circuit. Fans of televised poker know his face, recognize the unlit cigarette that dangles between his lips, wonder about his style, and want to know what he knows.

For Farha on Omaha, he teamed up with Storms Reback (co-author of All- In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker) to produce a well-written, well-priced book for all who play limit Omaha, pot-limit Omaha and Omaha eight or better-a text that reveals many of the techniques that made him so formidable at the tables.

The title of the book, Your Worst Poker Enemy comes from a Stu Ungar quote, and it means that our own internal shortcomings are the biggest obstacle we face to improving as poker players. In Ungar's case, this is undeniable, but I believe it's true for every other poker player as well. In this book, Schoonmaker explores the road blocks that we set up for ourselves that prevent us from being the best poker players that we possibly can be.