Best Books to Learn Poker: Read and Win!

Poker is not an easy game, and requires thorough understanding of the strategies. Those who want to stay ahead of the curve need every bit of help they can get. Books are one of the best sources of organised information you can find on the subject of poker, and one of the best ways to improve your poker game. Unfortunately, some poker books are not applicable in today’s games; whereas some will greatly improve your game, despite their age. In our article, we have compiled a list of best books to learn poker for you. 

There are nearly 500 different books to learn poker on the market today. Whatever you wish to learn, read, or know about the game, you will undoubtedly find several helpful poker books to pique your interest.

Although it might be difficult to know which poker books are worth reading and which are over-hyped. Thus, for your ease, we have compiled a list of best books to learn poker and master your skills. So before visiting online poker sites in the US, read our list of the best books to learn poker.

What are the best books to learn poker?

Let’s have a look at the list of best books to learn poker:

Master Micro Stakes Poker by Alton Hardin:

This book an excellent choice for someone who is beginning their poker journey in the cash game realm. We all have to start somewhere and the micro-stakes is a place where you can learn how to play solid poker without breaking the bank. However, the micro-stakes do require some specific adjustments in order to maximise your expected value. This book lay theses adjustments out in an easy to read and comprehensive format. This book boasts almost 400 pages of content across 30 chapters which covers everything from setting up your HUD to playing against limper, how to study the game, and player profiling.  The book has a great number of positive reviews, just like Intertops Poker.

Excelling at No-Limit Hold’em by Jonathan Little:

Wouldn’t it be thrilling to read the insights and tips from 17 of the top poker pros across the globe all in the one book? This is what Jonathan Little has put together in this book. And as a result he created one of the best poker books of the last 10 years. You must be a competent poker player before diving into this one. This book doesn’t hunt into the basics and jumps head first into more advanced topics.

Excelling at No-Limit Hold’em will make you rethink some of the ideas and strategies you have had ingrained for years. The topics in the book include understanding the fundamentals, satellite play, lower-buy in events, analysing poker tells and moving up in stakes. You will then move onto a thorough technical breakdown of the game. Including sections on range analysis, game theory optimal play, short stack strategies, value betting and final table play.

Modern Poker Theory by Michael Acevedo:

Poker is on an inevitable path towards being solved by computers and debatably has some restricted circumstances. This means that much of the learning we will take from the game going forward will be based on theory derived from solvers. This is where Modern Poker Theory by Michael Acevedo comes in. This poker book contains almost 500 pages of content. Starting from simple concepts such as minimum defence frequency to applying GTO concepts to multi-way situations and using modern poker solvers.

The book walks through how to take into account stack depth, position and other factors to modify these base ranges for many of the common situations you will encounter.

How To Study Poker Volume 2 by Sky Matsuhashi:

The book is sub-titled “A Proven Playbook For Increasing Your Poker Skills Through Dedicated Daily Study”. It is a template that you can use to study poker and improve your game very quickly.

Studying is not always easy and often the most difficult part is simply getting started. But getting started is easy with the strategies given in this book. Sky gives you a 28-day template where you’ll see all the content he studied. His hand reading practices, his database reviews and filters, many poker equity calculations and all the lessons he learned throughout this process.

The Course by Ed Miller:

The Course by Ed Miller takes a different approach to many of the other poker books on the list. Forget concentrating on how your opponent is playing. You should instead concentrate on your own game and “control the controllables”.

The hypothesis of this book stems from golf where players are often taught to not think about other players or the scoreboard and instead just play the course. While this at first may seem to go against a lot of what conventional poker or even Hollywood’s pokers would suggest (i.e. poker is all about playing the player), this approach has a merit. And in fact this is the same approach that a theoretically optimal player would use.

You can learn more about Intertops Poker here.