Gambling Books - Page 3

The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success

Matthew Hilger; Ian Taylor

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Dimat Enterprises, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 4 new & used starting at $16.47

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

What "secret" separates top poker players from poker wannabes?

Is it zen-like mind-reading skills, a computer-like brain or thousands of hours of play? No. It is a series of established approaches and behaviors that enables these experts to bring their "A" game to the table session after session, regardless of short-term results.

In this groundbreaking book, Taylor and Hilger lay bare the secrets of the Poker Mindset: seven core attitudes and concepts that ensure you have the optimal emotional, psychological, and behavioral framework for playing superior poker.

The Poker Mindset deeply explores vital topics that most poker books only touch upon:
- Tilt: What it really is, why and when you are most prone to it, and how you can avoid it.
- Bankroll: A complete examination of bankroll management from a technical, but more importantly, from a psychological and emotional viewpoint.
- Opponents: How to determine your competitors' mental and emotional processes so that you can dominate, out think and outplay them.
- Downswings: Every poker player experiences them, but you will truly understand and be armed against low ebbs when they occur.
- Bad Beats: The Poker Mindset will enable you to overcome the trauma of bad beats and losing big pots.

Poker is a fun game, but it is even more fun when you win. The Poker Mindset may be the most valuable poker book you will ever read. Embrace its concepts and you can overcome the unseen obstacles that are limiting your success at the table.

When you make the Poker Mindset your mindset, you will take control of your game and walk away a winner.

Hoyle's Rules of Games, Third Revised and Updated Edition

Albert H. Morehead, Geoffrey Mott-Smith, Philip D. Morehead

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Signet Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $1.23

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hoyle's Rules of Games 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Book is NOT user friendly, did not help me learn the game of Hearts...book is written to those that already know more than I do and my friend agreed.

Waste of Paper 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Hoyle's Rules of Games, Third Revised and Updated Edition

There are easier to understand and more up-to-date descriptions of gameplay for most of the more popular games on the internet. The book is particularly weak on diagrams, which simplify understanding of many of the games tremendously. I would consider this book to be useful as supplementary information only; it would not be my first choice for learning a new game from scratch.

Excellent reference for card games & much more 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I first bought this book about 20 years ago. It is an excellent reference especially now that our children are of age to play advanced card games. I was looking for some new games to learn several years ago, and discovered what has become one of our favorites, Oh Hell. This book is essential if you play cards. Also included is good reference for various board games such as chess, checkers, backgammon, and some fun games for young kids.

Editorial Review:

This definitive book on games offers rules, strategies, and odds for more than 250 games, including:

* Scrabble(r) * Bridge * Chess * Backgammon * Minesweeper * Freecell * Gin Rummy * Canasta * Poker * and more.

Beginner's Guide to American Mah Jongg: How to Play the Game & Win

Elaine Sandberg, Tom Sloper

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Tuttle Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $9.17

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent Source of Information 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent book for beginners and great for those who have been taught by others but need more insight into the correct procedures of playing the game. The print is large, the color of the tiles is clear, and the format is such that each step is clearly understood. Exercises are given to help a person experience what is written. At the end of each section is a quiz to determine how well the material was absorbed. I highly recommend this book for an easy explanation of the game and the rules.

Excellent Resource 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This was an excellent introduction to American Mah Jongg. It was clear and gave me the ability to start playing right away. The exercises helped me understand the concpets and answered all of my questions as they came up. I highly recommend this book for someone starting to learn the game or for a refresher for those that haven't played in a long time.

Editorial Review:

A Beginner’s Guide to American Mah Jongg is the only book available which is specifically geared toward American mah jongg and follows the official National Mah Jongg League rules. Offering first-time players an easy-to-follow guide to this complex game, A Beginner’s Guide to American Mah Jongg includes simple instructions and clear diagrams to walk the reader through each step, including how to select a hand, how to play and how to develop winning strategies.

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

Ben Mezrich

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Free Press Amazon Marketplace: 368 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 426 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

#1 National Bestseller!
The amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T. students who beat the system in Vegas -- and lived to tell how.

Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.'s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.'s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world's most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies.

Filled with tense action, high stakes, and incredibly close calls, Bringing Down the House is a nail-biting read that chronicles a real-life Ocean's Eleven. It's one story that Vegas does not want you to read.

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book: Lessons and Teachings in No Limit Texas Hold'em

Phil Gordon

Amazon Price: $14.96 List Price: $22.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon Spotlight Entertainment Amazon Marketplace: 63 new & used starting at $7.49

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 114 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Phil Gordon plays poker with the best players in the world. He has won -- and lost -- in tournaments and cash games around the globe, all the while studying the game and learning from every hand dealt. As the resident expert and cohost of Celebrity Poker Showdown, Phil has quickly become one of the most sought-after teachers of No Limit Texas Hold'em. It's a tough game. But anyone can become a winning player with the right amount of courage, patience, aggression, observation, and, perhaps most important, dedication to becoming a better player.

After fifteen years of keeping notes on the things he's learned, the greats he's played with, and the celebrities he's taught, Phil Gordon has poured every single thing he knows about No Limit Texas Hold'em into this little green book. Taking a page from Harvey Penick's bestselling book of golf wisdom, Phil plays the role of both teacher and student, offering up insightful tips on how to think about poker and how to develop a singular style of play. Through philosophy, psychology, strategy, math, and the knowledge gleaned from playing poker with everyone from T. J. Cloutier and Phil Ivey to Hank Azaria and Ben Affleck, Phil breaks down the game into enlightening instructional tidbits and illustrative anecdotes that inspire the kind of persistence and motivation necessary to improve your game.

A book to rank with Doyle Brunson's Super System and David Sklansky's The Theory of Poker, Phil Gordon's Little Green Book deserves a spot on the shelf of every serious student of the game.

Hold'Em Poker for Advanced Players (Advance Player)

David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Two Plus Two Pub. Amazon Marketplace: 81 new & used starting at $8.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I was constantly breaking even before getting this book on online poker sites. After reading it, I took nearly all of the guesswork out of my playstyle and recently just bought a new guitar entirely with winnings.

I recommend this book to anyone who already considers themselves decent at poker and already has good intuition as to spotting how others play to determine what they have... or don't have. This book will not probably help you with those things. This book is best for those who are already good at poker but either have their game strategy wrong or off a little.

The best part of this book is it makes it much more easy to spot poor play from other people at your table and thus allows you to profit hugely from that.

Editorial Review:

Texas Hold ’em is not an easy game to play well. To become an expert you must balance many concepts, some of which occasionally contradict each other. In 1988, the first edition appeared. Many ideas, which were only known to a small, select group of players, were made available to anyone who was striving to become an expert, and the hold ’em explosion had begun. It is now a new century, and the authors have again moved the state of the art forward by adding over 100 pages of new material, including extensive sections on "loose games," and "short-handed games." Anyone who studies this text, is well disciplined, and gets the proper experience should become a significant winner. Some of the other ideas discussed include play on the first two cards, semi-bluffing, the free card, inducing bluffs, staying with a draw, playing when a pair flops, playing trash hands, desperation bets, playing in wild games, reading hands, and psychology.

Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I

Matt Flynn; Sunny Mehta; Ed Miller

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Worthwhile, but not worthy of all the glowing reviews 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I just completed reading this book, and I'm an active NL cash player. My overall impression: the book was absolutely worth the money, and worth the time spent reading. I'll get Vol II. I'd recommend the book to my poker playing friends.

Clearly, I think the book is overall pretty good. I don't, however, think the book deserves the level of praise it's getting here, because it does have it's flaws. Much of the core of the book revolves around SPR (simply: effective stack size / pre-flop pot size), and manipulating the pre-flop betting to get you the SPR that is ideal for your hand. But *why* are those SPRs desirable? He determines it based on how many pot-sized bets it takes to get you all in. That is a flaw, in my opinion - he builds into the math the assumption that bets and raises are the size of the pot. Sure, sometimes they are, but often they are not.

Don't get me wrong: your stack size absolutely effects how you play different types of hands. But he takes the idea of specific SPRs way further than it should really go; it's pretty core to his play style.

Another pet peeve I had was places where he recommended get pot committed / all-in "so that you don't have to face any tough decisions later in the hand". (He is not the only author that gives this advice, but it rankles me everywhere I see it). Basically he is saying, get your whole stack in, so that you don't have to make choices later. I think choices are a good thing, especially given that I'll see more cards and have a better basis for making decisions later - I don't want to self-limit my choices ahead of time! That advise is only worthwhile to someone who habitually gets bluffed off the best hand.

Over all, though, the book was good and I felt I got some valuable ideas from it. I like his ideas about planning out a whole hand early, and deciding if you will or will not get committed to a pot before you have put much into it. (I see so many players that call a few bets and suddenly realize on the turn that they already have 1/3 of their chips in).

Get it, read it, learn it, but in my opinion, take it with a (small) grain of salt.

Editorial Review:

No-limit hold em was once only a tournament game. Cash games were rarely spread in conventional poker rooms, let alone the Internet. All of that changed when the game exploded on television. No-limit cash games started sprouting up at casinos of all types. No-limit hold em is now the most popular form of poker. Tournaments pushed it to the forefront, and a great deal of money can also be won here despite that fact, many players feel frustrated with their results. They win some money, only to lose it all on one botched hand. This book teaches you how to play and think like a professional. It shows how to size your bets, manage the pot, manipulate your opponents, know when to go all-in, and avoid the big mistake. Do you understand critical no-limit concepts like The REM Process, The Commitment Threshold, and Stack-To-Pot Ratios? If not, this is the book for you.

Ace on the River: An Advanced Poker Guide

Barry Greenstein

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Last Knight Publishing Company Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $12.77

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 91 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

So good I bought it twice 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is far and away some of the best stuff that has been written on poker. I lost my copy and this book is so chalked full of info I had to buy it again! Barry Greenstein is the consummate professional and an excellent writer on top of that.

For those that like hand charts and theorem like explanations of how to play poker, you will not like this book.

For those that want the wisdom of one of pokers finest players, you will not be disappointed. Barry understands that a thorough understanding of mathematics and of poker is more the ludic elements that make up the physical game.

Editorial Review:

Ace on the River is designed to improve the play of everyone from beginners to seasoned professionals. The unique play-by-play section will challenge readers to think beyond simple starting hands and make better decisions on other streets.
Ace on the River addresses elements of the game that are unfamiliar to many players. Included are chapters on the poker society, money management, family matters and even sex. This complilation of philosophies and real-table scenarios provides a rare chance to see the poker world through the eyes of someone who lives it.

Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play

Ed Miller, David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Two Plus Two Pub. Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $9.29

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

For today’s poker players, Texas hold ’em is the game. Every day, tens of thousands of small stakes hold ’em games are played all over the world in homes, card rooms, and on the Internet. These games can be very profitable — if you play well. But most people don’t play well and end up leaving their money on the table.

Small Stakes Hold ’em: Winning Big with Expert Play explains everything you need to be a big winner. Unlike many other books about small stakes games, it teaches the aggressive and attacking style used by all professional players. However, it does not simply tell you to play aggressively; it shows you exactly how to make expert decisions through numerous clear and detailed examples.

Small Stakes Hold ’em teaches you to think like a professional player. Topics include implied odds, pot equity, speculative hands, position, the importance of being suited, hand categories, counting outs, evaluating the flop, large pots versus small pots, protecting your hand, betting for value on the river, and playing overcards. In addition, after you learn the winning concepts, test your skills with over fifty hand quizzes that present you with common and critical hold ’em decisions. Choose your action, then compare it to the authors’ play and reasoning.

This text presents cutting-edge ideas in straightforward language. It is the most thorough and accurate discussion of small stakes hold ’em available. Your opponents will read this book; make sure you do, too!

Elements of Poker

Tommy Angelo

Amazon Price: $29.95 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Tommy Angelo Amazon Marketplace: 8 new & used starting at $26.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Disappointing 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I don't know what the other readers searched in this book but I was looking forward an improvement in my game. Instead this book is all about words and discussion on poker world but NOT about poker strategy itself. I've recently bought about 15 poker books and this was by far the worst of them. Please save your money.

Editorial Review:

Beyond statistics, beyond whether to raise, call, or fold, Elements of Poker reveals a new world of profitability for your bankroll and your life. You know tilt costs you money, but do you know how to make it go away? You know position is important, but do you know how to cash in that knowledge? Elements of Poker will teach you all of this and much more. Tommy Angelo is a top tier poker coach, poker writer, and philosopher. Humorous and provocative, Elements of Poker turns conventional poker wisdom inside-out. Join professional, winning poker players like Ed Miller, Jay Rosenkrantz, and Lee Jones in reading what Al Schoonmaker calls "the most original poker book I've ever read." ---------------- Tommy's book is the best poker book I've ever read. -- Jay Rosenkrantz, a.k.a. KRANTZ