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Norman Welsh's Poker Library

My Name is Norman and I am a professional poker player from London, UK. On my personal website I want to introduce my favourite poker books. Here they are:

#1

The Book of Bluffs: How to Bluff and Win at Poker (Paperback)
By Matt Lessinger

The success of a poker player lies in his ability to bluff and position himself for bluffing. Bluffing needs timing, guts, and a remarkable poker sense. The bluff strategy is a poker player’s fundamental skill. You bluff to win! Pulling it off can be frightening but embarrassing when caught. Your bluffing scheme is a form of art that sometimes gets you in trouble but most of the times give you rewarding winnings if you know how to position yourself.

The Book of Bluffs reveals and teaches you the technique on psychologically estimating your opponent in an objective mathematical strategic option that simply withstands any hardened poker face tactic. This paperback offers 49 different bluff strategies with detailed explanation of what works or not in a given position. The book helps you realize and figure out the things you should be looking for when deciding a move.

The Book of Bluff gives you a great deal of information on how to respond to your opponent’s positional bluffs, identifying your opponent’s style, attacking the opponent’s weakness, and knowing when to change your own bluff tactic. If you do not know yet how to identify and manage your position, I advise you read The Book of Bluffs. You simply cannot ignore this highly critical topic because bluffing begins at the time you get yourself close to the button or finds yourself as the last player to act. This is a very advantageous situation, The Book of Bluff teaches you how to evaluate your opponent’s act and see all action before you bluff and win. If you intend to win outright without any sort of confrontation, take the bluffing tips this book gives you. The best lesson is the actual game. Read The Book of Bluff first and understand the art of bluffing before you aggressively set yourself out for a good card game. 

#2

Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players
By David Skllansky and Mason Malmuth


This book first discusses the traditional style such as calculating odd pots, position, and the opening hands. The first half discusses essential topics about the game and I advise you memorize and know the lessons by heart. Your ability to calculate pot odds will likely separate you from the boys. The second half discusses general slow play, difficult hands, and semi-bluff topics. The book presents a variety of details and situations about the game’s basic concept but presents sophisticated details that are for advanced Hold’em poker players, which could be way beyond the simple understanding of a beginner poker player. The pre-flop play and hand rankings are quite difficult for beginners still trying to understand the flow of the game. The book’s later chapters described several advanced plays that give you an idea of how to win after the flop especially the middle limits.
It makes sense reading first a simplified version of Hold’em poker before reading this book for advanced players. You might find some difficulty understanding the basic poker theory detailed in the later chapters. The Texas Hold’em poker game is not easy to understand because you need to read and balance several Hold’em concepts that sometimes do not agree with each other. An interested poker player determined to study the content of this book achieves the right discipline and experience to make himself a natural winner. This book covers the semi-bluffing, inducing bluffs, reading hands, opponent psychology, playing with trash hands, playing in wild games, staying with a draw, and putting on desperation bets.
The book Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players provides a wealth of knowledge and experience for players wanting to forward to the next level of the game. Although the level of play described in the book are a bit complicated, you can experience the game by actually understanding the concept than merely reading it. 

#3

Winning Low Limit Hold’em
By Lee Jones

This book is the simplified version and the recommended book to read before Texas Hold’em advanced book. The Winning Low Limit Hold’em recently updated its content to cover the online poker as well as the single table no limit hold’em tournament. This book expanded its content to give players who are interested to learn the game a better grasp and experience of the game. This has been the standard reference and serves as the introductory book to the Texas Hold’em. If you intend to become a top hold’em poker player, this book gives you the basic ideas and techniques to understand and play the game especially right on the 4-8 game. This book helps you understand the basic as well as the advanced books you plan to read. Obviously, you need to tweak some tactics and recommendations to fit your own style and the particular game you play to achieve more of the book’s benefits.

The basic content of this book makes it very different from the other poker books in the market. Winning Low Limit Hold’em very basic content gives you the edge to re-study the basics of the game and thoroughly understand the fundamentals of the advanced poker context with all the recommendations that could give you significant winnings. It details the standards, play of the straight, betting for value, position, and the flush draw in Hold’em broken into chapters such as the “Playing before the flop in the early position”, and many more chapters to make the presentation more simple and understandable.

Lee simply discussed the selected 12 hands than the 65 hands to play in the position. He practically teaches you to start with the basic position, improve, and learn as you go with the game while teaching you in a progressive manner which hands to add. He even had a chapter dedicated to explaining and preventing the trash hand. You can save a great deal of losses if you read this book first before advancing to the other Hold’em poker advanced books. This book gives you a reasonable and a very accessible introduction to the Hold’em game explaining the critical tools in creating low limits winnings.

#4

Improve your Poker (paperback)
By Bob Ciaffone

Improve your Poker contains a collection of information that details the techniques and skills you need to learn and understand to be able to play a good poker game. The book discusses various poker plays such as no-limit holdem, pot-limit Omaha, and the limit holdem oriented for the advanced and the intermediate poker players. Beating your opponent requires more than plain general strategies. The complex strategy you need to know by deeply understanding the game from careful thought and expanding the poker game away from the table. The quickest way is to learn from experience and note what these great players do. Know the reason behind their decision to use a certain position or bluff. Think what makes the best and smartest Holdem poker players the best in their game.

The author Bob Ciaffone collected and organized his collection of poker essays he had personally written in the past. Bob Ciaffone wrote many poker books, maintains regular column writing all about poker, and teaches poker at the same time. He is a professional and one of the best poker players in the world. His students even won a tournament prize amounting to more than $2 million. Improve your Poker has the most well reasoned explanation and list of the most important principles of Holdem poker that can help improve your game in a significant way. This is the only book I have read that gives the best bluffing description and position. I certainly agree on the excellent information he describes about big betting games. He describes the big bet poker situations well.  Ciaffone simply has more than 50 years experienced of the poker game. The author organized the topics well starting with the most general topics and then moving to the specific ones.
            

#5

The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success (Paperback)
By Matthew Hilger and Ian Taylor

In this book, the authors Taylor and Hilger reveals the secrets and techniques on how to develop zen-like mind-reading skills that could separate you from poker wannabes as a top poker player. Developing a computer-like brain requires a step-by-step understanding and practicing of established behaviors and approaches that could bring you a good game to your poker table session regardless of results. This book explores and reveals the crucial information about acquiring the correct poker mindset. This includes the seven core attitudes, approaches, and ideas that will help you attain the right emotional, behavioral, and psychological framework to bring an excellent poker session. Poker is a great fun game to play but it would be more fun if you start winning the game. This book the Poker Mindset helps you realize and understand the context of the game and some great concepts that could help you identify and overcome unseen obstacles during the poker table session, which most of the time limits your success of winning. 

Developing what you read in this book, The Poker Mindset, will help you prevent incurring bad beats as well as losing future big pots. You will discover and develop your skills that can help you take control of the game table and become a sure winner. Read and learn how to identify and determine your opponents’ emotional and mental processes to outplay them and dominate the game. The book did a good job detailing some poker realities such as bad beats, coping with loss, and applying your new poker mindset effectively at your session table. The authors devoted an entire chapter explaining how your life experiences affects your playing habits giving more insight about your thought processes and instincts that may influence your way of thinking, reacting to things, and goal setting. Learn how to change your thinking or mind set and acquire the skills on how to adapt a new mindset so you can play good quality poker game in winning fun way. If you intend to be the best poker player in your town, you should not miss reading this book. Becoming a winner is all about changing and adapting a new mindset and behavior! 

#6

The Theory of Poker
By David Sklansky

The Theory of Poker introduces and details the fundamental concept of the poker game, its implications, and the value of psychology and deception. The book further discusses the context of the slow-play, heads-up play, position, free card, semi-bluffing, and the implied odds of the game theory. This includes discussions about the high five-card draw, hold’em, seven-card lowball stud, and other variations of the game as such as lowball draw. David Sklansky presented his experiences and ideas in a simple, subtle, but deep way you will absolutely understand and learn the experience just by reading. The Theory of Poker is the world’s comprehensive book and guide to playing and winning the poker game. The book provides you the techniques on how to outwit your opponents in the poker table and play your game successfully. The author brings the readers a good insight to all factors that a good player identifies and practices during the game, detailing the fundamental theory behind each factor, and the expected reaction and thought processes of the advanced players playing the game. I recommend this book to those who wanted to learn how to be the best player in the world of poker. This book is also good for the advanced players review and become more accurate with his bluffs. You surely cannot be a master of the game in one reading. You need to read and review this book as you experience and apply your knowledge while developing your skills on the poker table. 

#7

Winning Methods of Bluffing & Betting in Poker (paperback)
By Lynne Taetzsch

Winning a poker game requires an adaptation of clever behavior and mental alertness as well as anticipating and memorizing mathematical possibilities from every position and hand you decide to implement and draw. Lynne Taetzsch book of Winning Methods of Bluffing & Betting in Poker teaches you how to play smart by observing the other players reactions and choices in the poker table. Many players do the mistake of merely picking up cards and just pushing bets for the sake of playing thinking that is the normal reaction to get into action with the other players in the table. The book will help you realize and change your way of thinking and reaction to the game by revealing true to life experiences and techniques of concealment and intimidation that will help you win and control the game at the table. The author teaches you perfect strategies, positions, and hands that will hide your weakness and maximize your strength during the game. This book is not just all about techniques and figuring out statistics on betting but also covers the emotional and psychological aspects a top poker player must have. You need to buy this book to widen your experience and develop more skills in the process. 

#8

Caro’s Book of Poker Tells (Paperback)
By Mike Caro

Become a winner and learn how to read your opponents’ thoughts, anticipate his next move, and counter his bluff or position. You must have realized by now that most of the best poker players win because of their psychological and emotional skills in concealing their moves and in interpreting the moves of their opponents. This book Caro’s Book of Poker Tells helps you identify information about your opponents cards based from their revealing physical reaction. Watch and interpret the player’s sigh, shrug, and hand or even what their eyes reveal when you gain eye contact. The other poker players’ actions reveal a lot about the cards they are holding than you can imagine. Your meaningful interpretation to their behavior and mannerism is your edge to employing a strategy for bluffing. The book gives about 170 photos to illustrate action of players for each sample play. 

Mike Caro is an authority on poker psychology, statistics, and strategy. He explains the art of playing the poker game in a different manner. He teaches you to focus on the game as well as your ability to develop simple theories of tells such as understanding the intentions and the motives of your opponents on the table. This is like walking in with an initial investment of $200 on a poker table and walking away with a $10,000 winnings if you can master and understand the skill to read your opponents motives. The only secret you need to know is getting a library of knowledge about tells and win the pots in the process. Your knowledge of tells can make you win the hands that your cards may dictate and the cards that your opponents do not merit. Tells can help you play a better game with a wise choice of cards and prevent getting into the situation of trap hands. If you want to know your opponent’s weakness and win a pot raising a bet at the right moment, then read this Caro’s Book of Poker Tells and learn.

#9

The Psychology of Poker
By Alan N. Schoonmaker

The game of poker is a complicated process that requires comprehensive understanding and varied experience of the psychological process that is taking you and your opponents to lose or win the game at the table. Winning the game definitely demands varied skills and effective strategies, which includes appropriate aggression, understanding tells, reading hands, proper hand selection, semi-bluffing, telegraphs, and the semi-bluffing. Remember that no one wins by following natural reactions and actions. The best players wins by reading the opponents minds and choosing the right psychology and strategy at a certain game.
This book, The Psychology of Poker, provides psychological overview and strategic advice based from the psychological overview of a certain game situation. The author’s goal is to make you see how certain psychological factors influence your decision as well as your opponents’ decision to play strategically. You need to understand that many players know the theory of poker but still play poorly. This book explains about your mindset and behavior. Why do you play the game the way you want to play? Learn and understand the strategy to apply your theory and knowledge about poker properly. Make your strategic adjustments and improve your game results. Play better and then enjoy your game more by winning more. This book actually gives you a better insight on how to play with a specific style that your opponents may be aware but are not using. The Psychology of Poker brings you to the reality of the game where players decide based on cards and logic specifically reading other players’ body language. Do not buy the book if you only want to read and kill. You need to understand the basic theory of poker, achieve some technical skills, and then make a kill. I recommend this book for both beginners and advanced players. You can actually learn the skill by reading it over and over and then applying what you learn. You need to go back to the basics and read again either you fail or you win in your practice. You will only understand when you learn and understand the process when you read it repeatedly and experience the same thing in different situations, in different tables, and with different set of opponents. 

#10

Big Deal: One Year as a Professional Poker Player
By Anthony Holden

Do you want to spend your life like Anthony Holden? You need a large reservoir of confidence and knowledge to obtain one like his experience. Inspire yourself with the interesting life of Anthony Holden who is a British biographer turned into one of the toughest poker player in the world. This book Big Deal relates the author’s one-year experience as a professional player of poker at the places of Las Vegas, Morocco, and the Malta. He spent days and nights with the legendary poker players of the world, sharpened his skills, perfected his strategy and repartee, and in the process learned a great deal about poker and his self. He claims that the game of poker is like a game of chess where people win or lose and where the game brings out the worst or the best among its players. People who had read the book often talks about his hair-raising experience. The book tells about his funny genuine insight of the poker game. If you love to hear about inspiring stories, then this book is for you. The thrilling victories, crushing decision of bad beats, unbelievable bad and good luck, and the strategies he used to win or lose a game will surely take you to the depth of the life of a poker’s dramatic hands. The story is simply fascinating and captivating. Are you planning to chase your dream? Read this book first before you drop everything. The details of his experience and the suspense you feel when reading the book will make you decide if you are ready to drop and move to chase your dreams being the toughest poker player of the world.