If you are determined to become a winning poker player, it is in your best interest to start picking up a few poker books. Many people, including me, can be reluctant to splash out $20 on a book when the money can be invested on the poker table. But I can tell you from my own personal experience that some books are worth the price ten times over.

The strategy and advice in the books has accumulated from years of play at the tables, and it designed to speed up the learning process of understanding good poker strategy. If you are relatively new to the game or have been playing for a number of months or even years, you can save time from trial and error at the tables, and learn solid strategy from a pro that knows what he or she is talking about.

You may be reluctant as I first was to buy a book, and decide to teach yourself through practice and more practice at the tables. This is fair enough, but not only will it take you longer to learn how to win, but also poker is an abnormally difficult game to learn from through trial and error. If you make one certain play in a hand and it works out well due to a fluke, you may feel that the way that you played the hand was correct as you ended up winning. However, the fluke allowed you to get lucky and win the hand, and so if you employ the same strategy every hand then you will be losing money in the long run. This is why it is difficult to learn to play a game like poker well, as many outcomes are based on the luck of the cards as well as the strategy.

There are numerous books out there, ranging from strategy for the different poker variants to true life stories about famous poker players. Although the storybooks are interesting to read, they will not do much in the way of improving your game. A great book that is highly recommended by myself and other poker players is the ‘Theory Of Poker’ by David Sklansky. This is an absolutely fantastic book that provides information on all of the fundamental concepts of the game, which can then be applied to any form of poker. It is said that there are two types of poker player; those that have read Theory Of Poker, and those that haven’t.

However, if you are looking for something more specific to your game after reading the Theory Of Poker, there are plenty of books out there that can take your game to the next level. You should read through the book reviews on Amazon before committing yourself to purchasing a book, because there are some that will inevitably be better than others. Try to remember though, that however good you may think you can be, there is always going to be room for improvement. So start reading!