I only recently began to play Hold'em. My dad taught me to play 5 Card Draw when I was a kid, but I never played a lot or got very good. Then a little while ago I discovered Hold'em, decided to try it out, and loved it. I primarily play online, and in honesty will probably do more of that than table poker for quite a while. I've been looking for a good book, wanting to make a proper purchase to get better at the game. I don't necessarily want a book that's only for online poker, but I want one that's at least online poker friendly, or applicable in online poker. Most of the books I've ran across that are just for online poker have horrible reviews, anyway.

I was thinking of The Theory of Poker, as I've heard such wonderful things about it, and I will own it eventually, but are there any other books, or similar books, that you guys could recommend?

I'm going to tell you what no one else seems to want to admit, or maybe just doesn't know: poker books really don't help much with online poker.

You'll learn about some theory and strategies, but it's a whole different thing to employ them. Here's the best things you can do to start off your online poker career:

Use FREE websites to study about poker math, general strategy and tactics.

Then here's the biggie: play, play and play!

I've read 6 different poker books, two of them that focused quite a bit on online play. You know how much they helped me? They gave me NAMES for strategies I see people using online, THAT'S IT! If you research how the chess grandmasters became grandmasters, one (if not the biggest) reason is because they've played so much Chess that they've seen every single situation and know how people act in those situations MOST of the time. Apply this philosophy in poker. The more you play, the more you'll familiarize with the way people generally bet in certain situations, and the more you'll know when to fold, call and raise.

where do u play hun, fancy swapping advice?

Thanks for your perspective, Dodge. Would you be so kind as to list some of those sites? I mean, I would at least like to see primers on note-taking if not other techniques. And I would at least like to try to learn from *others* mistakes hehe.

I disagree with Dodge, though I'm not sure what book to recommend.

Are you interested more in tournaments or cash?

This is great info, thank you. I'm definitely compelled to follow your advice!

I'm still grappling with calculating poker odds (like just what exactly are outs in every situation? How does going for a straight or flush factor in if you don't have 4 of the 5 cards on the flop?) and taking notes, and it would be great if I could really get a lowdown on those things, like commonly used shorthand terms, best way to take notes when that feature doesn't exist on a poker site, etc. I google online but I always just find these things glossed over in 2 or 3 paragraphs.

that url looks like spam....