Originally Posted by George

Harrington's anything is good, but harrington on hold 'em is a must have. Haven't read the new one.

thanks George I was thinking maybe it would be best to go with Harrington on CG rather than HOH because as I heard HOH is mainly geared towards playing in tournaments and HCG is more on cash games, right now I play cash games tournaments would be something for the near future right now I want to mold my skills on cash games. But I like HOH its a long volume and it has a lot of hand analysis which is great

I've also read the Harrington on Holdem -- just the MTT books though.

Although I liked the books too, the one thing I will say is that without a little bit of experience (say 50 or 100 tournaments), it might be difficult to fully grasp anything. I read the book when I first started playing, and it didn't make a ton of sense to me. I now remember things written in the book a couple of years after I read them. It could just be my learning style though (I learn better with pictures and hands on as opposed to text).

Sorry haven't read Harrington on Cash as much prefer tournament play. Gl and best advice is pay attention to your opponents and make good notes most difficult thing to disguise is your tendancies and you can use this against other players

Crushing SSNL by jeremy steinhausen is the best poker book out right now. Helped me get better in 2011, but its a little bit advanced for beginners, so keep that in mind before you make a purchasing decision. For $40, its amazing for what you learn.

I would recommend Doyle Brunson's Super System 2. There is a lot of good information on a variety of games.

May I ask, are these books actually readable for players that are pretty new to the scene? The reason I ask is that I've picked up maybe 5 different books in the last week and they're so laden with jargon that I have to hit google twice a paragraph to look up the definitions of terms, and half the time the definitions are loaded with more jargon!

I've got a strong technical mind, plenty of spare time, and would love to learn poker properly, but need to get started in the right place.

Many thanks

Try a poker teaching website you can often sign up free and get bankrolled on affiliate websites. I was on a very good one no names mentioned lol which had basic intermediate advanced etc courses and was geared towards online poker. It taught me loads of jargon and how it was applied without confusing me and might be a good place to start it also has starting hand charts etc.

Thanks Peter. Any chance you'd be willing to make a few suggestions? I could trawl through teaching sites until I find a "good" one IMO, but truth be known I probably don't actually know what a good one is