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Small Stakes Hold'em: Winning Big With Expert Play

Rating: 9/10

Cost: $24.95

The Nuts: Teaches good limit hold ‘em skills from every possible angle.

The Muck: If you find something lacking in this book, you let me know.

Recommended For: Intermediate-Advanced Limit Holdem Players

Ed Miller, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth triumph with Small Stakes Holdem: Winning Big With Expert Play. Hands down, this is a must-read for every limit hold'em poker player, even if you only plan on playing tournaments for the rest of your life.

We’ve all had to suffer through numerous tables filled with poor to mediocre players who make calls for reasons you stay up all night thinking about. This is the book to read if you want to get some sleep at night because this book will help you beat bad players.

Aimed at small stakes limit hold ‘em ($10-$20), Sklansky and Malmuth team up with Ed Miller (MIT graduate) to combine theory and reality and present their findings in this book. Ed Miller’s pragmatic touch can be easily identified if you have read any other book written by Sklansky and Malmuth. Not only is the text cohesive, but no major elements of a low-limit game is left out.

This book is best suited for intermediate-advanced players because of the need to understand how you are changing your game to beat bad players. Where some books teach you to play tight, and others teach you to be aggressive, this book will teach you how to “attack” in ways that almost read as playing “loose.”

Essentially, you will learn how to make money by taking advantage of other people’s weaknesses rather than solely relying on your strengths. “Be glad your opponents refuse to fold,” write the authors, “if they didn’t, you just might go broke.”

Broken down into seven parts, Small Stakes Holdem deconstructs nearly every piece of a low-limit game and makes suggestions on how to beat the plays and players who wouldn’t know how to fold even if you took their cards out of their hands yourself.

The authors touch on how to play nearly any two cards—suited, unsuited, connected, pairs, Big Slicks and “don’t bothers.” They’ve thrown in an array of charts, odds, diagrams, and hand quizzes.

With this book you’ll be covered from pre-flop action through the river card showdown, and everything in between. Their sections on draws alone are worth the price of the book.

This book will not only save your sanity, it will make you money. Read this book until it wears out and then buy another one. You’ll be thinking about limit poker in entirely new ways.

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