Poker Books and the Kindle

Like every good geek who plays poker, I have read books on poker, lots of books. So when I got my Kindle, I started thinking about how wonderful it would be to carry around my poker library with me. Poker books tend to be heavy and thick. And if you like to travel light like me, a few less poker books in your carry on bag would make a big difference.

Many of my favorite poker books are from Two Plus Two Publishing and none of them are available yet. Judging from this thread on their forums, they have no plans to release Kindle versions of their books. That’s a shame.

So what is available for the Kindle now? Well there are several books by Phil Helmuth. They all look like crap honestly. I don’t particularly like him anyway, but more importantly, I did once buy his book, “Play Poker Like the Pros” and returned it within a few hours. I just couldn’t read it and from what I did read, it was very light on useful advice.

There is one book that has his name on it that I started to read last winter, Phil Hellmuth Presents Read ‘Em and Reap. Thankfully, this was not written by Helmuth. It was better written and seemed much more useful. I’m considering buying it for my Kindle, since I don’t own a copy. Perhaps, I’ll download a sample and take a another look.

Phil Gordon’s book simply called Poker has good reviews, but it also looks very short on the kind of in depth strategy and tactics suggestions I enjoy.

Matt Lessinger’s The Book of Bluffs also looks promising but the reviews are decidedly mixed. I’ll have to find out more before I buy it.

There are a couple of non-fiction books about poker that I’ve read and enjoyed that are available. Poker Nation is a great read and Positively Fifth Street is also interesting. Lastly, One of a Kind, the story of Stu Ungar rise and fall in the poker world looks like it could be good. I’m downloading the sample of it and of Moneymaker. I’ll let you know if they are good.

I can’t be the only poker geek out there that would love to have copies of all my favorite poker books. The current lack of titles (only 36 show up when you search the Kindle store for ‘poker’) is probably an opportunity for some secondary poker authors to get noticed. If you are one of them, plead with your publisher to release your book in that format. I hope that Two Plus Two will come around soon as well, but I fear that they just don’t get it yet. If they wait too long, they might find another publisher will come along and challenge their lead in the poker books market.

UPDATE 3/22: Both the Moneymaker book and the book on Stu Ungar looked interesting. I downloaded the Ungar book and will have a review later.