Your World Series of Poker Reading List

When James McManus went to Binion's Horseshoe Casino in 2000 to parlay his $4,000 advance for an article on the World Series of Poker into an entry into the main event - a journey immortalized in his classic book Positively Fifth Street - he took along a few books to help him prepare to play poker with the big boys: Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'em by T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy, Theory of Poker by David Sklansky, Tournament Poker by Tom McEvoy, and what he calls "the mother of poker advice books": Super/System by Doyle Brunson. He must have learned something; McManus won a satellite into the main event, finished fifth in the field of 512, and took down a prize of $247,000 and change.

It would be foolish of me to assert that the sole reason he did so well was because of his investment in a few poker books. But if you're planning on competing in this year's WSOP, make a modest investment in some good books to help you hone your skills. The tomes McManus studied are good, but you've got a much better selection to choose from: The bookshelf devoted to tournament poker is bigger than ever. So, here's your summer reading list. Do your homework. And get ready for the biggest game in town.

Be Ready to Kill Phil
If you're a rank beginner and somehow find yourself with a seat in any of the no-limit hold'em events, recognize that you're the deadest of dead money - and buy one book: Kill Phil: The Fast Track to Success in No-Limit Hold'em Poker Tournaments by Blair Rodman and Lee Nelson. The authors, both professional poker players, have taken a simple strategy first proposed by David Sklansky in his excellent 2002 book Tournament Poker for Advanced Players and expanded it into a surprisingly compelling strategy for novice players.

Sklansky created his no-brainer system for the daughter of a casino owner who had never played poker before. He gave her just two rules:

1. "If someone else has raised in front of you, move in all your chips with aces, kings, or ace-king suited. Otherwise, fold.

2. "If no one else has raised in front of you, move in all your chips with any pair, any ace-other suited, ace-king (suited or offsuit), or two suited connected cards, except for four-trey or trey-deuce."

That's the essence of "The System": all in or fold. It's an approach guaranteed to frustrate the "Phils" of the title of the book (for example, Hellmuth, Ivey, Laak, and Gordon - but Rodman and Nelson really mean any competent tournament player). Why? Because good players "hate to go all-in before the flop, even if they suspect they have a small edge by doing so," the authors write. "They would much rather spar than slug it out." The all-in move is the ultimate knockout punch.

If all in or fold was all there was to the book, you could save your money, obviously. But while that's the essence of Kill Phil, Rodman and Nelson add more than a few wrinkles to it to give you the best chance to win. They modify the starting-hand requirements, for example, articulate how to play against large stacks and small ones, and discuss how to change your approach as you get deeper into the event. In fact, if you make it all the way to the "Kill Phil Expert" level, you'll have a reasonably sophisticated approach to your tournament.

You can read Kill Phil on the plane to Las Vegas, even if you're flying in from Reno, but you'll do better if you absorb its lessons well before the WSOP and, most important, practice execution. It takes discipline - and fortitude. The "Kill Phil" strategy is easy to describe, but it's not for the faint of heart. Every time you move in, you face elimination; as Rodman and Nelson acknowledge, "You need to accept the fact that you could get knocked out the first time you play a hand."

So if you're going to read only one book, this is it. (Note that if you're already a good player, you should be aware of the Kill Phil strategy; I suspect that more than a few players will be employing it this year, so you should understand it - and have a plan for counteracting it.)

Learn to Play Small Ball From Dan Harrington
If mastering Kill Phil is like earning an associate degree at a community college, then mastering Harrington on Hold'em: Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments: Strategic Play (Vol. I) and Harrington on Hold'em: Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments: Endgame (Vol. II) is a graduate degree from MIT. Dan Harrington won the main event in 1995 and made it to three other main-event final tables (in 1987, 2003, and 2004). He knows what he's writing about (and he's ably assisted by co-author Bill Robertie, a world-class backgammon player and author of many books on that game). These two volumes are simply brilliant, and I can't imagine entering any tournament without having read and studied them. In fact, I am constantly rereading these books continuously; I either learn something new or gain a deeper, better understanding of something I already knew every time I open them.

Volume I covers the basics, including playing styles, starting hands, pot odds and hand analysis, and preflop and post-flop betting. Harrington adopts the approach of chess guides: He poses situations, asks the relevant questions, and then provides solutions. A simple diagram depicts position, blinds, and chip stacks, and then a specific challenge is articulated.

For example:

"Situation: Online single-table tournament. You are the chip leader with eight players left. The players are generally aggressive and most pots are contested.

"Your hand: 8 6.

"Action to you: Players A and B fold. Player C calls [the blind of] $100. Player D folds. Pot is now $250. Question: What's your play?"

Then the authors provide commentary, typically for a few possible courses of action and for multiple streets. Obviously, the situations you encounter won't match these letter for letter, but that's fine; Harrington's goal is to focus on specifics in order to teach you general principles.

Volume II is even more valuable because it focuses on elements of the game not often treated in poker how-to books. In particular, it includes a lengthy discussion of what Harrington calls "Inflection Points": "how the strategy for proper play changes as your stack shrinks in relation to the blinds." You'll learn the importance of "M" - "the ratio of your stack to the current total of blinds and antes" (called M after Paul Magriel, another backgammon expert turned poker thinker) and "Q," "the ratio of your stack to the average number of chips left for each player."

Harrington's books resulted in an immediate improvement in my own tournament play, and if you're willing to study them, I am confident you'll come to feel the same as I do. A third volume, a workbook to test your knowledge of the material in Volumes I and II, was recently released.

David Sklansky and the Theoretical Approach

Mike Caro may be the mad genius of poker, but David Sklansky is just a genius, having written definitive works on several games and the much-praised The Theory of Poker that McManus cited in Positively Fifth Street. His own contribution to tournament poker - Tournament Poker for Advanced Players - is the book for players who are confident about their poker skills and prefer a more theoretical approach to tournament strategy. He was one of the first thinkers to articulate the significant differences between tournament play and cash games, and his idea of the "Gap Concept" ("you need a better hand to play against someone who has already opened the betting than you would need to open yourself") is absolutely crucial to tournament success.

The book does contain actual hands (from hold'em and several other games), but the emphasis is more on general principles than Harrington's book. He covers a range of topics, including satellites, rebuy tournaments, making deals, how to play against short stacks and large ones, and - one of my favorite bits of poker strategy - when to fold pocket aces. He concludes with a quiz section to test your knowledge.

If you're a fan of Sklansky's style and approach - if you think, for example, that The Theory of Poker is a seminal text (which it is!) - you'll definitely improve your level of tournament expertise by studying Tournament Poker for Advanced Players.

Playing to Win Vs. Playing to Survive
When I went to the WPT Poker Boot Camp, Mike Sexton summed up the difference between the old-school and new-school approaches to tournament poker. "We used to believe that the right strategy was to survive until the end and then play to win," he said. "But the people winning today are in there mixing it up. Tight players don't win poker tournaments." And two-time WPT champion Erick "E-Dog" Lindgren is the embodiment of the new school; in his book Making the Final Table, he makes it clear that "tournament poker is not about survival; tournament poker is about accumulating chips." The strategy he outlines is the kind of small-ball poker that the Kill Phil approach is designed explicitly to counteract, and it can be a valuable approach for players who can play well after the flop. But if Lindgren's aggressive, "let's see a flop" style doesn't suit your own, it can be disastrous. You'll find yourself in a lot of pots, bleeding off your chips, and you'll be forced to make a lot of difficult decisions.

Even if you're not a solid "small ball" player, it's useful to know how players like E-Dog approach tournaments: They play to win, not to cash. But if you'd be happy just making the money, consider the approach of Phil Gordon. He writes that "tournaments are about survival" in the tournament poker section of his fine Phil Gordon's Little Green Book. The book isn't explicitly written for tournament players, but the 40 pages he devotes to the topic are quite good. If you can't stomach the idea of Kill Phil, and you don't have the discipline to master Harrington or Sklansky, you could do worse than study Gordon's chapter on tournament poker.

Appreciate the Event
If you cram for weeks, if you really strive to master the material in these books, you'll definitely improve your chances of making the money. But after you've put in your long, lonely hours at the desk with the books I've mentioned here, give your brain a rest from strategy, moves, and poker math. Read something that will help you appreciate this unique event in the world of gaming, the holy grail for every poker player.

At the top of the list, of course, is the seminal poker narrative The Biggest Game in Town by the British poet and critic Al Alvarez. This very literary book, which first appeared as a two-part series in the New Yorker magazine, covers the 1980 WSOP and captures the essence of Las Vegas and high-stakes poker. (See my article on the book and Alvarez in Card Player, Vol. 19/No. 12.) You also should know a bit of the history of the event, dreamed up as a publicity stunt by Benny Binion, so pick up All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker by Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback. For players new to the game, it's amazing to read about the evolution of the world's richest sporting event over the past 35 years. And by all means you should read James McManus' Positively Fifth Street. His improbable run at the WSOP is the stuff that dreams are made of, and he takes you on a highly personalized journey through Las Vegas and the tournament itself.

Whatever you read and however you prepare, I wish you well at this year's World Series of Poker. I hope to read about your triumphs in future histories of the event. Good luck! Now, hit the books.

P.S.: Just as I was finishing this article, I got a new book in that horribly named "Idiot's Guides" series: The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Tournament Poker by poker author David Apostolico. As you might suspect, it's a user-friendly introduction to tournament play and it contains some good advice, but it's really designed for the rank amateur. If you're going to pony up $1,500 to $10,000 for one of the events at the WSOP, you are, I hope, beyond the need for this book. But if you are thinking about trying tournament poker, Apostolico's book can help you get your feet wet.

Books cited in this article (available at www.CardPlayer.com)
• James McManus, Positively Fifth Street: Murders, Cheetahs, and Binion's World Series of Poker (Picador; $15)
• T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy, Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold'em (Cardoza; $29.95)
• David Sklansky, Tournament Poker for Advanced Players (Two Plus Two; $29.95)
• David Sklansky, Theory of Poker (Two Plus Two; $29.95)
• Tom McEvoy, Tournament Poker (Cardoza; $29.95),
• Doyle Brunson, Super/System (Cardoza; $29.95).
• Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie, Harrington on Hold'em: Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments: Strategic Play (Vol. I) and Harrington on Hold'em: Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments: Endgame (Vol. II); (Two Plus Two; $29.95 each)
• Blair Rodman and Lee Nelson, Kill Phil: The Fast Track to Success in No-Limit Hold'em Poker Tournaments (Huntington Press; $24.95)
• Erick Lindgren, Making the Final Table (Collins; $15.95)
• Phil Gordon, Phil Gordon's Little Green Book: Lessons and Teachings in No-Limit Texas Hold'em (Simon Spotlight Entertainment; $21)
• Al Alvarez, The Biggest Game in Town (Chronicle Books; $15.95)
• Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback, All In: The (Almost) Entirely True Story of the World Series of Poker (Thomas Dunne; $24.95)
• David Apostolico, The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Tournament Poker (Alpha/Penguin; $9.95)