CardSharp

Authors: Matt Flynn, Sunny Mehta, Ed Miller

Publisher: 2+2

Professional No-Limit Hold ‘Em was a widely anticipated book. The literature on NL holdem is very sparse, which is somewhat odd given that it is currently the most widely played form of casino poker. Over the last couple of years, 2+2 publishing has put a number of books and series in the pipeline to try to fill that gap. The first was Sklansky’s No Limit Holdem: Theory and Practice which I found interesting but problematic in many areas. Next up is the Flynn/Mehta “Professional” series starting with this book, and announced but as of yet unavailable are a series of Dan Harrington cash game books.

Sadly, this book really disappointed me on a number of levels.

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Author: Mason Malmuth

Publisher: 2+2

In a similar vein to his previous Poker Essays, Poker Essays Volume 2 is a collection of columns that Mason Malmuth wrote for Card Player magazine.  Indeed, you might confuse them for the same columns found in the original Poker Essays, because many of the topics are the same and a small amount of the material is even directly reprinted from the previous work.

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Author: Larry W. Phillips (if you have website/contact info for Larry, please let me know)

Publisher Plume/Penguin

Ok, I’ll admit I was more than a little suspicious when I saw the title of this book. It certainly smacks of a quickly written attempt to cash in. So I was somewhat relieved to find that the author did in fact put substantial effort into trying to draw a prallel between Zen philosophy and poker play. However, I don’t believe he was particularly successful from the poker perspective. I have no idea what the zen guys think of this book. It would be unfair to the author to wholly criticize him for this, however, because he does point out that there are substantial limits to the parallel, but i feel that there are problems even in the areas he felt were harmonious.

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