Alright everybody. I know everyone has got to be pretty fired up to hear what this book is all about. I was ecstatic when I bought the book and just as happy to read it. What a fantastic and insightful read! I thoroughly enjoyed every single page.

The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King basically is a real life account of the highest stakes poker cash game ever played. Andy Beal is a billionaire that happens to have an affection for the action that poker can bring him while attempting to appease his ego that he can actually compete and win against the best poker players in the world. The book has its amusing moments as well as times when you just shake your head pondering what you have just witnessed.

I highly recommend this book. Not just because of the big names involved like Doyle Brunson, Howard Lederer, Andy Bloch, Jennifer Harmon and many other professional poker players. I recommend it because it is an extremely well documented account of how the high stakes poker players mind works and what drives them.

I picked up my copy brand new for $14 bucks. One of the best books I have read about poker in a while.

Poker Wingman

Poker Wingman is the latest in odds calculation software. Most of you know that there is a myriad of poker software products that provide odds calculation in real-time. Most of the software is specifically setup for online poker players and Poker Wingman is no different. Basically this product provides an odds calculator and recommends the “correct” play based upon position and pot odds.

Wingman works on both play money and real money tables and even displays your hole cards for you after you have folded although Pokerstars newest version allows you to see them without this software. There is a Pro version which handles bankroll management and will calculate just how much you need to play in a given cash game. This comes in very handy indeed. However, you can simply enter the calculation from almost any web site into an excel spreadsheet and do the same thing for absolutely free. The Pro version will run you $40 bucks.

Ultimately, I would not recommend this software to an advanced player as they are likely to already know what odds are involved in a hand. However, poker tips are plentiful in this application for those that are not as familiar with the game. If you are new to the game it can definitely help you learn the basic calculations and how to best apply that knowledge.

The first Do or Die Poker podcast is now online and ready for downloading. It took me a while to get to it but I am pleased with it and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. In my haste I left out the “or” in the URL but it is easily read throughout the entire podcast or by simply searching Do or Die Poker.

Hey I’m new to pod casting so I figure one mistake on the first one won’t kill me.

lol

Anyhow, we would love to hear your feedback so that we can continue to improve the podcast moving forward. Thanks for your patience and enjoy the show.

Curtis III AKA “Curtom”

This is a tough one as there has been a bit of an onslaught of really good female poker players lately. However, we do need to take recent success and longevity into the equation as well. Obviously, as with any best of list we will likely miss a few that rightfully belong.

1. Jennifer Harmon - Jennifer plays in the $8000 / $4000 big game on a regular basis and more than holds here own. That feet in and of itself ranks her amongst the best in the world as far as cash games go. Jennifer has also done well in tournaments as well and has a WSOP bracelet.
2. Kathy Liebert- Kathy, is one of the best tournament poker players around male or female and has been a regular at World Poker Tour final tables.
3. Annie Duke - Annie took down her first WSOP bracelet in Pot-Limit Omaha and then stormed on to win the Tournament of Champions for a cool million with a table full of poker elite.
4. Annette Obrestad - The European sensation has shown no signs of slowing down since winning the Euro World Series of Poker last year. She is still one of the best online players and remains a force to be reckoned with live too.
5. Vanessa Rousso - This brainy and drop dead gorgeous young lady dispels all of the myths about women and poker. She uses her high level intellect to help her make the correct decisions in crucial hands. Rousso is also engaged to former Hollywood hunk Chad Brown.

There is a new sherrif in town and it may just be a female.

Professional poker player Jennifer Harmon is one of the best cash game players in the world. She regularly participates in the “Big Game” and has done well in tournament formats as well. Harmon won her first bracelet at the 2000 WSOP in Deuce to Seven Lowball on a complete fluke. She didn’t even know how to play the game before entering the tournament and got lessons from Howard Lederer just moments before the tournament started.

In 2002 Harmon took down the Limit Holdem bracelet making her the only female poker player to take down 2 bracelets in WSOP open events. In addition to her bracelets harmon has cashed 22 times in the WSOP and has also made 2 WPT final tables and cashed 11 times in WPT events.

Jennifer has $2.2 Million in tournament winning to date.

Harmon is married to former stylist Marco Traniello and they have twin boys.

Annie Duke is a professional poker player. Duke is considered to be amongst the top echelon of female poker players. Duke is the sister of Full Tilt Poker President Howard Lederer. It was Howard that initially staked Annie and provided his council when duke decided to leave her graduate studies to pursue poker on a full-time basis. Since then Duke has gone on to win a bracelet in the WSOP Omaha Hi/Lo $5000 buy0in event. It marked the first time a woman had won a bracelet in the event.

Duke also has gone on to win the 2006 WSOP Tournament of Champions for a cool $2 Million dollar pay day.

Duke is probably best known as a poker coach to the stars as she tutored Been Afleck, just before he won the California State Poker Championship, and several others helping them to fine tune their game.

Duke can be a bit abrasive at the table and has consistently gotten into scrapes with players and authority throughout her poker career. She is devoutly loyal to her brother Howard Lederer almost to the point of being creepy.

PokerStars is pulling out all the plugs in attempts to further their already size able market share. If you haven’t logged in to play today then you are in for a treat. You will proceed as usual and accept the update. Once the download is completed you are launched into an entirely new world of PokerStars.

Everything in the new software is based on a stylish black theme. If you insist on staying with the Classic look you can always click view / lobby themes and select the old one. It’s really that simple. So make sure you login and check out the new digs.

Later!

Professional poker player Kathy Liebert is a long way from Dun and Bradstreet where she started her career in business and finance. Liebert is now one of the most respected tournament poker players in the game.

With lifetime winnings of over $4.5 Million dollars there is no doubt that Kathy has made a name for herself in the poker world. Initially Kathy began playing as a prop player in Colorado. Her success there led her to the tournament trail where she became the first female poker player to win a $1 Million dollar prize by taking down the Party Poker Millions in 2002. Since then Liebert has cashed no less than 27 times in the WSOP and has made 4 WPT final tables with 12 cashes.

Not too shabby for a finance major. Kathy enjoys martial arts in her spare time and possesses a blue belt in Karate. Kathy Liebert is one of the best female poker players in the world.

Professional Poker Player Annette Obrestad is quickly becoming a force on the European poker scene. After winning over $800k online between PartyPoker and Ultimate Bet “Annette_15″ has become a staple in the more profitable live tournament trail.

Since her early days of dominance online Obrestad has taken down the WSOPE for a cool $2 Million and just recently placed second in an EPT tournament for another $400K+.

Obrestad is from Norway and started playing online at the age of 15. She has fit right into the hyper-aggressive image that most of the younger players have adopted with extremely good results. Although Obrestad is not quite old enough yet, next year she will be twenty-one, to play in Las Vegas it will be very interesting to see how she fares playing against the best tournament players on a regular basis.

Is Annette Obrestad the best female poker player in the world?

That remains to be seen.

Vanessa Rousso AKA “LadyMaverick” is one of the top female poker players in the game. This twenty-five year old Duke University and University of Miami graduate has a lot more going for her than just her looks. Vanessa can flat out play poker!

This native Floridian graduated valedictorian of her high school class and finished college at the tender age of nineteen. While pursuing her undergraduate studies at Duke she discovered a game theory class and began applying those mathematical theories to poker. Since then Vanessa has gone on to earn her Law Degree and has taken the professional poker tour by storm.

She first popped on the scene in 2006 when she mada the final table in the World Poker Tour Ladies Night Out tournament. Vanessa then went on to take seventh place at the Bellagio Five Star World Poker Classic which was good for $263k in that same year.

Now, armed with a bankroll, Vanessa continued her run by cashing in no less than five events at the 2006 World Series of Poker. She then went on to take down the Borgata on the Professional Poker Tour for another $285k.

in 2007 Vanessa made the Final Table in the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker and took down another $700k+ adding to her steadily growing bankroll. Vanessa is still learning the game but she is off to a tremendous start and is a formidable tournament poker player among the ladies and men at the table. Vanessa is also engaged to fellow professional poker player Chad Brown.

“Killer Poker by the Numbers” by Tony Guerrera makes the math much more palatable for those that are not so comfortable crunching numbers. He breaks everything down to it’s simplest form and allows you to make your decisions from there.

He also goes in-depth on what’s really behind pot odds and calculating your outs. Tony Guerrera is extremely detailed in his approach to processing various scenarios that you will encounter in tournaments or cash games. He has an answer for just about every scenario and can justify it mathematically. The book allows you another dimension of thinking about the game.

Just for that alone I believe this is a book that every poker player should have in their library.

Enjoy!

“Pot Limit Omaha Poker” by Jeff Hwang is the definitive book on Omaha poker. It is the Omaha “bible” if you will. You won’t find hundreds of pages as you will in the Super Systems series but you will find extremely concentrated material on pot odds, straight draws, and what hands are “BIG” and what hands just look big.

If you are new to Omaha poker then you will particularly benefit from this book as it will prevent you from making mistakes common to Omaha rookies. However, the book does contain a few errors. The corrections can be found on-line though.

The one thing missing and sorely needed is starting hands. That would increase the value of this particular book even more. Of all things to omit from an Omaha book the starting hands would be at the bottom of most players lists as it is one of the most commonly asked questions in any form of poker.

I would still recommend adding this book to your poker library.

Dan Harrington continues to convey his years of cash game experience to poker players smart enough to purchase his latest series of books. Cash Games comes in two volumes and is packed with all the tools you will need to understand and win playing ring game poker.

Volume 1, “How to Win at No-Limit Hold’em Money Games,” teaches you the basic concepts of cash game poker from proper bankroll to playing against multiple or a single opponent. There is no stone unturned in Harrington’s quest to teach you how to play profitable poker. Once you have completed all of the preliminaries Harrington puts you in various scenarios with several players in the pot down to short-handed and heads up play. He also talks about knowing when you are pot committed and how to use deception to your advantage. This volume covers the basics. If you are an advanced player then you can skip this volume without losing any ground.

Volume 2, “How to Play No-Limit Hold ‘em Cash Games”, is where the meat and potatoes of this series is. Harrington, as usual, breaks down the streets and takes a lot of time to talk about fourth and fifth street in particular. The one thing that is disappointing is that Harrington does not discuss anything beyond the first level of thinking. All of the thought process is about “my cards” vs “his cards”. While you do need to play the cards you are dealt it would have been nice if Dan had broken it down a few levels deeper and spoken about image and how to use yours against other players. Harrington also breaks down bankroll management. Some players would consider this a non-factor while others see it as being a useful piece in the book to have. I tend to like that part of the book and I am glad he mentioned it. There are several examples in this volume with Harrington walking you through the hand and how it may be played out in several different scenarios.

Overall, as much as I love Dan Harrington books, this series is not close to the classic writings of his Harrington on Holdem series. On the other hand HOH was going to be hard to beat but Dan does give it a good try. If you are a beginner to intermediate player then this series will be extremely useful for your cash game. If you are an advanced player then I would likely take a pass.

Scott Fischman has put together a well written book in Online Ace. This particular book focuses strictly on online poker and nothing else. Online Ace is an easy read and Fischman goes out of his way to give you the little things that some of the other online poker books don’t.

Once thing that I appreciate about the book is that there is not a whole lot of promotional fluff like many of the other books on online poker. Fischman takes the approach a step further than just the basic fundamentals that you would get in just about any book. He addresses the mental aspect of the game and taking a more intraspective approach versus how to play a hand from a particular position.

I found that to be very refreshing.

You do get the basic fundamentals of playing hands and position as you would expect but you also get poker strategy on how to play the coveted Sit n Go online tournament. This is the bankroll builder for just about any player that has any aspirations of gradually moving up in limits. It’s also the meat and potato’s of this particular poker book.

The book is a fast read with a little over 200 pages. I would recommend adding this book to your library to anyone that wants to play online and build a bankroll.

Arnold Snyder really had the online poker player in mind when he wrote The Poker Tournament Formula. This book is well written, informative, and shows you how to win online and live poker tournaments.

Contrary to most books which give you lots of theory and mathematical computations to apply to various scenarios Snyder approaches the tournament based on how it is formulated. He takes things into account such as how fast the tournament plays. He also takes into account whether it is a re-buy tournament. You will learn how to calculate how many chips you will need to make the final table. You will also understand how fast or slow you can play a particular online tournament.

There is some math for those that incist on crunching numbers but nothing out of the ordinary. I found this book to be refreshing and a very easy read. Snyder also discusses how to make deals at the final table. Poker strategy is also discussed for various stages of the poker tournament from beginning to end. There is also a section that covers how to play satellites too!

A very nice addition to your poker library and a book I would recommend.