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To excel in poker, should you practice a lot or read a lot of books? Many beginning players ask this in the forums.

Let me answer by an analogy: If you go into battle, would you bring a machine gun or a tooth brush?*

Below is a list with the best poker books of the last decade – an amazing decade that we might call the Poker Boom Decade.

1. Harrington on Holdem (Dan Harrington)

No other book has had such a great impact on the poker playing community during the last decade as Harrington on Holdem (three books, really).

With the comprehensive and sound strategy outline for multi table poker tournaments, Harrington has given virtually all tournament players in the world a solid base to operate from. This book is listed as a must read on most people’s Poker Reading Lists from the last years.

Harrington’s back-to-back Main Event final tables are the proof that his advice isn’t completely off the wall. Contrary to his green hat.

2. Let there be range (Cole South, Tri Nguyen)

How do you sell books to millionaires? Make it really, really expensive. When Cole South and Tri Nguyen released the most expensive poker book ever, they set the price to please people with unnecessary huge bankrolls.

At $1850 a piece, this was a book that even regulars at the nosebleed stakes could buy without having to search their wallets for that annoying small change. Like hundred dollar bills.

Arguably, if reading this book can help you move up from $100/$200 to $300/$600, you’ll be winning back the nine big blinds it cost you real quick.

3. Read’em and Reap (Joe Navarro, Phil Hellmuth)

When a veteran FBI agent talks, you sit still and listen. For if you move, he can tell what you had for breakfast by reading the wrinkles on your forehead.

Seriously, in this book, former FBI agent Joe Navarro teaches us more on how to discover tells at the poker table than even the “Mad Genius” Mike Caro could achieve in his classic oeuvre in the same profitable genre.

With his recounts of tense interrogations during nationwide homicide investigations, Navarro makes us think for ourselves: “this is a man who knows what he’s talking about”.

Navarro is also the man who taught Phil Hellmuth to sit in that patented tight-assed way with his fists clenched before his mouth. There must be a federal punishment for that.

4. Super/System 2 (Doyle Brunson)

The sequel to Doyle Brunson’s legendary Super/System can in no way compete with the original when it comes to impact on the poker playing community.

Nevertheless, Super/System 2 was maybe the most anticipated poker book ever, and it’s a heavy piece on the poker literature mantelpiece, with Brunson and several others of our time’s biggest names spilling their guts of its strategic contents.

Peeking into the minds of players who have succeeded in the toughest games for ages is an exciting honor regardless of what you think of their actual advice. When it’s the mind of a living poker legend like Doyle Brunson, you’ll love the read even before you open the book.

5. Pot-Limit Omaha Poker (Jeff Hwang)

Pot limit Omaha, this feared big sister of no-limit Texas Holdem, is a very complicated woman indeed. Few men have penetrated her (mind) as deeply as Jeff Hwang.

The “Big Play” game plan that Hwang lays out has helped many online grinders to build a healthy income playing mid to high stakes PLO on the internet.

This book isn’t as well known and not as frequently mentioned as the books above, but it’s still rather new and surely has time on its side as we move into a new decade of exciting Omaha games.

6. Every Hand Revealed (Gus Hansen)

Is there any high stakes pro as interesting and magnetizing as “The Great Dane”, Gus Hansen? Everybody just loves to watch Gus suck out on opponent after opponent in his characteristic, sick manner.

In this open-hearted book, we get to see not only how Gus plays all (or most) hands during a big live tournament, we even get to learn exactly how his reasoning goes in these hands.

Admittedly, oftentimes Gus’s reasoning doesn’t seem to go much deeper than “I think I will raise him”.

7. Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha (Rolf Slotboom)

This is the underdog of the list, an item that you may not find on many other lists over poker books of the decade.

But honestly, Slotbooms telling of how he lived well from playing short stacked PLO under very specific conditions during his years in Vienna is really interesting and fascinating.

It may not be a method anyone else can apply in any given situation, like Harrington’s universal method, but it worked then and there for him, and Slotboom deserves our respect for having contrived and executed such an ingenious and unusual plan.

Also, the guy’s name is *rofl*.

8. No Limit Hold ‘em: Theory and Practice (David Sklansky, Ed Miller)

Sklansky has a life-time seat booked in the poker author hall of fame with his earlier work Theory of Poker. While a great book, it’s clearly focused around fixed limit games, and so not 100% relevant for the players of The Poker Boom Decade.

In his first work on no limit games, Sklansky (in cooperation with math whiz Ed miller) shows that his ability to think and explain important concepts in poker isn’t related to the exact rules of a specific game.

Sklansky is bigger than any particular poker variation, and all patronizing remarks about his lack of game are just not relevant in this context.

9. Ace on the River (Barry Greenstein)

With a book on poker which doesn’t look like The Secret Guide to Unbeatable Roulette Systems, Barry Greenstein gave us the first coffee-table book about poker.

Written by a regular in the world’s biggest games (that is, Barry Greenstein) this book also provides some serious poker information and exciting anecdotes from an exotic world where most people simply don’t have the skills to penetrate (including yours truly).

A soft and good-looking arrow from the Robin Hood of poker.

10. Elements of Poker (Tommy Angelo)

Another surprise to many readers, most likely, Tommy Angelo’s book is one of very few in the genre that deals with real-world issues in connection with playing successful poker.

Elements of Poker starts out where the typical poker manual ends: You’ve grasped all available concepts on poker theory and poker strategy and poker psychology, but How Do You Do It In Real Life?!

I don’t remember, you’ll have to read it for yourself.

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* There’s one evident answer to this question: BOTH.