The Theory of Poker Book Review

This book is the undisputed bible of poker. No book has made more money for more poker players than David Sklansky’s The Theory of Poker. This book is in every serious poker player’s book collection and it’s usually easy to spot. It’ll be the one that’s creased, marked, and worn from years of reading and re-reading. No poker player has a chance of playing winning poker without mastering the concepts in this book.

The foundation of this book is Sklansky’s fundamental theory of poker which states:

“Every time opponents play a hand differently from the way they would have played it if they could see your cards, you gain; and every time they play a hand the same way you they would have played it if they could see your cards, you lose.”

Like any good theory, Sklansky’s fundamental theorem of poker generalizes well. This theory applies to all forms of poker, and as a result, Sklansky’s examples run the gamut from Texas Hold’em to 7-card and back again.

More specifically, the fundamental theorem of poker explains how you make money playing poker and why poker is a game of skill and not a game of luck. According to Sklansky, the way you make money playing poker is by exploiting odds. You profit by taking good odds and making your opponent take bad odds.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you have A-K of hearts and the flop comes down 4-2-9 with two hearts on the board. After some aggressive pre-flop play, your opponent raises you all-in on the flop. Given that kind of play, I’d put him on a high pocket pair. If your opponent is holding 10-10 to Q-Q, then you have about a 60% chance of winning the hand. Even if your opponent holds K-K or A-A, you still have plenty of outs.

Pot odds are one of the more basic concerns in this book. Sklansky doesn’t stop there. He’ll teach you how to make your opponents to make mistakes too. You’ll learn how to slow play your opponents to extract the most amount of money. You’ll also learn how to raise to build a pot, steal a pot, or buy a free card.

In short, you’ll learn how to play big pots with big hands. Sklansky will teach you how to control the pot size and your opponent. This mathematical wizard will help you make sure that the odds are always in your favor when you play a pot.

The Theory of Poker is not a poker book. It’s the poker book. There are a lot of poker books that new players should read. This is the book that new players must read. Think of it as a poker 101 book. You’ll learn everything you need to know to understand more advanced poker books.

You could spend thousands of dollars to learn Sklansky’s lessons the hard way or you can spend the best $29.95 you’ve ever spent to learn how to play poker from a true master. The choice is yours.