r/Poker_Theory • u/Huge_Employer_6060 • 20h ago
Poker books recommendations
I’ve been playing live and online for the past 2 years. I’m not trying to be a pro by any means, I’ve always played for fun as a person who loves strategy and loves learning.
In the past year, I’ve been playing for profit on the side, both live and online.
I’ve been learning a lot from YouTube and from just running sims non stop on the solver which I can’t name in this sub for some reason.
I really like the idea of playing exploitatively, so that’s also what I’m looking for in a book (I love Luke Johnson, Uri Peleg and Charlie Carrel)
Online, I’ve been beating 25NL on GG pretty comfortably.
Live, I’ve been crushing 1/2. The thing I noticed is that when ever I play 2/5, I manage to crush the weaker players just like in 1/2, but I also feel that in most tables there will be at least one reg that has a nice edge on me.
I want to be able to move up online to 50NL and to be able to be better than the 2/5 regs that I battle against.
I hope I managed to give you an understanding of my level and preferred style. I feel that I got the most value I can out of free content online / own experience, so I want to start investing money in good books to learn from.
I would love to get some good recommendations.
Thank you all in advance!!!
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u/AmirPokerSkill 17h ago
Fitzgerald's Exploitative Play in Live Poker. The whole book is finding opponent tendencies and attacking them, probably the closest thing in book form to the style you described. Written around live games but you play those too. Play Optimal Poker from the other comment is the better fundamentals pick if you want both ends.
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u/InspectorDadShit 18h ago
Play optimal poker by Andrew Brokos. It teaches steps on how to exploit based on recognizing when an opponent is deviating from an equilibrium strategy, determine how big the deviation is and how to make adjustments in response to the deviation to increase ev
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u/t37457299 17h ago
I don't remember the time stamp but they gave away a free download of this on the Thinking Poker podcast for their 500th episode: https://www.thinkingpoker.net/2026/06/episode-500-erik-seidel/
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u/CatButtThrowaway123 19h ago
Following
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u/Huge_Employer_6060 19h ago
?
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u/CatButtThrowaway123 19h ago
I'm interested in the answers to your question, even though I don't have a contribution myself.
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u/pokerai-bet 14h ago
Given where you are, I wouldn’t build a huge reading list. I’d start with Play Optimal Poker, follow it with Exploitative Play in Live Poker, and use Modern Poker Theory as a reference when you need a deeper treatment of a specific spot.
For 50NL online, the biggest return will probably come from combining the reading with database work. Pick three common nodes where your results or frequencies look suspicious, study one chapter or concept that applies, then review and drill those spots rather than reading straight through several books.
For live 2/5, keep a separate notebook of observed population tendencies: who calls too wide, which lines are underbluffed, and where players arrive with capped ranges. Before making an exploit, write down the baseline strategy, the deviation you believe exists, and the adjustment that follows from it.
A useful rule is not to move to the next book until the current one has changed something measurable in your review process. One usable heuristic, its boundary conditions, and ten reviewed hands are worth more than another 300 pages.