Are poker books outdated?

In his Weekly Community Round-Up Barry Carter talks about poker books, plus everything you need to know this week at PokerStrategy.com.

You may have noticed we have a poker books page now here at PokerStrategy.com and for the rest of the month you will be hearing a lot about it. 

One of the reasons is obvious: it is coming up to Christmas and people buy each other books as presents. 

Then of course we are blessed right here to have a number of successful authors on or once having been on our coaching team. People like CollinMoshman, TwiceT,
jaredtendler, oh and little old me.

I have managed to wrangle some free excerpts of some of these classic books to publish right here for the month of December. 

I also want to ask an important question - are poker strategy books still worth it?

Some people would say "no" for the simple reason that the game progresses too quickly - in the months it takes the author to start and finish the book, arguably the material has already dated. Meanwhile websites like PokerStrategy.com can have new material up pretty much overnight. 

I still think books have their place, for a lot of reasons. For many it is just a preferred way to consume information. I love books, they are perhaps my joint favourite form of entertainment (along with bingewatching box sets of shows like Breaking Bad and The Wire) and I love reading for an hour in bed.

Of course I am biased. I currently have two books out and I also have a PokerStrategy.com books page to promote. Not only that, but I am working on my third poker book (not a strategy one) at the moment (more on that in the coming weeks - I have promised myself I'll announce it before the end of the year, so I can't back out). 

So in the next few weeks you can expect to see plenty of free book excerpts, interviews with the authors, and we'll even be getting our coaches to give you their best recommendations. 

Do you think books are outdated? Let me know in the comments box. 

Thread of the week

This is insane and worth a read. martinemem decided it would be fun to play 500,000 hands in November and blog about it. 

Normally these challenges start with the best of intentions, but fizzle out after a while. So what a pleasant surprise that he not only stuck to his challenge, he also managed to keep his blogging up to.

He didn't quite get to 500k hands, the final figure was 362,095. The challenge ended with a small profit at the tables and presumably a small fortune in loyalty bonuses.

Not only is it an interesting story of the ups and downs of such a high volume challenge, martinemem is pretty funny and makes you laugh a few times along the way - check it out. 

LOL of the week 

That has to be one of the five embarrassing picks from mjperry's collection of poker movie scenes. For me the worst will always be this cringeworthy moment where Justin Timberlake bets half his (actual) life on a gutshot (anyone else think the still image below looks like a screenshot from PKR?):

Running Hot

Here are some of the best things you may have missed from the last seven days at PokerStrategy.com: 

• lnternet, oblioo, Skodljivec and pokerguru740 all joined us for an interview.

• Betfred Poker is back in our stable of partner rooms and you can earn StrategyPoints with them.  

• Another big lol this week - 14 reasons why poker is better than sex.

• Once again it is double prizes in our Top100 race.

• Here is your rundown of all the big December offers at our partner rooms. 

Coming Up

This is the busiest month of the year for us so you can expect lots of fun stuff coming your way including:

•  Videos from Schnitzelfisch, CollinMoshman, pleno1, pokerguru740 and all our Boot Camp videos for the week.

• Live coaching from Unam, Uri Peleg, Skodljivec and more.

• We have the first in a long line of free excerpts from some classic poker books by our coaches. 

• I am hoping to bring you at least one, maybe two, interviews from big winners on the World Poker Tour. 

• Another big change to our Tell-a-Friend programme we think you will really enjoy. 

• Plus stay tuned all this week for more from our Boot Camp and Winter Promotions. 

 By Barry Carter l Barry Carter on Twitter

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