Small Stakes Limit Holdem (I forget the exact name - the red book) would be an exception. For no-limit hold'em you guys may be right. The Harrington books are good as well although they need to be adjusted somewhat for smaller stakes tournaments.

I don't want to jump into the middle of a pissing match, but as a big fan of this book, and as someone who, at the risk of sounding arrogant, understood this book better than the average reader, I feel compelled to chime in...

After I read this book I was concerned that "all of the secrets had been revealed", that amateur players everywhere had been given the key to greatness. And then I read one post on a poker forum about the book and I immeadiately realized that 75% of the people reading this book would misunderstand and thus misapply the concepts therein.

The concepts in this book do not apply only to deep stack games or hi-limit games. Understanding the concepts in this book could greatly improve your $10NL game. But if you do not fully understand the concepts, if you just try to apply the "tricks" as given by the examples, you stand to lose some money regardless of the stakes you play.

The sections of the book that deal with complex bluffs will obviously not work at low stakes games. But they shouldn't have to give the reader a disclaimer for him to know that (even though I think they actually do give one). And I think these sections account for no more than 10% of what this book has to offer.

If you read this book and tried out what you learned from it and then lost a bunch of money, well, it ain't the book's fault. Read the book again. Or, fvck it, forget the book. It's ok to disagree with Sklansky. But if you want to criticize it, you need something better than "I tried this and lost a bunch of money", because that's what, thankfully, the majority of players who read this book are doing.

I was only speaking for myself and that's all I ever do.

I relinquish the pulpit.