subject: Are Free poker ebooks Worth Reading [print this page] Are Free Poker eBooks worth reading? Are Free Poker eBooks worth reading?
If you search the internet right now then you'll find a ton of free poker ebooks that you can download instantly. But the real question is, "how good are these ebooks and can they actually improve your game?"
From my experiences, 90% of the free ebooks that you find on google will be poorly written and not be very helpful. The question you have to ask yourself is, why would anyone take the time to write a 50-page or so ebook just to give it away for free?
The answer,is that affiliate webmasters decide to use free ebooks as a mean of opting you into their emailing list. The only reason to give away a free ebook is to get your email, which allows them to send you weekly offers and promotions that fill up your inbox. So, the truth is, once you've submitted your email to that website the owner has pretty much fulfilled his job. This means that he isn't interested in helping you with your game or getting good feedback, hence the ebook will either be poorly written in pigeon English, suggesting bad advice, or even worse both.
Can a Free Poker eBook really Be that Bad?
It might sounds ridiculous denouncing something that somebody is giving away for free. But, I can prove how badly written and poor poker strategy can harm your game.
Many ebooks will contain incomplete poker strategy advice that can lead to big flaws in your game. I've read some books that spurn out generic instructions like "you can only cbet opponents who're weak and fold a lot to raises."
This isn't true at all! It is only half of the story and leaves out critical information. For example, having played thousands of hands at $1/$2, I can tell you that there are plenty of other times and profitable situations to continuation bet opponents. If you're opponent is LAG and regularly opens with a loose range of hands than it's very likely he'll miss the flop or that you can double barrel the pot on later streets. Secondly, if you have relative position on an opponent than it makes more sense to bluff pots. Finally, calling stations (with a WSD% of 50%+) are the best to cbet because they overplay too many hands. This makes value betting the flop extremely profitable and contrasts completely with the idea that "the best opponents to cbet are ones that fold a lot".
There are a number of other cases in which material or strategy is incorrect. Poor 3bettting/4betting pre-flop strategy and a lack of understanding of range balancing makes many free poker ebooks bad for you.
In conclusion, I don't want to bring all free ebook into disrepute because there are a number of great resources out there. None the less, if you're looking for accessible material than I strongly recommending paying $40 - $100 for a professionally written poker ebooks that is authored by well known high stakes pros in the online poker community, and that you can guarantee is creditable material.
