Defending Super System from an earlier post

[Thundercat32]

Yesterday I made a post asking about poker language, one person responded with an excellent series of discussion from this forum back in August before I was a member explaining different abbreviations.

Out of that sprung a link to a discussion on this forum about the Theory of Poker. A debate arose to which book was better Theory of Poker or Super System.

One person said Super System was important but also not detailed enough and sometimes incorrect. I've only read the no limit portion of Super System and part of the limit section. But from my gatherings, I think to call Super System incorrect is to forget it was written in 1978. At this time it seems poker was far less popular and many players were more experienced and more intelligent poker players. Thus playing looser and making more moves was correct.

However now with poker's popularity, many brand new players join the poker ranks each day and they play loose and wild themselves. So the strategies in Super System may be incorrect against today's field, but I do not think they were incorrect back in 1978.

I have not had the pleasure of reading the Theory of Poker yet, but I'm curious if I could spark a debate and/or discussion of the two books

Footnote: Does anyone know why Bobby Baldwin stopped playing poker? (he's mentioned in Super System as an upcoming player back in 1978)

[HoldenFoldem]

I've read them both. Super System is a hands on "how to" book on various poker games.
Theory of Poker is different in that each chapter covers an aspect of poker that is common to all poker games. Here's from the table of contents:
2. Expectation and hourly rate
3. Fundamentals of poker theorem
4.The Ante Structure.
5. Pot odds
7 implied odds and reverse implied odds
8 the value of deception

Sklansky writes like a professor teaching university students. Its very good, and very clear.

[GGrey]

Super System is good for getting your feet wet in my opinion. I think more than anything it's a great if not the best first book to read if you're just getting into poker. Also, regardless of how loose and wild the field is becoming, it's still important to stress the benefit of winning a pot by aggression rather than the cards you are holding.

[mason55]

As you move up, many aspects of SuperSystem become true again.

Reading Theory of Poker will give you the theoretical and mathematical basis for why the plays in SS work. It will also allow you to think for yourself and adapt to all table conditions. It will also allow you to play games besides NLHE with a fundamental understanding from the second you learn the rules.

TOP is much more important any way you slice it, SS just shows one way of applying the concepts presented in ToP for a specific set of table conditions.

[gol4pro]

This is really not even something you can argue about.

Because there are so many factors to deal with in poker that make one decision more correct in a different situation as opposed to another, it's really quite stupid to say whether or not one book is correct.

Conversely, with the absolutes of poker-- such as pot odds, one book may be correct and the other not. This is a result of being something tangible or concrete. As far as the statistics and math of poker go, a book can be consired correct or incorrect. But with something intangible or opinionated, it's completely ridiculous to evaluate something as far as true or false.