[bustedromo]

There are no truly advanced poker books.

What I mean by truly advanced is a book that does not copiously waste words explaining concepts that are intuitively obvious to talented players, and instead devotes itself steadfastly to the task of difficult problem-solving.

The serious chess players on here know what I'm talking about. There are literally 100s of advanced chess books, where from page 1 onwards your brain is put to work and it's typically a battle between wanting to continue reading and putting the book down because the author challenges your mind just as a fierce talented opponent does.

Instead, in the poker literature, the so-called advanced literature consists of excessive explanations of intuitive concepts with trivial 1-d examples that seem to have been chosen simply because they were the least work to think up.

Am I accusing poker's so-called advanced authors of intellectual laziness ? Yes, I am, because I think some of these people could do much better.

I agree with BG that most poker books are lame, but BG's book contains only a few well-discussed advanced hands which effectively serve as a tease since most of the book reads like an inane coffee house conversation with your aunt.

Sometimes I wonder if existing established poker authors are capable of writing an advanced book. Sometimes I wonder if most advanced players assume that if they write an advanced book it will serve to lesses their edge over the competition.

And I call bs on the advanced players who wrote totally lame-ass jokes on TP and dare to dump it on the poker-playing public.

Sorry to be so blunt. Maybe Gus' book will go in some small measure to remedy this sorry state of affairs.