What are the most influential poker books in history?

Harrington on Hold 'em, Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments; Volume I: Strategic Play is the first of three books many people believe to be the most famous series of poker books ever written on No Limit Hold'em tournament play.

Despite being written over a decade ago, his books they still hold a tremendous amount of solid fundamental tournament information for a beginning player.

Doyle Brunson’s classic Super System is deemed to be the ‘bible’ of poker books by many professional poker players influenced by its contents. Brunson is the Godfather of Poker, and he emptied his mind onto paper when very few were doing so.

Super System contains strategy from a wide range of games taken from the minds of some of the greatest players in the history of the game. David Sklansky, Chip Reese, and Bobby Baldwin wrote chapters for the book. Amarillo Slim penned the preface.

When Gus Hansen entered the 2007 Aussie Millions Main Event, he thought he would try something a little different. Armed with a dictaphone, Hansen recorded his summarisation of every significant hand he played. He then went on to win the thing for $1.1m, and a blockbuster of a book was born.

If you want to get into the mind of a player as he makes more moves than a bowl of jelly, then look no further.

If you want to become a serious long-term threat at the poker table, then you need to understand the mathematics of poker and nobody does it better than Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman.

It's a tome of a book. The chaptered concepts are not all easily digestible. However, it is THE go-to book for mathematics for the vast majority of professionals.

You can be the greatest technical player on the planet and it won't matter one iota if you keep losing all of your money because of regular lapses of emotional control. Jared Tendler and Barry Carter understood this more than most and decided to write a book about it.

It's THE go-to book for professional poker players struggling to keep a lid on a broad range of emotional and mental issues affecting their game in a negative sense.

Tendler takes everything he learned from coaching professional golfers, mixed it with what he learned coaching professional poker players and voilà! A greater understand of the WHY behind our losses of emotional control and actions we can put in place to help reduce them.

Nobody authored more books than David Sklansky in the Top 86, and The Theory of Poker was the most popular by far. It is right up there with Dan Harrington's Harrington on Hold’em Series and Doyle Brunson’s Super Series as one of the seminal works of poker literature.

The Theory of Poker is great because the fundamentals taught can be applied to any game, and his chapter on The Fundamental Theorem of Poker is one of the most famous of all time.

Amazon is offering the paperback version of this book for £1,310.54. But don't worry - delivery is free of charge. It was the first serious poker e-book to hit the market and the first to bring the theory of hand ranges to the minds of beginners.

It's also the highest ranking book for two players who made their fortunes playing online poker. I highly suggest begging a friend to give you their battered old copy.

Nobody in the history of the game has won more money playing live tournament poker than Daniel Negreanu, and back in 2008, he was willing to share his secrets with you, as were some of his friends aka Super System style.

Negreanu covered live tournament Hold'em strategy; Todd Brunson took care of the live cash game strategy; Erick Lindgren had a go at explaining the online games; Paul Wasicka looked after short-handed online games, and David Williams also weighed in with a chapter on mixing it up.

The most illuminating information hits you at the end where Negreanu shared his small ball strategy with the world for the first time.

Doyle Brunson returns 26-years later to produce his sequel to Super System. Once again, he brings with him an army of some of the most celebrated players in the history of the game.

Phil Hellmuth talks about Niche Poker, Jennifer Harman takes you through Limit Hold’em strategy, Bobby Baldwin covers Omaha 8-or-Better, his son Todd Brunson covers Seven Card Stud, and Daniel Negreanu gives you an insight into his Triple Draw game.

Just to show that Doyle kept up with the times there is an extensive section from the man himself on online poker.

Applications Of No-Limit Hold'em by Matthew Janda (2013), is not a book for beginners. Instead, it's a book designed to help players who are already proficient in the art of No-Limit Hold'em become even better. It's that good; people have referred to it as the real poker blueprint. His discussion on equity calculations, hand range structures, and game theory optimal play is some of the best stuff on the market.

Chris Moorman is the most successful online tournament poker player in the history of the game, with over $13.1m in earnings. In this book, Moorman analyses 80 hands played by co-author Byron Jacobs from various stages in online poker tournaments, sharing the thought processes that have made him such an icon in the game.

The second in Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold’em tournament series starts off where the first one ends. Harrington guides his readers through a variety of scenarios including how to make moves at the table, inflection points, and how to play short-handed and heads-up.

Another excellent book covering all aspects, the Cadillac of Poker Kill Everyone includes early stage play, endgame strategies, and online short-handed No-Limit Hold'em cash games. The second edition also contains running commentary from Bertrand ‘ElkY' Grospellier.

Play Poker Like the Pros by Phil Hellmuth is by my reckoning the only poker book to ever make it on the New York Times Bestseller List, and yet there wasn’t a book that even came close to dividing opinion like this one.

Some hated it, others loved it, but it reached the #14 rank because somewhere along the path of a professional poker player, it created a spark of inspiration that helped turned something mediocre into something special.

Elements of Poker takes the format of every poker book written before it, pours petrol on every page, and then sets them alight.

Angelo breaks down his poker philosophy into enough bite size chunks to always leave you wanting more. His sections on Table Poker are fantastic, his views on the Elements of Performance revolutionary, and all with a spiritual spine running through each piece of advice.

For over a decade, Barry Greenstein has been handing people copies of Ace on the River each time they get lucky enough to eliminate him from competition, and do you know what? Nobody ever complains. It's an interesting and absorbing look into the philosophy of one of the most successful players in the game.

Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold'em, Volume 1 by Will Tipton is the highest rated Heads-Up book in our charts. His publisher D&B Publishing once told me that his manuscript was so great it could have gone straight into print - such was Tipton's attention to detail.

Another one of the timeless classics of poker, this time, directed at the more advanced player Hold'em player. The book covers everything from tells, short-handed play, and even psychology. It is also one of the older books to be ranked so highly having been published nearly three decades ago.

The final instalment of Dan Harrington's seminal work on Hold'em tournament play. The first two books gave you all the knowledge you need to make a success playing No Limit Hold'em tournaments and this book puts theory into practice allowing you to work through 50 different scenarios involving some of the greatest players in the world.

Mike Caro's Book of Tells is the highest-ranked book on the psychology of body language in the game of poker. The book covers classic tells such as when weak means strong, when strong means weak, and much more.

Seven years after Mike Caro published his Book of Tells, Zachary Elwood pops up to give the whole philosophy a makeover. Judging by the feedback he did an excellent job.

This book does much more than create a list of tells. It teaches you what to do with the information gained, the importance of the situation, and covers the field of unconscious human behaviour.

The Yoga of Poker is short but very sweet. Andrew ‘luckychewy' Lichtenberger's views on spirituality and how to apply them to the game of poker are incredible. It's no coincidence that Lichtenberger went on to win the WPTAlpha8 event in Las Vegas earning $1.7m in the process not long after this book was released.

Another entry by the master David Sklansky, this time partnering with Ed Miller to dissect the game of No-Limit Hold’em covering technical, strategic, and psychological aspects of the game.

Biographer, Anthony Holden, gets stuck into the world of professional poker for a year and documents every single aspect of it. It’s a great story of life on the road detailing all the highs and the lows. This book is the highest-ranked biographical type book in the ratings.

Jonathan Little is the most active author of poker books in the market today. His most recent book, Excelling at No-Limit Hold'em, goes back to the collective theme of instructional chapters written by some of the great authors who appear in this list of influential books including; Phil Hellmuth, Will Tipton, and Zachary Elwood.

One of the first poker books to be written in an entirely different language than what went before it. The book's spiritual core was revolutionary 17 years ago, and is very apt today, as the top professionals start to find an edge in this part of their game.

Bertrand ‘ElkY' Grospellier caused quite a storm when he arrived on the poker scene from the world of professional video gaming and swept title after title under his rug. Here he is joined by Tony Dunst, Lee Nelson, and Tysen Streib to give you an insight into how he managed it.

Jesse May rose to prominence in the late nineties after he accidentally became the lead commentator for the poker show that began it all: Late Night Poker. May would go on to have a tremendous career as a commentator. But Shut Up & Deal proves that he was also an excellent writer and storyteller. This is entertaining poker fiction at its best. Or was it fiction? You decide.

The Biggest Game in Town is a sought after cult classic that delves into the world of High Stakes Poker in Las Vegas, most notably the 1981 WSOP. If you want to get a deeper understanding of strategy, then buy a different book. If you want to understand the characters who play the beautiful game and love a thrilling ride, then this is for you.

Devilfish: The Life & Times of a Poker Legend is the biography of one of the most important, influential, and controversial poker players in the history of poker. It's a riveting read that fans of Dave Ulliot will love.

The first authorized biography of Stuey Ungar, a young man many believe to have been one of the most gifted poker players of all time. Ungar won the WSOP Main Event three times and was reported to have earned over $30m, before being found dead in a cheap Las Vegas motel at the age of 45, with only $800 to his name.

Long before Full Tilt Poker was found to be a Ponzi scheme that robbed people of millions of dollars, a group of the players who represented the online poker room, created one of the best poker strategy books of that generation.

The likes of Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Andy Boch wrote about No-Limit Hold'em tournament strategy; Mike Matusow helped with the Omaha strategy, and Huck Seed chimed in with a few wise words on Razz.

A brilliant and compelling insight into one of the most famous high limit poker games of all time, when a group of professional poker players took on the billionaire banker Andy Beal in a series of heads-up Limit Hold’em matches. The poker players dubbed their alliance The Corporation. Players involved were Doyle and Todd Brunson, Chip Reese, Barry Greenstein and Jennifer Harman.

This book tries to even the playing field by handing the amateur all the tools, tricks, and talent, to take down the professionals at their own game. You will learn beginner strategies, intermediate strategies and advanced strategies, along with some decent appendices covering all aspects of No-Limit Hold'em tournament play.

Seven-Card Stud for Advanced Players was the highest ranking book specifically tailored to a game other than No-Limit Hold’em. The book is easy to read and has enough depth and layers to help and assist players of all levels of the game.

Tournament Poker for Advanced Players does what it says on the tin. It assumes the reader has a grasp of the fundamentals of poker and then introduces the theory and strategies needed to succeed in tournament poker including written opinion on the idea of going broke, how chips change value throughout the tournament, and the gap concept.

DUCY is an acronym born on the 2+2 Forum where David Sklansky used to use the phrase “Do You See Why?” when trying to help people understand concepts on strategy.

The book reads like an autobiography as Sklansky airs his views on all things poker. If you love of problem-solving, then you will revel inside the mind of one of poker's true masters.

Another classic book focusing on No-Limit Hold'em, only, this time, we also get some insight into how to play the derivative known as Pot-Limit Hold'em. The authors are both members of the Poker Hall of Fame with 10 WSOP bracelets between them and over $12m in live tournament earnings.

If Hunter S. Thompson had found a job blogging about poker, then he would have ended up getting in some of the same scrapes that Pauly McGuire writes about in this book. It's a funny, honest, and raw look at what happens when the final card is dealt at the WSOP.

A look into the life of the first person to win two EPT Main Event titles, Victoria Coren-Mitchell. From her first forays into the casino, her time with the Hendon Mob, and her first EPT Main Event victory in her own backyard, this was a riveting and beautiful tale of life beyond the felt.

A story within a story when the author, James McManus, agrees to head to the World Series of Poker, on behalf of Harper's Magazine. The aim is to look at the event from the female's perspective, and also cover the murder of Ted Binion, but he wins a satellite into the Main Event and makes the final table.

The authors of the #1 Most Influential Poker Book of all time are back, this time with a two volume series looking at the nuances of the cash game scene.

Another great Hold'em tournament strategy guide, this time, focusing on the Limit Hold'em version of the game. The authors cover everything from the typical opponents you can expect to find at different limits, strategy across all streets, and some quizzes to your understanding of their teachings.

Lee Jones’s book on winning at lower limits is a great gift to give to anybody looking to take their game from beginner to the world beyond. Too complicated for the absolute beginner, and too simple for the skilled professional, it finds that nice niche where players are looking to learn more.

The business side of poker doesn’t only apply to professional poker players. Poker is a game that’s ostensibly played for money. Therefore, it’s critical that, ‘poker money’ is cared for and nurtured along with all your other living expenses. This book still stands alone as one-of-a-kind when it comes to this important concept.

The second Larry W. Phillips book to hit the Most Influential Poker Book charts and another timeless classic. This beautifully written book contains 285 nuggets that will transform your game.

If you want to become a great poker player, then you have to master the art of non-verbal communications. Who better to go to for advice than a former FBI Agent whose skills in determining the tweaks, twinges and tells of humanity were so highly attuned.

The Education of a Poker Player is the oldest book to appear in the list of most influential books. In this autobiography Herbert O. Yardley, chief of US codebreakers during both World Wars teaches you how to play poker by example.

Another excellent book that focuses purely on physical tells Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues by Paul Ekman contains a series of photographs with associated descriptions on a series of emotional cues such as fear, anger, and facial deceit.

Mastering Pot-Limit Omaha: The Modern Aggressive Approach is the first Omaha book to get a peek in the Most Influential Book charts. The book teaches you how to use aggression to your advantage in the most aggressive of games.

The final volume in the highly acclaimed Cash Game series by Dan Harrington & Bill Robertie focuses on Turn and River play in a live cash game setting.

Heads-Up No-Limit Hold 'Em by Collin Moshman is the second book that focuses on Heads-Up to make it into the Most Influential Book list. Moshman is a great coach and voracious producer of poker strategy content. In this book, he uses hand examples and accompanying theory to help improve a critical part of any poker player's game.

A great big bet poker book for lovers of Pot Limit and No Limit formats. Stewart Reuben and Rob Ciaffone cover Hold’em, Omaha, Lowball Draw, Seven Card Stud, and London Lowball in a book that is best read by medium to advanced players.

One of the few mixed game strategy books that made the Top 59. Ray Zee provides you with tips and advice on how to thrive in High-Low derivatives such as Seven Card Stud and Omaha Eight-or-Better.

A memoir from one of the greatest players to have ever played poker.

Phil Gordon is more likely to be found launching a successful start-up these days, but there was a time when his poker books were as popular as anything ever written.

Paul Hoppe, a fourth-degree black belt in Taekwon-Do, uses the martial arts narrative to dissect the game of poker in a way that has never before hit the pages of a poker book.

The autobiography of the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event winner Joe Hachem.

The first of two books written by Daniel Negreanu offering 50 powerful tips that will make you a winning poker player.

A look at short-handed Pot-Limit Omaha games by two of the Netherlands finest.

The only book on Sit n Go strategies to makes it into the Top 59. Collin Moshman is a valued author and poker coach. This was his second entry in the Top 59 (#50 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'em).

Another entry from the voracious author that is Jonathan Little, this time sharing his secrets on the most popular poker game in the world.

An autobiography from one of the most controversial and colourful characters in the game.