Title: Super System 2 – A course in power poker
Author: Doyle Brunson
Facts: Super System 2 contains 646 pages of text while the first edition had 519 text pages and about 50 pages of preface, supplement and glossary. Cardoza publishing publishes the book. You can buy it for $15 from Amazon.com.
About the authors
Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson, the godfather of poker. Brunson is one of the top players now and has been for the last decades. He has been around for so long that he actually has the hand 10,2 named after him. The reason is that he won the No Limit Hold ‘Em event at the World Series of Poker two years in a row with T2! He was the first player to reach 1 million dollars playing in tournaments. He has won the world poker tour legends, two World Series of poker and several bracelets at the WSOP. This is a master and he keeps playing strong poker. He finished second in the WPT battle among the poker book authors.
Review
The super system is often referred to as the bible of poker. The first super system has been around for almost 30 years. And when you ask people about the best book about poker, the super system books always come up, they are indeed great books. A lot of people think that the second one is just an update of the first one, but that’s not true. Some parts like the No-limit chapter is still pretty much the same but a lot of the other pieces have been changed around and new chapters about various modern poker games were added. So, there is nothing wrong about getting both super system books and reading them. If you only want one of them, we suggest you go for Super System 2. It contains more up to date games. But. if you are interested in games like draw poker, you need to go to the first edition because they left it out in the second one.
Doyle Brunson writes only parts of the super system books. Top theorists and players, like Mike Caro and Bobby Baldwin (after his great player career, he became the president at the Bellagio and CEO of the Mirage, but still plays some poker), write the other chapters. Those two makes contributions to both editions. Caro’s chapter in the second edition, we believe, is a masterpiece. There are 43 tips from Mike Caro’s University. They are simple and they are great! In the first edition, David Sklansky writes about high-low split. In the second edition Daniel Negreanu writes about triple draw and Jennifer Hartman about limit hold’em. Brunson has an amazing couple of co writers in his books and that’s what makes them so good! Daniel Negreanu is probably the best poker tournament player at the moment and his last couple of years on the world poker tour have been amazing.
The book gives you the basics about poker in general, but also specific knowledge about different games. Therefore, this is a beginner’s book that can also be studied by the top pros. Every poker player will be able to learn something from these books. But, be careful when you decide to follow the advice about how to play no-limit. We say that because Brunson is a very aggressive player and nowadays when you play online poker, that play won’t always work. Also, a lot of players have read the book and adopted the advice in it, so sometimes you need to change your game a bit to avoid getting into trouble. In super system 2 there is a chapter about online poker. It’s seems to mostly promote Brunsons own poker room. But it also has an important lesson to be learned before getting too much into the later chapter’s fancy play.
Super System 2’s weakest spot is the tournament poker strategy chapters. There are small pieces about playing the largest tournaments, but not enough. If there is going to be a super system 3, we would suggest putting a bigger effort into the tournament sections. And until then, the readers need to look elsewhere to find specific strategies and tips about different types of tournaments.
Super System 2 can be a good starting book when you do not know what type of game you want to play. You read the book, start playing your type of game and then you go looking for other books more specialized in that specific game.
Read on to review some of the industry’s other best poker books.