For a while now, the poker book market has become somewhat stagnant. People still talk about the Harrington on Cash Games series as some of the best poker books, but that was a few years ago. What is there now?
Well in case you’re wondering, “Don’t Listen to Phil Hellmuth” is the latest big-time poker book to hit the market, and the title alone makes you want to read it. You might want to read it even more after finding out that it’s written by cash games specialist Dusty Schmidt, who has earned several million dollars during his poker career.
Before this, Schmidt was best know for issuing a $1 million challenge before Tom Dwan started issuing his million dollar challenges. However, Schmidt’s challenge was different because the renowned golfer wanted to combine poker and golf into his challenge to see who would come out on top. Eventually Schmidt gave up on his challenge when: A) nobody took him up on it, and B) the United States Golf Association took his amateur status away for issuing the challenge.
Getting back to the subject at hand, Schmidt’s book deals with 50 of the worst poker tips you’ll ever hear in your life – a.k.a. the old school way of playing poker. In case you’re wondering about the title, the co-author of this book, Paul Hoppe, pointed out that many of the terrible strategy bits come from Phil Hellmuth….and so the title was born.
The obvious knock against this book is that Schmidt doesn’t have 11 WSOP bracelets to back up his opinion that Phil Hellmuth is clueless about the modern poker world. However, he has won plenty of cash over the course of his career, and Hellmuth is more of a has-been star who’s failed to improve his game over the years. In short, I’d put my money on Schmidt if the two were to play poker against each other.
