Get just about any poker book you want for next to nothing.

Profit: $15(ish)

I should have mentioned this before but it's never really occurred to me how useful this could be for some people.

As we all know, poker books can be very expensive. As most of them are shipped over from from the US they often cost in the region of £20. Of course, you could sign up to poker sites and get free books and goodies that way but you often miss out on rakeback offers and the like. There is an alternative however and it comes from what would appear to be an unlikely source: local libraries.

I used to work in a library and one of the things we often had to do was request books from out of our stock. This would mean either getting the book from a library outside of the region or buying it in for our stock. I decided to see what would happen if I requested all three volumes of Harrington on Holdem. Prices will obviously vary throughout the UK but where I worked it cost 60p per book and then a further 60p if the library decided to bring it in from a library outside the region. I was delighted to discover a month later that all three Harrington books had been bought into stock and were available to loan.

Now, the real beauty about all this is that poker books aren't the most sought after items from libraries so you can often loan them out and then keep them indefinitely - and if you can't you always know where you can pick it again up if you need it. I've had the Harringtons now for over a year now: I just keep renewing them.

So, instead of paying £60 for one of poker's essential bibles, try requesting it down at your local library. It cost me £1.80. That's bankroll management!

And don't get embarrassed about using a library. It's a public service; it's there to serve you. People order bus-spotting books, manga comics and all sorts of crazy literature, so why shouldn't you be able to request some poker books? My local library is a mecca of poker books now. I'm eagerly awaiting Positively Fifth Street as I type :)