Super/System is great too, there's a Super/System 2 as well, but I don't really rate it as highly as the first one, it's too dripping with ego stroking.
Don't play unless you know you're going to have long enough with no distractions to stay focussed, you need to be able to maintain a clear head to make the right decisions.
Speaking of which, avoid playing when drunk, I dunno if I still have it but I had a winnings graph of one of my months playing where I was going out every friday night, coming back and playing poker, the graph had a nice slope upwards during the week, then a massive drop every friday where I pissed away more the weeks winnings in drunken sessions. It didn't take me too long to work out not to play when pissed!
Online sites are not dodgy.
They don't care who wins or loses hands, they make their money from the rake regardless, it's simply not in their interest to rig hands.
I've got hand histories of millions of hands, and they show that they're not dodgy, everything happens around the amount of times you'd expect them to.
People think they see bad beats more frequently online, but that's not true. You see more of them sure, but you see more hands online too.
Live you're limited to around 30 hands per hour, online? well, single table you could push 90, multi tabling, a multiple of that. I'd easily push 600 hands an hour back in my grinding days, that's 20x as many hands as playing live, of course you're going to see more bad beats, but do they happen more frequently? No.
There are exceptions of course, there have been staff members using their positions to cheat (the absolute poker scandal being the main one) but they get found VERY quickly, because people who play this game for a living are also obsessed with stats and how people play, and it's pretty obvious to notice someone who is cheating if you know what to look for.
Then of course there's full tilt, which apparently was just a huge ponzi scheme with the company paying itself out of players money rather than having a seperation of funds like they should have, so they were spending the money that players had in their accounts. But that's another thing entirely.
As for casinos swarming with sharks, most casino sharks fall into two categories,
1) people with actually know how to play poker
2) rich people who try to bully hands
There's always enough fish, and enough of number 2 (who are the exact people you want at a table) in a live game to make money, and number 1 aren't that abundant so you can avoid playing hands with them if they are actually that good. But the secret is they generally aren't, because you don't have to be to play live poker.
Most live players are far worse than online. There's very few live games I wouldn't walk into and be profitable at, it's only when you get into the stupidly high stakes you start getting tables full of pros, because honestly, most live casino games just aren't profitable enough for people who can actually play poker to bother with most the time. Why would you want to play 30 hands an hour live, when you can do 600 online?
Full Tilt is what I played so maybe my perception is tainted...nonetheless, online poker is a money vacuum unless you are very strict with yourself.
The casino where I'd play had enough "teams" at the lower stakes tables that I just played tournaments to make sure everything was above board...