Customer Reviews

Kill Phil: The Fast Track to Success in No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is going to change the way you approach tournament no limit holdem. It will be an essential book to round out your no limit tournaments library.

The subtle beauty is that this approach can allow inexperienced or moderately experienced players to negate some of the skill edge veteran and expert players hold. This book is a detailed and expanded version of "The System" described in David Sklansky's "Tournament Poker for Advanced Players", which Sklansky designed to allow a complete novice to be competetive in a big buy in tournament.

Before "Kill Phil" was published many of the young, aggressive players were already using this type of approach with good success against the veteran tournament pros. It is an interesting strategy which if you don't know and understand will leave you behind against the rest of the players who do know it. I will go out on the proverbial limb here and predict that this book will become an instant classic and "must own" book in any players no limit tournament library. It is that good.

It is not the "Holy Grail" for no limit tournaments, but because it is so powerful, you must understand how to use it and when it is being used against you. It does have drawbacks certainly, but used as described will minimize some of the skill gap for lesser experienced players where they may be put to tough decisions too often. The core of the system is a combination of math and psychology; the system has you making some hyper aggressive plays with hands that don't seem to warrant it, but the psychology of the all in bet coupled with the possibility of elimination if you call- and either guess wrong or are outdrawn -make it a devastingly effective strategy in the right situations.

If someone asked you at the beginning of a $10,000 buy in tournament to flip a coin for your entire buy in, would you do it if you knew ahead of time you would probably lose your $10,000 about one time in three?

Post Script Jan 21st: Lee Nelson(co author with Blair Rodman) took first in the 2006 Aussie Millions on Jan 19, 2006 and won $972,000 for first place. If you weren't a believer before, you should be now.

Posr scriptApril 4, 2006: There seems to be a fair amount of hostility coming in toward this book and I am not sure exactly why. An astute player and reader should realize that this type of strategic approach is just a small part of a well developed approach to no limit tournaments. The one huge thing it did for my no limit game was to decrease the fear of moving my stack in
more often both because it was mathematically correct to do so and in defense of the "table bullies" who constantly apply pressure to you. So to the extremely negative reviews I wonder ...what were you hoping to gain from buying this book? and why could you not find some value in this strategic approach to add to your game?

Great poker players want to enter a lot of pots and beat the amateur players on the late streets. This is small ball poker. Kill Phil allows you to side step the advantage of the pros by getting all the money into the pot before the flop--before the pros can outplay you later on in the hand. This is long ball poker.

The great thing about this book is that while you are using the long ball tactics, you can learn small ball tactics by observing other players. So rather than getting eaten up in a tournament, you are going further and learning at the same time.

Another good thing about the book is that as the blinds and antes increase, all of the players should start adjusting to long ball tactics. Some players don't know how to make the proper adjustments, so they fall short at the end. This is where even an advanced player would benefit from the book.

Because the techniques work extremely well when blinds and antes have increased and decisions need to be made for greater portions of your chip stack, I have found this system to be most effective in the turbo style NL tournaments.

There are different levels of Kill Phil, going from basic to advanced. As you move through the system, you are not just moving all in with AA or KK like you would at the basic level. You play more flops and become an aggressive force at the table.

I would say this belongs on the book shelves of most regular NL tournament players. The book is easy to read and the concepts are pretty simple to use the day you get the book at the most basic level.

Additional thoughts: I have had this book for about 6 months now and it has done wonders for my tournament play. I have worked on my play to the point that I am able to employ the Kill Phil "expert" level tactics almost by second nature. Couple this with the fact I had already read the Harrington books prior to getting the book, I am very comfortable playing any level of NL hold'em tournament. This book has moved from 4 star level to a full five star book. I think it is going to allow players to get a lot of enjoyment from the tournaments they play in. Even the tournaments I lose, I always know I am not going out without a good fight. I really love this system, especially at the advanced levels of the program. Highly recommend.

I suppose I understand where these authors are coming from; they know that the WSOP and WPT hype has brought a lot of new players into the game of hold 'em, particularly into tournament play. Now, the best way to become a quality poker player is to rack up experience at the tables; but, they offer this book as a short-cut to the impatient. Allegedly, this is to help them do better while learning the game. But I question that approach because the Kill Phil strategy is largely formulaic. Exactly how does one learn the game while following a relatively fixed formula?

And what exactly does the formula consist of? Essentially, it involves pushing all-in before the flop or folding. The authors rarely ever discuss playing past the pre-flop stage, referring derisively to such tactics as "smallball." Folks, hold 'em is not a game that's supposed to be played with only two cards; waiting to see a five card hand before deciding to play for all your chips should not properly be classified as "smallball," whatever the authors say on the matter. You can still make "longball" plays after you've seen if you have an actual hand or not (and whether your opponent is likely to have something).

What does this system offer? Basically, this book concedes that you're a sub-par poker player and unable to compete with quality poker players at their own level; so, instead of doing that, the book offers a fairly mindless system to employ to force coin-toss confrontations against your opponents. Basically, if there's a certain amount of money in the pot, and you're likely to be 50-50 or so against any hand your opponent might have, the book advises you to push all-in pre-flop. This has the obvious advantage of preventing you from being outplayed after actual cards are dealt; but the extreme disadvantage of never leaving you with much more than a coin flip chance against your opponent.

You'll have to win a lot of coin flips to win any sort of tournament with this system. Of course, you'll have to win a lot of coin flips anyway, but here, there's no possibility of outplaying your opponent and getting your money in with favorable odds. Pre-flop, you can never expect the odds to favor you as much as they might after the flop (especially if you factor in the odds of forcing your opponent to fold). So essentially, this book advocates a system that removes any chance of playing a hand out with favorable odds. This is not only bad poker, it's bad math, and bad gambling.

Now, in the final stages of a tournament, this strategy is basically sound. At that point, you should take your chances whenever and wherever possible and hope to win a lot of pots without too much confrontation. The problem is that the strategy presented here is much too tight early on. It's in the early stages of a tournament where you can be creative and apply skill to maximum advantage. Yes, this is more dangerous than pushing all-in, but presents an ideal opportunity to build up a big stack before the end-game forces random acts of desperation. Kill Phil has you basically throw away hands like AAs and KKs by raising all-in pre-flop and not getting any value out of them; if you are fortunate enough to get a hand that good in a tournament, I should hope you would be smart enough to try to milk them a little! If they get cracked, that's poker; but you gave yourself good odds to make some money in the process, and you've already won if you can do that often enough. This book assumes that you can't.

I'd recommend the sequel to this book, Kill Everyone: Advanced Strategies for No-limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments and Sit-n-go's rather than this book and Poker Tips that Pay: Expert Strategy Guide for Winning No Limit Texas Hold em for readers that are looking for detailed, hand-by-hand poker strategy and advice.

I bought Kill Phil after Mason Malmuth of Two Plus Two publishing and noted poker authority rated it a 10 out of 10, which is a very rare event. The premise of the book is to teach beginner and advanced tournament players long-ball or big pot strategies. These strategies have several advantages. One it helps negate the skills of better players. These players, the "phils" named for some of the big names in tournament pokers won't want to get involved in big pots even if they are a favorite. They will fear you because you will be willing to play aggressively in these marginal situations. Two, it is an excellent medium to small stack strategy. Many players are too cautious at this stage. KP teaches you to use your stack as a weapon, whereas most players allow themselves to get eroded away. Finally, it is an excellent strategy for late in tournaments as the blinds get very high and you are forced to gamble. KP will teach you when and how to gamble.

The book begins with KP Basic which is a full strategy of poker much like basic strategy with blackjack. It requires no decision making only calculating you stack relative to the blinds and antes. It requires you mostly making all-in moves stealing the other bets and doubling up. I have experimented with basic strategy in 200 low limit Sit n Go's with great success. A return on investmet of 35% and almost 50% in the money. I think my success has been party because I chose a site with a very fast tournament structure. The book adds to KP basic extensively describing KP basic plus and KP Expert. Both teach you to apply KP strategies and adapt them to the circumstances as your experience increases.

For the beginning player you will learn KP basic and it will be very beneficial. You can gain lots of experience and still be a winning player. For the intermediate player, KP will give you another gear and help you tremendously in end game, where many intermediate players are too tight and timid. For the advanced player, it will teach you long ball. A strategy that you can combine with your small ball post flop skills to be very dangerous. A good example would be to use small ball as a big stack and then switch to KP as a medium stack. Although the best players will mix it up throughout the tournament. I highly recommend the book and think it will help everyone's game. As a limit player, my no-limit post-flop skill were pretty weak. KP allowed me to build on these skills while staying a winning player.

I already had significant SnG experience before picking up this book, and therefore I don't think I got that much out of it. The book is trying to be a "how to" guide, and in that regard is probably pretty decent. It fails however to provide the same level of detail and analysis that Harrington does in his NL texts. It is that underlying knowledge that will ultimately improve one's poker game. If you are starting out, I would still recommend reading Harrington's book to this. The concepts there coupled with experience will ultimately be more beneficial than adopting the basic or advanced Kill Phil strategies advocated in this book.

Kill Phil is an outstanding contribution to tournament poker literature. This is not, contrary to what you might suppose, merely a naive all-in approach. The basic Kill Phil approach involves (i) minimizing tough decisions after the flop (but not eliminating them-- both the basic Kill Phil approach and, to a greater extent, the more advanced variations invlove play after the flop) and (ii) adjusting your aggressiveness and the risks you are taking based on blind levels, stack size and number of players. The hand rankings that form the basis of the system are exceptionally useful and are very different from the hand rankings that you may be familiar with from Sklansky or similar sources. These hand rankings are intended to reflect playability in an all-in situation against hands that may call you or hands that may have raise or called in front of you--domination for example results in some hands ranking lower than you might expect, and the likelihood of two live cards results in some hands ranking higher than you might expect (e.g., middle suited connecters). The authors make the point that the Kill Phil approach does not have to displace your regular game, but can be incorporated into a style that involves a small ball approach as well. In any case, about half way through a sit and go tournament, and in the later stages of other tournaments, all-in skills are crucial.

I have incorporated the Kill Phil approach into my regular game and am very happy with the results. I think the book can operate either as a complete method of tournament play or as a supplement to more traditional tournament play. Highly recommended!

I like the idea of a simple system that makes mediocre players competitive with better players. The Kill Phil System promises this, but I have been watching it fail online and on television. The 2005 WSOP was full of players doing the All In rhumba and exiting the tournament quickly. Online, I play against Kill Phil players regularly at SNG tables and they rarely make the pay level.

After reading it, I thought their advanced system was pretty good and use some of the ideas in my own game. So, I recommend reading it. But the folks who use the Rookie or basic system had better get ready for a thumping at the hands of better players.

While the book's claim to fame is the use (and misuse!) of allins in no limit Texas Hold'em poker tourneys, it really covers many aspects of staying on course in tourneys: handling tough opponents, stealing the blinds, playing the final table, even making deals to split the top prizes.

Some of the information in this book is revealed nowhere else that I know. Other material that can be found elsewhere is presented here in a concise way, giving as much certainty as possible to the often murky world of poker probabilities.

The detailed at-the-table examples using this strategy in play are excellent.

I won't tip the best advice in the book, but overall, it is a terrific book on tourney play. (You feel in reading some books by big-name players on NL tourneys that they have all the expert knowledge, but they aren't about to tell you for $24.95.)

This book gives you a real insiders' view of the game.

Edit: The secret to success using the KP method is Fold Equity. If you ain't got a large fold equity, you will not like what happens. To shove your stack with "better than average" hands is a poor play unless there's a good chance your opponent will fold. Don't try it at all in the early levels of online tournaments as you get numerous any-two-card callers.

The genesis of the original allin/fold concept is David Sklansky's teaching a beginner how to play in the WSOP in 1 day! (Imagine a pro's reaction to frequent allins in the main event on day one!)

These guys have fleshed out David Sklansky's all-in or fold "system" from Tournament Poker for Advanced Players. And they have done it using concepts similar to those Dan Harrington wrote about in Harrington on Holdem 2 - (i.e., M, Q and zones) combined with position.

If you are new to NLHE tourneys, this is a good way to learn to play. If you aren't new but having trouble, this book will help get you back on the right track.

As for the book itself, there is quite a bit of filler material in the beginning that would only be of interest to complete beginners. But after that, the book is outstanding.

Kill Phil joins the Harrington books, David Sklansky's Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, Barry Greenstein's Ace on the River, Phil Gordon's Little Green Book and Howard Lederer's More Secrets of NLHE DVD as the best resources available on NLHE tourneys.

I have never seen such a concerted effort to hype a mediocre book.
This book is tired and old, using a very outdated strategic approach. It would never have been published at all but for the huge boom in poker's popularity.
First the premise of the book is that you beat certain star players, who all coincidentally share the name "Phil" allowing the weak pun based on the Tarantino film of the title. That is about as good as it gets.

The main criticism of the book is that it fails to deliver on its premise. You are not going to be a top tournament player on the basis of this book. You can't memorize a strategy and win at poker tournaments, the human element forbids it. And Kill Phil is highly specific. To be successful at poker tourneys you need, in addition to a huge amount of luck, to be able to adjust your core strategy to your opponents who figure out what you are doing. That is the difficult part. And here the book waffles or just ignores the problem completely.

I'm tempted to award this book another star for awarding me the opportunity to beat all the people who will effectively be turning over each hole-card by using this strategy. It takes five minutes to come up with a powerful anti-Phil strategy. But then again, poker isn't about charity.

I feel sorry for all the idiots that will buy this book, get lucky and win some money in a tourney and put it down to Kill Phil's advice. Then they will spend years losing money thinking the problem is with them. It isn't.

Watch this review disappear in a few days as all the sycophants boosting this book's sales close ranks. One thing you can learn from this book is marketing...