Customer Reviews

The Poker Tournament Formula II: Advanced Strategies

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Last June, I was playing in a Caesar's Palace Megastack tournament. I was down to $4,000 in chips, from a starting chip stack of $12,500. I was livid and decided I was going to play poker by my instincts and reads, rather than whatever the hell "the book" or "books" recommended. Out of 561 players, I made the final table and we chopped.

Playing by the book will never make you a winner. But, of course, I'm always on the lookout for a good book on poker. I had real doubts about an author claiming to have a winning tournament formula. What a bunch of nonsense and what nerve? Yet, Snyder's The Poker Tournament Formula was a damn good read. His explanations of player types he's labeled as "boat people," "Canasta Ladies," and so on, were spot on and hilarious. Snyder's analysis of tournament structure, while overly detailed, was a novel insight. His "rock, paper, scissors" analogy was genius and very accurate. He also gives the best explanation of position play that I've ever read. Nevertheless, I was, and remain, skeptical of his relying too heavily on position and not enough on the cards -- even for the fast tournaments his first book is geared toward.

The Poker Tournament Formula 2 is much, much better than TPTF. His re-examining of the theories he recommended for fast tournaments for slow tournaments shows him to be an original thinker, adapting to circumstances rather than adhering to dogma. He rips Sklansky's half-baked ideas on calling requirements and chip values (i.e., "the less chips you have, the more each chip is worth, and the more chips you have, the less each chip is worth" is correctly ridiculed) and the overly tight, rigid play recommended by Harrington in his 3 volume set. Calling the Harrington devotes "Harringbots" is not only accurate, but damn funny. Snyder recommends not surviving, but thriving -- by accumulating a big stack and using your chips as artilery. His explanation of "chip utility" accurately describes, and simplifies, how the size of your stack compared to the blinds/antes and those of your competitors enables you to play poker or cripples you -- and you're headed for the rocks much earlier than you would have thought, at least according to Harrington's "M" formula.

Most surprising about TPTF2? Snyder doesn't recommend a "forumla." He emphasizes "chip utility," reading your opponent, worthwhile gambles, tournament structure, and tournament stages. He seemed to articulate my thoughts on playing tournaments; but since all the authors seemed to disagree with my thoughts, I assumed I was wrong. Snyder has been bludgeoned on some websites for his theories and recommendations, but most of these criticisms seems to be from people who seem too devoted to the common accepted poker theories to see anything worthwhile in Snyder's unconventional theories. Snyder's book is well-thought out, well-written, and witty. I highly recommend it. If it's not the best book on poker I've read, it's in the top 3.

Anybody that buys a poker book and then tries to play poker exactly as stated is a chump. That's not how the game works. There's too much variation. Too much that is unexpected and unpredictable. Until someone can create a theory for poker that takes all this into account (highly unlikely) the result will be the creation of poker theories that provide great insight into a few aspects of the game, but are deficient in others. No matter what any author tells you, it's up to you to put the various pieces together.

So this book, it's not a formula that you can play by--at least not strictly. I love the idea of Harringbots, because that's definitely a danger that you face when following Harrington's approach to the letter, but the same danger is here as well. However, there are some really useful concepts that blow some old stodgy ideas out of the water. The most interesting of them to me was Snyder's view of chip utility. The way he formulates this idea, that stack size can do so much more than just indicate strength or weakness, and his principles for thinking about leveraging stack size and the usefulness of (or lack thereof) calculating pot odds is much more effective and accurate than what some others (ahem, Sklansky) have indicated in books.

Less useful are his thoughts on game selection and bankroll management. Also, I continue to be skeptical of how much he talks about position versus cards. I think this can work in places, but it can really get you into trouble if you're not confident about how to use it right and when not to use it. I can imagine getting stuck up an unfortunate creek by relying too much on position, just because someone's figured out the strategy and knows I don't hold the cards.

Still, all in all, there's stuff in this book you can't get from anywhere else and that alone makes it a must read.

I like this book because it doesn't go in detail on what starting hand requirements a person should play. This is an advanced concept book and is not for folks who are just starting out playing hold'em.

I won't take away from Mr. Snyder and lay out the content of his book online. You can purchase the book for all of that. However, I will describe a few of topics otherwise no one will be inclined to read his material.

One of the interesting things about the book (and it's not even listed as a selling point) is the 10 functions you have with your chip stack.

Think about it for a second, can you list down all the functions your chips stack has besides adding to the pile? PFT2 goes into detail on how to use your chip stack to make information bets, value bet, dominate small stacks.

The books primary focus is utilizing the weapons you have at hand to develop a monstrous chip stack.

The first book is my favorite for tournament beginners. This is suposedly for more advanced players, but it falls seriously short. It's a highly repetitive polemic that suffers from a weak understanding of the issues. At the heart of the book is a debate about using ICM (Independent Chip Model) for calculating one's expected share of the tournament prize pool. ICM assumes your chance of finishing first is proportional to your chip stack. If you were to take a coin flip for your stack, when you double up, you double your chance of winning, but you don't quite double your chance of finishing 2nd, 3rd, etc (if you're 60% to finish first, you can't be more than 40% to finish 2nd) and so your expected share of the tournament prize pool doesn't quite double. As a result, conventional poker wisdom eschews coinflips early in tournaments when blinds are small and you can likely find a better spot. While the author does not agree with the conclusions of ICM, he does not provide a cogent, logical argument against it, and instead creates a fuzzy notion of "tournament utility" that a deep stack gives you more of. Much more revolutionary would be a more accurate version of ICM. If we were to assume that your chance of finishing first were proportional to your chipstack squared, then a double-up increases your expected cash by more than 100% and you would end up following the authors advice. In reality, I suspect, as always, the correct course of play depends on exploiting the tendencies of your opponents. If everyone follows conventional poker wisdom and plays weak-tight, then being the maniac at the table will work great. If all of your opponents read this book and raise every pot, then playing solid will get the chips. The author's "revolutionary" insight is to attack people who play weak-tight, but almost no one folds too often. As Mike Caro so accurately points out, people's primary mistake is calling too much.

It will cost us money at the tourneys! After reading this book, I played in 4 large casino tourneys (470-730 players) and became huge overall tourney chip leader in 3 of 4. One event by the 6th blind level, I had over 19x the start stack at nearly 135k chips, when about 1.5x was the average stack. The last one in the series, I was overall chip leader for about 5 hours including going into the final table as chip leader with 588k out of a total of 1.8mil chips in play. Lost 4 races in a row (I was ahead when all the chips went in) to finish in 4th place. This book definitely helped my game. Definitely get book one as well, otherwise don't bother getting book 2.

Honestly, this book is ground breaking for tournament players. Some of the main concepts would be too deep for beginner players - but are mind blowing for those who study the game of poker.

The author is able to convincingly argue that pot odds are for cash games and he completely blows Harringtons M theory out of the water. These two concepts will change your game completely.

This book also does a good job of explaining small-ball chip aculamation techniques, discusses bank roll mangement and game selection.

As the book's blerb says - the strategy's covered are primarilary for big buy-in/deep stack tournaments. His previous book PTF1 details a strategy for low buy-in tournamnets.

Of the dozen or so poker books I have read, I think this one has given me a far deeper understanding of the game and (hopefully) considerably increased my edge over the average tourament player.

Like I said.....I would prefer you did not read this book.......

PTF2 is so jam packed with great information I'm not going to attempt to summarize it here. I had to outline the book to remind myself of all the great points, and I try and keep that outline with me. It's so good, I'm noping it doesn't get as widely read as the Harrington books, because good tournament players could do without everyone having the knowledge in the PFT books.

When I started to play before I read anything, I was naturally quite loose, and I was up a bit in my bankroll overall. Then I started reading the traditional books, and my bankroll took a nosedive (I was playing too tight, I was a "Harrington-Bot"). After reading PTF2, I've become more aggressive than I ever was, and my tournament success has increased substantially.

It's has a lot of points in common with some of Daniel Negranu's best book, but it goes much further and deeper.

If you want to do me and other tournement players who are up and in the black a favor, then don't read this book. It's too good.

This is the second book by a blackjack expert on playing poker tournaments. His first book included online play; here the focus is on brick and mortar poker.

He recommends a very loose aggressive style, playing the situation, not your cards.

The standard books on tournament poker are the Harrington books. They suggest a much tighter style which may lead to pushing marginal hands when you're outchipped.

Probably wisely, Snyder recommends chipping up with early aggression based om position and reads as well as your cards.

The author is using a pen name, but I believe he has a creditable live tourney record. He graphs his tourneys in this book. (Would using his real name hurt his results at the tables?)

This book is well worth adding to your poker library as a different way of thinking about poker. The poker book market has a lot of me-too books. Snyder's works stand above the rabble of cloned poker texts.

I have read this book and think you should not. Keep away, the secrets or mind set you could acheive from this book will cost me money. I do not lend this book to my friends, no telling when they would use it against me. The more prople that learn this stuff the harder it is for me to beat them. I am doing very well with this knowledge. I want to keep it to myself. Stay away, keep dumb and keep giving me your money.

I read this book right before playing in a $1,000 buyin for the WSOP. It had given me a different approach to the game and was a tremendous help to my poker game growth. I adapted pretty well to the system set out in this book, and although I didn't get to make it to cash, I finished 720 of 4576 people. I got much farther than I would have with the help of this book, than playing my normal game as I used to be much more cautious. It gave me confidence to make more plays and be involved in more pots, which got me more chips in the end. I recommend this book to any tournament player.