Learn About Poker

5 Comments on this post

1. Posted by Johnny A. Large March 13th, 2010 at 10:02 pm

   Snyder has done any serious tournament player a favor by revealing all the information in this book. A follow-up to PTF1, it is written for deep-stack tournaments, but much of the theories and tools provided can be used for all forms of poker (I know Snyder might disagree with this). Frankly, being selfish, I’m glad not too many people have read this outstanding addition to the vast library of poker books available. To those of you that are really serious however, this is a MUST BUY, and worth 10X the price.
   Overall Rating: 5 / 5

2. Posted by Seth Baldwin March 13th, 2010 at 10:47 pm

   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.
   Overall Rating: 2 / 5

3. Posted by G. Wardlaw March 13th, 2010 at 10:49 pm

   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…….
   Overall Rating: 4 / 5

4. Posted by 2many2read March 14th, 2010 at 1:37 am

   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.
   Overall Rating: 5 / 5

5. Posted by Online Junkie March 14th, 2010 at 4:28 am

   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.
   Overall Rating: 5 / 5