| The Poker Tournament Formula II: Advanced Strategies |  | Author: Arnold Snyder
Publisher: Cardoza
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $15.39
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Seller: allnewbooks
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 124,998
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 1580422268
Dewey Decimal Number: 795.412
EAN: 9781580422260
ASIN: 1580422268
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9781580422260 | | • | Condition: USED - Good | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
Probably the greatest tournament poker book ever written, and the most controversial in the last decade, Snyder's revolutionary work debunks commonly (and falsely) held beliefs. Snyder reveals the power of chip utility - the real secret behind winning tournaments - and covers utility ranks, tournament structures, small- and long-ball strategies, patience factors, the impact of structures, crushing the Harringbots and other player types, tournament phases, and much more. Includes big sections on Tools, Strategies, and Tournament Phases. A must buy!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 Great Sequel July 20, 2010
mesham
If you have read PTF1 you will like PTF2. This book covers a slower tournament structure and the strategies to win. I especially enjoyed his stereotypes of players. Also, his real life observations of winning tournament pros. Highly recommend.
 Consider Your Chips April 3, 2009
TheGreeneShark (Boston, MA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
 Not as Good as the First March 17, 2009
Seth Baldwin (Portland, OR United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
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.
Playing Players, Not Cards January 27, 2009
Kevin O'Mahoney (Cambridge, MA United States)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
Shhhhhsh! Don't tell anyone else what a great book this one is... January 2, 2009
Online Junkie (Hollywood, CA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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