The Poker Tournament Formula II: Advanced Strategies

• #42 in Best Gambling Books
• #43 in Best Poker Books

3 Reviews

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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.

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.

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.