Product Description

Divulges the real strategies used by professional poker players to consistently win major (and minor) no-limit hold 'em tournaments. With poker tournaments televised on more than a dozen television networks and internet poker sweeping the nation, the popularity of the game is at an all-time high. Everyone thinks they have a shot, as evidenced by the 5,600+ player field in the $10,000 main event at the 2005 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. If these weekend warriors hope to win, they'd better know the same strategies that the pros use. Authors Blair Rodman and Lee Nelson, both poker professionals, spill the beans about the strategies they (and most of the big-name poker players) use to keep scooping the pots.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #437903 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 275 pages

Review
It's like giving the gun to the rabbit. -- Marcel Luske, two-time Hall of Fame Classic Champion

It's like giving the gun to the rabbit. --Marcel Luske, two-time Hall of Fame Classic Champion

The best book on tournament no-limit hold 'em I've ever read. -- Russ Hamilton, 1994 World Series of Poker Champion

The best book on tournament no-limit hold 'em I've ever read. --Russ Hamilton, 1994 World Series of Poker Champion

This book will be a dangerous weapon in the poker world. A detailed strategy for future tournament-poker champions. -- Joseph Hachem, 2005 World Series of Poker Champion

This book will be a dangerous weapon in the poker world. A detailed strategy for future tournament-poker champions. --Joseph Hachem, 2005 World Series of Poker Champion

About the Author
Blair Rodman made a name for himself in the 2004 World Series of Poker, where he made it into the prize money six times and played at three final tables. He topped it off with a terrific five-day run in the World Championship, eventually finishing 54th out of 2,576 players (one spot behind the legendary Doyle Brunson). Blair continued the pace in 2005, making two final tables on the WSOP circuit and finishing second in the World Poker Tour finale at the Reno Hilton for a $327,000 payday. Blair is currently ranked 10th in the world in the 2005 World Poker standings. Lee Nelson is the top-rated tournament poker player in Australia and Asia, named the Austral-Asia Grand Champion for 2000-2005. In 2005, Lee won the Party Poker World Open with a $400,000 first prize, the $120,000 High-stakes Speed Poker event, and the 7-card stud championship at the Aussie Millions, as well as the pot-limit Omaha event at the Irish Open. Lee also took down the no-limit hold 'em tournament at the St. Maarten Open in late 2004.

Customer Reviews

instant classic...and then some
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?

Mixed feelings
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.

This book basically concedes that you're a sub-par player!
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.