As a full-time online tournament poker player, I am always open to new concepts, strategies and opinions. So when I picked up this book, written by Lee Nelson and Blair Rodman, I was immediately convinced that there was fresh, new material. Now, whether or not you agree with the strategies presented in this poker book, you need to know your competitor’s knowledge and recognize their strategies as well. Some of which will clearly follow from books like this in years to come.
Nelson and Rodman are professionals at this game and each have excellent track records of success. In this book, they provide the novice player with a simple strategy to implement in No Limit Hold’em Tournaments. Having used these strategies themselves, well, they know what they write about. The premise of the Kill Phil strategy is twofold. 1- Maximize betting your entire stack (it’s No Limit, after all) consistently, thus masking the true strength of your hand, and 2- Negate post-flop play that is usually the domain of stronger players .
The reasoning here is that any time you’re all-in and a presumptive favorite, your potential to build a big stack is very realistic. Also, even if you go all-in with prescribed hands and find yourself behind, you won’t be as underdog. The book shows in detail how certain hands you wouldn’t think to bet with have a good chance of winning a huge pot.
The Kill Phil strategy is essentially a byproduct of how tournament formats are traditionally structured. This strategy was first introduced in David Sklanksy’s Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, but Nelson and Rodman break it down and make adjustments for stack size and position, while also introducing some advanced concepts, which the player of Novice tournaments can introduce you to your game with some experience. .
The writers do an excellent job of explaining this tournament poker strategy, giving confidence to any new tournament poker player. As an experienced person, I found a few flaws in the system, which does not detract from the wording and the generous amount of tournament background information included here. I personally couldn’t use this formula, because a large part of my game is post flop aggression. Also, if you employ these tactics in an online tournament with a low entry fee, let’s just say you’ll get a laugh out of Dodge. I have seen such characters and they NEVER win online. Players like me line up drooling for just the right moment to take these fools down.
But as I mentioned earlier, being interested in new concepts is part of growing and improving as a player. The writers present an excellent short stack strategy that can be incorporated into most players’ games and one that I like to use. Hey, any time you have two players this good, butting heads, odds and strategies together, give them the $25 and read their book.