Poker Is Skill, By George

As this post is being published, FerricRamsium and I are probably in the air on the last leg of our journey, heading from Amsterdam to Kiev, Ukraine to cover the initial stop of Season 6 of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour. Start checking PokerNews’ live reporting page tomorrow (Tuesday) for our first reports.

Am hoping to be able to post this week from Kiev, although can’t promise anything along those lines. Meanwhile, I thought I’d give y’all something to ponder. Saw this op-ed piece in Saturday’s Houston Chronicle by George F. Will which speaks in a somewhat general way about legal battles over online gambling and poker, and thought I would point you to it and make a comment or two.

You might recall Will -- a generally conservative political pundit though never hesitant to criticize either party’s policies if he feels such criticism is warranted -- was an early opponent of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. In fact, Will was probably one of the first to liken the UIGEA to prohibition, writing a Newsweek column about it in October 2006 (shortly after Bush signed it into law) which he titled “Prohibition II: Good Grief.”

Will’s new piece, titled “Internet gambling ban a raw deal for poker players,” also makes the libertarian argument against government restrictions against online gambling. Yet Will additionally makes some effort in the piece to emphasize the “poker is skill” argument, highlighting Howard Lederer as a modern day exemplar of the theory. He also reaches back to the Hungarian mathematician and founder of game theory, John von Neumann, to further Lederer’s case that poker is not strictly gambling, but a genuine test of one’s ability “to apply skill, acquired by experience.”

Incidentally, not all poker theorists blindly accept von Neumann’s poker-related ideas, the most famous of which appear in a chapter called “Poker and Bluffing” that appears in the mathematician’s 1944 book titled Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Arnold Snyder has a lengthy section in his Poker Tournament Formula 2 which (perhaps hyperbolically) suggests “this chapter has resulted in more bad bluffs at the poker tables in the past 65 years than drunkenness, fatigue, and bad-beat tilting combined.” But Will’s use of von Neumann in his editorial seems relevant enough.

There is one problem, though, with Will’s editorial, I think, in that Will seems to be conflating two distinct issues.

There’s the issue of personal liberty, whereby any restrictions that handicap or prevent individuals’ being able to gamble online are viewed by folks like Will as a threat. Then there’s the issue of poker being different from other forms of gambling, involving a skill component in a way that, say, roulette or playing the lottery does not.

In his new piece, Will doesn’t mention either Barney Frank’s Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2267) -- which seeks to license and regulate online gambling, generally speaking -- or Robert Menendez’s Internet Poker and Games of Skill Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act of 2009 (S. 1597) -- which concentrates on licensing and regulating “games of skill” like poker, chess, bridge, mah-jong, and backgammon.

It appears Will was probably inspired by Menendez’s newly-introduced Senate bill to write the new piece. But the argument he puts forth gets a little fuzzy when, on the one hand, he refers to gambling in general as “a ubiquitous human activity that generally harms nobody,” while on the other hand he highlights poker as a skill-based game that because it requires skill makes it particularly unfair for the government to circumscribe folks’ playing it.

Still, I appreciate Will chiming in, and don’t disagree with his view that Congress should not be restricting “Americans’ freedom to exercise their poker skills online.”

Interesting, I guess, that I’m now heading to Kiev, where the initial EPT stop was moved following Russia’s decision to consider poker gambling (and not a sport) and thus make it impossible for the EPT to have its event in Moscow. We go where the game goes.

In any event, I hope to talk to you soon from the Kiev Sports Palace!

Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon! by John Fox

When in Vegas this summer I did get a chance one afternoon to visit the Gamblers Book Shop again. The store has a new location since my last visit, having moved from its previous spot over on 11th Street near Charleston Blvd. to a smallish strip mall over on E. Tropicana Ave. The new store has just about everything the old one did, although I missed the room full of old magazines and used books which didn’t make the trip.

I bought one book while there, one with kind of a historical value as far as poker literature goes. The book is by John Fox and is called Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon! or The Complete Psychology, Mathematics and Tactics of Winning Poker.

When one opens the cover, the title page looks like it might have been patterned after the title pages of 17th- or 18th-century British novels and satires, extending on and on down the page: Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon! or Play Poker With “The Fox,” or Poker for the Greedy Player, or The Complete Guide to Winning Poker, or Poker: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why, or The Secrets of a Professional Poker Player, or The Mathematics Professor Plays Draw Poker, or How to Be the Best Poker Player on Your Block (or the World), or Draw Poker Tactics and the Science of Behavioral Deductions, or How You Can Make a Living Playing Casino Poker, or How to Win at Poker Without Being Really Lucky, or A Brief Outline of Some of the More Fundamental Aspects of Draw Poker (in 600 Pages).

Fox’s book was first published in 1977, and as that long version of the title indicates the game on which it focuses is five-card draw. However, though much of the strategy discussed concerns that largely outmoded game, the majority of the book concerns psychological issues, with lots of specific pointers regarding tells, projecting an image, various strategems to elicit desired responses from opponents, and other advice not necessarily specific to draw poker.

As that long version of the title also probably suggests, Fox is quite the humorist, and employs a witty, engaging style throughout, peppering his discussions with funny anecdotes (some of which are laugh-out-loud hilarious) and what he calls “stratefices,” a word he invented to refer to “a tricky, extremely useful, carefully selected, profound, and more than a little underhanded maxim, principle, or rule.” When introducing the word, he explains its etymology in detail, claiming it combines elements of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, “in keeping with the learned nature of this erudite tome.”

The book was self-published, and has all the quirky, unexpected shifts in typeface, spacing, and sometimes erratic copy editing one might expect. Like I say, the book kind of reminds me of an old British satire, what with all of the digressions, the pseudo-academic apparatus, and other idiosyncracies -- including the author’s sort-of-crazy-sounding persona. For those who are familiar, think Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy or Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub.

Fox’s book has a definite historical importance in poker literature, appearing a couple of years before Doyle Bruson’s Super/System and seven years before Mike Caro’s Book of Tells. Arnold Snyder, whose Poker Tournament Formula books I’ve recommended here before, speaks highly of Fox’s discussions of the psychology of poker and bluffing both in Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon! and in Fox’s second book, How to Hustle Home Poker (1981).

Says Snyder, Fox’s discussions “are truly exceptional,” adding that Fox’s first book “truly is in a class by itself as poker books go.” Snyder also points out how some of the “old timers I’ve talked with told me when Fox’s book first came out in 1977, it was viewed by many of the top players as a groundbreaking book on the game that did for poker what Ed Thorp’s Beat the Dealer did for blackjack.”

Snyder also commends Fox for the way he understands the relevance of mathematical probabilities in poker -- that is to say, knowing odds and frequencies are important, but not everything, and in some cases of no relevance whatsoever. Such a position provides fuel for Snyder in his ongoing fight with the “math heads” -- Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky. (I might come back to discussing this conflict in a post next week, actually.)

Caro acknowledges Fox in his Book of Tells, and in fact Fox appears in one of the photographs in Caro’s book (see left) in which he’s shown doing a poor job concealing his hand from the player to his right.

If you are interested in learning more about John Fox and his Play Poker, Quit Work and Sleep Till Noon!, the poker author John Vorhaus wrote a three-part series of columns for Card Player about the book last spring, titled “The Ageless Wisdom of John Fox.” The first two parts are available online (Part I, Part II), but I am not seeing the third installment, which appeared in the March 31, 2009 issue (Vol. 22, No. 6) -- apparently it didn’t make the cut for the online archive for that issue.

Anyhow, like Snyder and Vorhaus, I recommend Fox’s book as both an entertaining and useful read -- if you can find it, that is. It has long been out of print, and I’m seeing copies online being offered for $100 or more. I know the Gamblers Book Shop had a couple more on their shelves for considerably less than that, if yr really interested.

When You’ve Begun to Think Like a Gun

Been listening to these old John Cale albums over the last week or two. I’ll pull ’em out every couple of years. Not as good or interesting as the two Velvet Underground LPs on which Cale appeared (the one with Nico & White Light/White Heat), but full of surprises and cool moments, nonetheless. (I’m referring to the half dozen or so records Cale made during the early 1970s.)

One reason why I don’t wholeheartedly embrace Cale’s music is the fact that his lyrics -- while often suggestive -- are usually just a bit too opaque to produce any real response (in me, anyway). An exception is the song “Gun” from which my post title comes.

“Gun” is a rocker, with a driving, head-bobbin’ rhythm. As the title suggests, the song has a “hard-boiled” theme, told from the perspective of a ne’er-do-well criminal -- probably a hit man -- capable of all sorts of horrors who is reflecting on his trade. Can’t really say the story of “Gun” makes a lot of sense on a literal level, but it does a good job evoking the cool, cocky, morally-depraved atmosphere of a pulpy potboiler.

And the chorus delivers the message in a relatively point blank fashion (pun intended): “When you’ve begun to think like a gun, / The rest of the year has already gone. / When you’ve begun to think like a gun, / The days of the year have suddenly gone.”

Not to get overly academic about it, but I’ve always interpreted those lines as suggesting something about the speaker’s wholehearted commitment to executing the task before him -- his ability to forget everything and think of himself as a weapon, a tool designed to destroy. And when that happens, all that matters is now.

Lots of poker writers use similar language to describe effective, aggressive play, with Doyle Brunson’s chapter on no-limit hold’em in Super/System (first published in 1979) being the model for such “think like a gun”-style talk.

That chapter begins with Texas Dolly criticizing timid players who “ante themselves to death” or are “gutless” or don’t have the “courage” or “heart” or “muscle” for the game. “They’re weak,” says Brunson. “So you keep whamming on ’em and whamming on ’em and you just wear ‘em down. And, sooner or later, you’ll win all their money.” When he gets into specific strategy tips, he tends not to recommend fancy check-raises or slowplaying, favoring fast play and riding rushes. As Al Alvarez summarizes Brunson's advice in The Biggest Game in Town (1983): “the message is clear: aggression, aggression, aggression.”

Alvarez's book is also where we find that neat, metaphorical description of the difference between limit poker and no-limit poker from Crandall Addington that also evokes the idea of the player being a gun. Says Addington, “In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and starts shooting back at you.”

The differences between limit and no-limit are huge, to be sure. But really, well-applied aggression can prove highly profitable in either game. In LHE, one sometimes encounters -- especially at the six-handed tables -- an aggressive, crafty player dominating the action. He’s the guy everyone is watching and reacting to. Sometimes I’m that guy; sometimes I’m one of the onlookers.

Sort of like he’s the one constantly waving a weapon around, putting everyone else on edge. Or who is the weapon. And you never know when he’s gonna fire that sucker again.

Other writers talk about using one’s “weapons” at the poker table. In The Poker Tournament Formula (2006), Arnold Snyder talks about how “the first step to victory in no-limit hold’em tournaments is knowing the three distinct weapons you will have at your disposal,” namely, your cards, your chips, and your position. Of course, you have to have the “heart” to use those weapons when necessary. One could refer to cards, chips, and position as your ammunition -- as bullets -- and you’re the gun firing them. Or not, in which case you get anted to death like Broomcorn’s uncle (as Brunson would say).

Nat Arem had a smart post yesterday in which he listed various qualities possessed by successful poker players, among which he included the “ability to view money as a tool.” Arem does a good job explaining that he’s not saying one needs to devalue money entirely, just value it appropriately -- “as a tool to make more money.” “Don’t even bother playing poker for serious money,” he says, “until you can mentally disconnect yourself from poker bankroll equaling spendable money.”

Indeed, the whole idea of a “bankroll” is informed by this concept -- that the money with which you play is a tool, a means. Or, ammunition. And you’re the gun. And the idea is to collect more ammo so you can keep firing.

Interestingly enough, the song “Gun” appears on Cale’s album Fear (1974), where it could be said to offer an antithetical view to the record’s opening track “Fear is a Man’s Best Friend.” Siouxsie & the Banshees did an especially good cover of it for their Through the Looking Glass (1987). Was poking around YouTube and saw an acoustic version featuring Cale and Siouxsie Sioux, which is pretty cool.

Had also seen a clip of the original smokin’ Cale tune on YouTube, but it appears to have been taken down. Check it out, if you can find it.

Whatcha Gonna Do With All Them Chips? (On Changes to the Structures at the 2009 WSOP)

Two months from today (May 27), the first event of the 2009 World Series of Poker kicks off at the Rio Hotel and Casino. Event No. 1, the Casino Employees no-limit hold’em tourney ($500 buy-in), begins that day (a Wednesday) at noon, followed the next day by Event No. 2, that $40,000 buy-in “40th Annual” no-limit hold’em event.

Earlier this month, officials rolled out the structures for the 57 events, with a major change being a difference in the starting stack sizes from 2x the buy-in to 3x. In other words, for those $1,500 events, players will begin with 4,500 chips rather than 3,000. Same goes for the other events, too -- e.g., 120,000 chips for that $40K event, 150,000 chips for the $50K H.O.R.S.E., and 30,000 chips for the $10K events, including the Main Event. All of the structure sheets can be found on the 2009 schedule page over at the World Series of Poker website.

Some recall a similar change being made two years ago, when the WSOP doubled the starting stack sizes. However, when that change was made the blinds and antes were also doubled throughout the schedule, making the change in starting chips relatively insignificant. Such is not the case this year, as most of the tournaments are keeping similar structures. For instance, in those $1,500 events, the blinds still begin at 25/50. I haven’t looked through all of the structure sheets, but I’m noticing a few have been altered somewhat -- e.g., the $50K H.O.R.S.E. event looks like it has a lot of differences in the way the blinds/antes/bring-ins increase in response to the larger starting stacks.

In fact, looking more closely at the structure sheet for Event No. 7, the first of those popular $1,500 no-limit hold’em tourneys, not only have they kept the same schedule with blinds/antes increasing at the same rate (with one-hour levels), but they’ve even added a couple of levels, too. There’s a 75/100 level now (Level 3), whereas before players went straight from 50/100 to 100/200. There’s also a 1,200/2,400/300 level (Level 14) that hadn’t been there before.

The structure for the Main Event is identical (i.e., no new levels), but as mentioned the players will have 30,000 chips to start rather than 20,000.

These changes made me want to go back to Arnold Snyder’s Poker Tournament Formula books to help me see just how significant they might be. In his two-book sequence, Snyder provides formulas for calculating the “patience factor” and “skill level” of a given tournament according to its structure. The second book, The Poker Tournament Formula 2, concentrates more closely on slower-structured tournaments that require a higher skill level to play competitively, and thus adds another consideration to the mix which Snyder calls “utility factor.”

You can go over to Snyder’s website and read around to learn more about these concepts, if you are interested, perhaps starting here with this excerpt from the first book. There’s even an Excel spreadsheet over there you can download that can be used to calculate “patience factor” and “skill level.”

I did a little bit of number-crunching using the spreadsheet to try to get a quick estimate of how the changes might affect the some of the tournaments might go. I’ll just share here what I found regarding those $1,500 buy-in NLHE events (like Event No. 7).

The “patience factor” for the 2008 version of the $1,500 event was 14.93 according to Snyder’s formula. That number comes from looking at the structure and figuring out how many hours the “World’s Most Patient Player” (i.e., someone who folds every hand) would last, then squaring that number. According to the 2008 structure, the WMPP would last 3.86 hours, thus making the PF 14.93.

From the PF, one then can derive both the “skill level” and “utility factor” of a given tournament. For Snyder, any tournament with a PF of more than 10 is a “Skill Level 6” tournament -- that is the top of his range, indicating the tournament should be for highly-skilled players only. His first book, by the way, focuses on the faster-structured tourneys, while the second one gets into talking about distinctions between slower-structured, “Skill Level 6” tourneys. Thus, in the second book, he introduces this idea of “utility level” to address some of the distinctions between the different slower-structured tourneys.

The increase in starting chips and extra Level 3 in the 2009 version of the $1,500 NLHE tourney means the WMPP can last 5.29 hours by folding every hand, making the PF 27.94. Still a “Skill Level 6” tourney, but now players have a much greater “utility factor” to consider.

The “utility factor” comes from comparing the PF to what Snyder calls the “starting competitive factor.” Assuming a stack of 60 big blinds gives one what Snyder calls “competitive utility” (i.e., you can make just about all the moves you’d like to make at all points during a hand), Snyder looks at how one’s starting stack compares to that figure, then multiplies that ratio times the PF to get the “utility factor.” The point here is to show that a higher PF doesn’t necessarily translate into a higher UF -- the rising blinds may still force you to action more quickly, depending on the relative ratio of your stack to the current size of the big blind.

So for those $1,500 events, back in 2008 the UF was in fact identical to the PF -- i.e., 14.93 -- since players started with exactly 60 big blinds (3,000 chips, with a big blind of 50). This year, those playing in the same events will start with 90 big blinds and the PF is higher, too, meaning their UF will be considerably higher at 41.91 (i.e., 90/60 = 1.5 x 27.94 = 41.91).

According to Snyder, tourneys with a UF between 6-20 are “Rank 1 Tournaments” in which “you definitely want to build a big stack early or bust out trying... because after an hour or two, the players who manage to build early stacks will not only be able to dominate their tables, but may also be able to play real poker against each other.”

Meanwhile, tourneys with a UF of 40-60 are “Rank 3 Tournaments.” In these “early risks are still required as you definitely need to double up before the third blind level,” but you won’t be quite as desperate early on (i.e., in the first two levels) as you would have been in a tournament with a lower UF.

All of which is to say, there’s going to be a difference here, I think, although it won’t be an inordinately huge alteration in the way the tourneys are played. I do like the changes, though, as they appear to make these $1,500 “donkaments” (as we reporters affectionately called them last summer) slightly less manic there at the very start, perhaps admitting a bit more play (or “skill”) to dictate how things go.

I should note as a postscript that not everyone buys into Snyder’s formulas and theories, but I think he has a good way of explaining such ideas and giving his readers useful ways of preparing for a variety of tournament structures.

And since we’re only two months away, I’d say it’s time to start planning!

Thriving vs. Surviving: John Phan & David Sklansky at the 2008 WSOP, Event No. 40 Final Table

Mentioned last post Arnold Snyder’s The Poker Tournament Formula 2. An interesting read. I’d definitely recommend it to the serious tourney player.

After focusing primarily on fast tourneys in the first one (and talking a lot about position play), Snyder looks more specifically in PTF2 at tourneys with slower structures. In both books Snyder talks about how to calculate a given tournament’s “patience factor” and therefore rank the relative “skill level” required of the event. On his website, Snyder has among other articles and information a downloadable “Patience Factor / Skill Level Tournament Calculator” -- really just an Excel spreadsheet into which you can insert the relevant numbers to compute tourney speeds. (The sheet probably isn’t of much use to you if you haven’t read the books.)

I didn’t want to discuss the book too much, but rather just mention a couple of passages that come up in PTF2 and how they reminded me of a particular event I covered at this summer’s World Series of Poker, Event No. 40, the $2,500 Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw event.

Snyder begins his second tournament poker book with a discussion of John Phan, the highly-successful tourney player who has accumulated over $4 million in career earnings over the last decade. Snyder found himself playing with Phan a couple of times at the 2006 WSOP, and both times he experienced Phan’s especially aggressive, off-putting style of play with which he successfully accumulated huge chip stacks while punishing the table mercilessly. “Phan’s chip stack,” Snyder reflects, “combined with his aggressive style of play, literally had the rest of the table frozen, even though most of the players had very viable chip stacks in relation to the blinds.”

Snyder takes it upon himself to try to figure out what Phan was doing, and the result in large part is PTF2. He talks a lot in the early part of the book about a concept called “chip utility,” most simply defined as “the usefulness or serviceability of your chips.” Phan’s style not only won him chips, and thus gave him an increased “chip utility” at the table (i.e., he could now do more things with his chips), but it also reduced his opponents’ chip utility -- even those from whom he was not winning pots.

Reading this little tribute to “the Razor” made me think of the six-handed final table of Event No. 40, which began with Phan as the chip leader with nearly 300,000 chips. In fact, he’d led for a lot of the three-day tourney -- I know he was at the top of the leaderboard for most of the second day. Phan faced some tough opponents at this final table, including Gioi Luong, Robert Mizrachi, Ben Ponzi (who had one WSOP bracelet), and David Sklansky. Shun Uchida was the least decorated at the table, though he’d led the tourney at the end of Day 1 and would go on to finish second.

F-Train and I covered this one, and having watched Phan work the first couple of days we knew he’d be tough for the others to deal with at the final table. And indeed, he controlled the show for most of the night. If you read back through our coverage, you’ll see numerous references to Phan’s aggressive play (and table talk). I think we also mentioned in there somewhere the ten Coronas he ordered halfway through the night. I know I did in a post here, anyway.

Phan won that tournament, taking his second bracelet of the series. Although I’m not too versed in 2-7 triple draw, it struck me as a game that suited Phan particularly well in that even though it was a limit tourney it afforded numerous opportunities for bluffing and/or intimidation -- especially if one had the chips to do so.

A lot of Snyder’s advice in both of his Poker Tournament books is offered independent of one’s actual cards -- in the fast tourneys he’s talking a lot about using position, and in the slower ones he focuses more squarely on using your chips. Of course, in a game like 2-7 Triple Draw, the actual cards tend to mean even less, with the betting and drawing really moving the action and forcing most of the decisions.

I mentioned David Sklansky was also at that final table. He’s the other reason why Snyder’s book made me think of Event No. 40.

Sklansky entered the final table with 78,000 chips, making him the short stack as play began with about 40 minutes left in Level 17 on Day 3. The blinds were 3,000/5,000 and limits 5,000/10,000 when play began, meaning he had not even eight big bets -- enough, perhaps, to play one hand (sort of) comfortably. Indeed, Sklansky had been nursing the short stack for pretty much all of Day 2, and we’d thought on numerous occasions we’d be reporting his elimination prior to the final table. But he hung on and made it. Finishing in the top six of an event in which 238 players entered is certainly an accomplishment.

We knew, though, Sklansky wouldn’t be winning this one. Not without cards, anyway. And sure enough, Sklansky’s stack dwindled down quickly. Just kind of randomly looking back through the blog, I see I wrote this post about one of the last hands from Level 17:

Sklansky Looking for Cards
David Sklansky raised from the hijack, Robert Mizrachi called from the button, and John Phan called from the small blind. On the first round, all took two cards, and all checked.

On the second draw, Phan stood pat, Sklansky took one, and Mizrachi took two. This time Phan bet, Sklansky called, and Mizrachi folded. Phan stood pat again on the last draw, while Sklansky took one again. Phan bet, and Sklansky folded. Phan has chipped up to 315,000.

Sklansky folded the next hand. On the next he was in the big blind, and had to fold after someone raised. He showed a king as he did.

Sklansky is down to 29,000.

Even in this limit tournament, Sklansky had just about zero “chip utility” of which to speak. As was the case with many hands we watched that night, we had no idea what cards players had on this one. But it kind of didn’t matter, other than the fact that whatever Sklansky drew on the third round, he wasn’t comfortable risking such a high percentage of his stack (the 10,000-chip big bet on the end) to see if he was good.

Then came the blinds, and Sklansky folded both times. He’d fold another orbit’s worth, then facing a three-bet in the big blind, would fold again.

Sklansky was down to 14,000. On his very last hand, he had just 12,000 to start, meaning even if he’d won the hand, he still would have just a couple of big bets with which to continue.

In his discussion of chip utility in PFT2, Snyder gets into it big time with Sklansky over the latter’s long-held argument for “reverse chip value theory” in tournaments -- what Snyder calls the “big boner” of tourney thinking dreamt up by the “math heads” (i.e., Sklansky and Mason Malmuth). It’s a provocative (and entertaining) discussion, one I think most tourney players should at least be curious about in that it forces one to rethink some of that so-called “received wisdom” we’ve had preached to us over the years.

This post has already run on too long, so I’m not going to get into the whole argument too deeply. I will summarize it, though. The “reverse chip value thory” -- which, Snyder points out, has informed a lot of tournament strategy writing over the last couple of decades -- is the idea that “the more chips a player has, the less each of his chips are worth,” and, conversely, “the fewer chips a player has, the more each of his chips are worth.”

This, of course, is the exact opposite of Snyder’s view. Snyder feels that the more chips you have, the more they are worth, insofar as they give one an increased chip utility. And recalling all of the utility Phan had with his chips there at the final table of Event No. 40 -- and how miserably little utility Sklansky had -- doesn’t contradict Snyder’s point here.

(This argument over the “reverse chip value theory” -- and other debates brought up by Snyder’s book -- continues over on Two Plus Two, with Sklansky predictably entering fray as well to fight back.)

Snyder speaks of how “so many players voluntarily surrender their utility” and instead revert to “survival-oriented strategies” in tournaments. It probably isn’t fair to say Sklansky had “surrendered” his utility by the time the final table started, although he certainly did somewhere along the way in Day 2, choosing rather just to survive than to do what was necessary to take all of his opponents’ chips.

Snyder ultimately characterizes a poker tournament as “a battle between the utility players and the survival players, and it’s not so much a battle as a rout.” From what I could tell, Event No. 40 of this year’s WSOP seemed to confirm that view.

Weapons of Choice

I’ve been perusing Arnold Snyder’s first book about hold’em tournaments, titled The Poker Tournament Formula (2006). The book concentrates largely on “fast” tournaments, i.e., tourneys with rapidly rising blind/ante structures that require players to master strategies that Snyder collectively refers to as “speed play.” A sequel, The Poker Tournament Formula 2, came out this summer, and it focuses more on “slow” tournaments with large starting stacks and longer levels with more gradual increases of blinds/antes.

Incidentally, “Arnold Snyder” is actually a pseudonym for a successful tourney player who has also written some well-regarded books on blackjack. He writes quite clearly and has many interesting ideas that build upon and, in some cases, refute well-known concepts appearing in other books such as Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold’em series. For example, in the second book Snyder offers a particular criticism and clarification of Harrington’s much-lauded “M” concept that I would think most hold’em tourney players would find persuasive (or at least intriguing).

In this first book Snyder starts out with an explanation of how to analyze the structure of a given tournament and thus determine whether or not it is “fast,” “medium,” or “slow.” Snyder provides some formulas to help figure out the “patience factor” of a given tournament based on its starting chips and schedule of play, as well as the relative “skill level” one might therefore associate with the tournament.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of Snyder’s formulas (which do seem quite helpful), but wanted instead just to share one observation he makes early on in the first book regarding the relative importance of cards, chips, and position.

Snyder believes that in tournaments with fast structures, “your cards are the least important of your three weapons.” Also, echoing Doyle Brunson’s point from Super/System, Snyder believes that “position is the most important weapon you have in... a fast no-limit hold’em tournament.” That said, “it’s usually best not to tangle with a big chip stack when you’re really just making a position play.”

Thus when assessing the relative value of cards, chips, and position in these fast tourneys, Snyder suggests thinking of of the three factors as a version of the “rock-paper-scissors” game. He even offers a helpful mnemonic device for remembering what beats what: “Cards are made of paper. Chips are something you could throw, like a rock. If you can remember those two, there’s nothing left for position except scissors.”

Thus, cards beat chips (paper beats rock). Chips beat position (rock beats scissors). And position beats cards (scissors beats paper).

An interesting analogy. Of course, as Snyder goes on to explain, there are a few reasons why it is incorrect to think of hold’em tourneys as simply an elaboration on the game of Rochambeau. For one, in rock-paper-scissors, all three weapons are always of equal value, no matter what. In hold’em tourneys, the relative strength of your three weapons is constantly changing -- as is the case for your opponents, too -- and so it is important to recognize where you stand with regard to each when determining how best to proceed.

I’m hardly doing Snyder’s idea justice here -- you’ll have to go check out his book yourself for more explanation. Interesting stuff, though.

Even so, I haven’t left my usual pot-limit Omaha and H.O.R.S.E. ring games and started jumping into any hold’em tourneys just yet. Although I am thinking of playing in a certain one tonight.

Most reading this blog probably know all about it already, but Dr. Pauly is hosting a $5.00+$0.50 no-limit hold’em tourney on PokerStars tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time as a way of celebrating the fifth anniversary of Tao of Poker. And in addition to the usual prize pool, the winner will receive an entry into a $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament during the Borgata Poker Open (September 12th) as well as two nights’ stay there Borgata Hotel & Spa in Atlantic City.

Pretty swell deal, there. Like I say, I’m probably going to be playing, although I might be distracted for the first hour as tonight ESPN is showing the final table of Event No. 4, the $5,000 Mixed Hold’em event which I covered for PokerNews. That airs from 8-10 p.m. Eastern time.

Whether I make it or not, let me encourage everyone reading to join in the fun. And don’t forget yr weapons.