Recommended Reading: Part III

In my last column, I discussed Kill Phil. In this one, I will discuss Kill Everyone. Lee Nelson is the main author of this volume, but he received contributions from Tysen Streib, Kim Lee, and Mark Vos. This book is absolutely full of interesting ideas and strategies for the experienced tournament player. If you are not particularly experienced, I would suggest starting off with Harrington on Hold'em, Volume I; Harrington on Hold'em, Volume II; and Kill Phil. If you are experienced, this book will provide some thought-provoking ideas in a number of areas, and help you quantify some specific aspects of strategy, such as moving in, calling a move-in, bet sizing by position, and the effects of the bubble and the tournament structure on your strategy. In the early stages of tournaments, some top players play "small ball." This means that they try to play a lot of small pots, relying on frequent steals, value-bets, and good reads to provide them with positive equity. Other successful players gear their style more toward winning a few big pots. This book is one of the first to discuss the tactics used by small-ball players and big-pot players, and the pros and cons of both. I recommend trying to incorporate some elements of both, shifting gears as table composition and psychology change.

Kill Everyone provides detailed tables outlining a basic strategy for moving in as your M gets small. (If you divide your stack size by the cost per round, or CPR, you get a number that shows how many rounds you can survive without playing a hand. I have gotten used to calling this number M in conversations with Gus Hansen and Paul "X22" Magriel. Dan Harrington's books refer to it as M. In Kill Everyone, they opt to call it the chip status indicator, or CSI, which I find a little forced and hard to adjust to.) It provides an equally detailed discussion of calling someone else's move-in. It is interesting to note that hand rankings are somewhat different for each case, but more on this later. The book also points out that these strategies are designed to achieve the best possible result versus an opponent who is playing properly, an equilibrium strategy. In effect, this is similar to playing basic strategy in blackjack. It tells you what to do when you don't have any additional information. And just as you adjust blackjack basic strategy as the count changes, so should you adjust these strategies. If the relevant opponent is fairly tight, you should move in more when you are ahead of him, but call his move-ins less.

There are discussions of a wide variety of topics, too many for me to describe and comment on. So, I will select and discuss one important area that I think this book may help to clarify - small pairs. To illustrate this discussion, let's start with the smallest of small pairs, deuces. (Anyone who believes that "deuces never loses" will end up on the Bowery with no shoes.) Deuces are a much better hand to push with, approximately 17 percent down from aces, than they are to call a push with, approximately 24 percent down. Why? Your typical opponent will call your push with some hands that are dogs to your deuces, such as A-K, and fold some hands that are favorites, such as middle to low suited connectors, and possibly even some better small pairs, like threes and fours. Unfortunately, deuces don't fare as well against the range of hands with which opponents will push. Other than a few big aces, like A-K, against which the deuces are a tiny favorite, all the rest of their pushing hands are at least small to medium favorites, and all of the other pairs are big favorites.

What should you do with deuces, and other speculative hands, early in a tournament, when your M is high? High M's suggest using a strategy similar to the one you use in cash games, so this is a doubly important idea. If you are first in, especially from middle or late position, you should consider making a semibluff-raise. If you are in early position or there are other players already in the pot, what should you do? Kill Everyone suggests using what I call the Woolworth Rule - the rule of 5 and 10. (For those of you who are too young to remember, Woolworth's used to be a vast chain of stores that supposedly sold everything for a nickel or a dime.) The Woolworth Rule for speculative hands is fairly simple. If you are risking less than 5 percent of your stack, always call. If you are risking more than 10 percent of your stack, always fold. Your decision will occur when your call will be for an amount between 5 percent and 10 percent of your stack; you should base this decision on your position, on the number of players who haven't acted yet and might reraise behind you, the quality of your hand (8-8 is a lot better than 2-2, the J 10 is a lot better than the 7 5), and the nature of your key opponent (is there a good chance that he'll lose all of his chips with one pair?).

I strongly recommend this book, as it provides a lot of information on a lot of topics. Neither I nor anyone else, except the authors, will agree with all of it. There are a few problems in some of the tables in the appendices. The organization is a little diffuse, and the focus shifts from extremely mathematical discussions of certain elements of strategy to more psychological discussions of tells, and delves into its author's personal feelings and preferences for various diets, supplements, iPods, and so on.

Steve "Zee" Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at many major tournaments and playing on Full Tilt, as one of its pros. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his New York City bars near Houston on Avenue A - Nice Guy Eddie's, The Library, and Julep. Almost every Friday, he ends up at Doc Holliday's on Avenue A and 9th Street. He plans to be in New York City from late April to late May, when he'll head back to Vegas for the World Series of Poker. He has promised to buy a drink for any Card Player reader who tracks him down at one of his bars.