My issue with PTF

[jfletcher]

First, I want to thank Arnold for taking the time to answer our posts. I must say I enjoyed his book as a complement to HOH. I am not one of those people who believes in following one or the other. I think there is a place for both. I think the biggest thing I got out of PTF was a reminder of how you can use position.

That said...

It seems to me that a lot of the "moves" suggested in PTF to take advantage of your position are really only applicable in a small portion of the tourney when you start to get short, but not too short. It's a portion in which you might only spend one or two levels, and maybe 30 or 40 hands.

So pretty soon you are past all of that and pretty much at standard push-fold poker.

I guess I'm not saying I think any of the ideas are wrong. I just think that the circumstances to use them don't occur enough.

[Taardvark]

The book is designed around a very specific type of tournament structure, specifically fast structure tournaments where you start with a pretty small number of big blinds. For those types of tournaments, typically the daily tournaments at most casinos with buy-ins from $20-$200, the strategies in PTF work surprisingly well.

This book isn't designed for deeper stack tournaments where skill is more of a factor, like WSOP or WPT events and larger casino events that you might find some pros playing in.

I found the strategies in the book to be surprisingly useful. I actually played as outlined at a tournament at a local casino shortly after reading the book last year without ever looking at my cards and finished 5th out of about 45 players. It was a really interesting exercise. I figured it was worth a shot for a $60 buy in and I ended up winning around $250.

If you haven't been to Arnold's website before, you can download an excel sheet and determine the speed of the tournaments you play in by entering in values such as starting stack, blind levels, etc. It will give you a number which is for lack of a better word the "Speed Index" of the tournament, which you can reference against the book. The faster the tournament, the better these strategies work.

I agree it's not the be all end all, even for these types of events, but I've found it to be one of the most useful poker books I've ever read, one of the few where nearly everything in the book brought something new to the forefront.

[jfletcher]

I understand it's talking about fast tourneys. Those are the ones I'm talking about.

That's why the time when you can use the stuff goes by so fast. The fast tourneys get down to push-fold play pretty quickly.

Say you have a typical small buyin tourney with 3K starting chips, blinds going 25-50, 50-100, 100-200, etc. at 20 min intervals... You are relatively deep in level 1, then in mid zone for PTF plays in levels 2 and 3, maybe, and then by level 4 (200-400), forget it. All that's out the window. So you're talking about maybe 20 hands in that middle range.

I played a tourney at the MGM in December and really thought about using PTF stuff because of the fast structure. As it turned out, there was maybe one hand where I really did something from the book. By level 4, it was "all-in baby!"

[jeffnc]