Book Review: 'Winning Poker Tournaments' by Rizen, Apestyles, and Pearljammer

As part of my foray into tournament play, I picked up the new tourney book by online pros Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Jon "Apestyles" Van Fleet, and Jon "Pearljammer" Turner. You can use points to get it from the Full Tilt Store. It's volume 1 of a planned 2-volume series. This volume covers hands up to the money bubble, with the next volume projected to cover hands from the money bubble to the end of the tournament. The book has 4 sections. In the first three, each author takes 50-60 hands and analyzes them action by action. In the final section, there are 20 hands where each author gives their own independent take on each action.

Of the three, Pearljammer's play is probably the most closely directed towards tournaments. By that I mean that his play is often more directed towards survival and conservatism rather than aggression and applying maximum pressure on opponents. For instance, he flat calls a pre-flop min raise with TT on the button, essentially playing the hand for set value rather than wanting to create a big pot early, even though he probably has the best hand. He even open limps TT from the hijack (which, of course, looks like a great play in the hand shown because he flops a boat). Later on in the group section, he decides to check his option in the BB with ATo after it's folded around to the SB, who limps in. He does manage to get in some thin river value bets, for instance value-betting Q5o on the river into two players on a Q63hhJ2 board. He obviously has a stellar record as a tourney player, so far be it from me to criticize his play, but he's a little passive pre-flop for my tastes.

Apestyles has a game that's probably most similar to the tourney game I am striving for. For instance, we find Apestyles raising TT UTG (granted, with blinds a bit higher than in the PearlJammer hand), whereas PearlJammer was limping it in the hijack. Whereas PearlJammer checks behind ATo in the BB, Apestyles mulls over raising in the same spot with Q4o. He eventually decides to check behind, and gets some very nice value raising the river on a K96KQ board. His section ends with a series of hands where he goes through every hand around the bubble of a big tourney as he really abuses the table to chip up, squeezing with QTo and 4-betting K7o in a blind battle. He also goes through some chip equity calculations in some hands, which none of the other authors do. I guess most readers wouldn't be interested in such calculations, which is why they are eschewed by PearlJammer and Rizen, but for a serious player, they're really crucial.

Rizen's section has some nice examples of 3-barrel bluffs (he fires 3 barrels at a KT5ddKT board), and some re-steals (T6o vs. the cutoff). The T6o is interesting because he 3-bets the cutoff, the BB shoves, and Rizen folds despite getting 2.4:1. His reasoning is that the BB's range is very very strong so that he might not even have the 29% equity he'd need to make the call chip-neutral, and also calling and losing would take away his chip lead at the table, whereas he could fold and maintain his chip lead. This is one of the only spots where the authors hint at the difference between chip EV and payout-EV. I guess the image effect of calling and having to show T6o and folding getting 2.4:1 is about the same, although he doesn't mention it.

Overall, I found many of the hands helpful, and I'll probably adjust my tourney play to be a little less risky pre-flop on the advice of PearlJammer. I don't think I'll ever find myself open-limping TT in late position, but I'll probably limp behind 88 or maybe even TT and AJs with a couple of limpers in front early on in a tourney, whereas in cash games I will be raising them pretty much every time. If you're a tourney player with some experience and a decent handle on ABC poker, this book will probably help you a lot, both to hone the ABC TAG style and to add in a few tricks. If you're a more advanced analytical player, you'll almost certainly find enough interesting material to make the book worth reading. I was interested enough that I will probably get the second volume. However you won't find any great material on calculating payout EV in terms of your stack, other stacks, and your assessment of your relative skill, which is really the central issue in tournament poker that separates it from cash games. As far as I know, Sklansky's 'Tournament Poker for Advanced Players' remains the most important book on this subject.

-BRUECHIPS