The goal of the book Kill Phil is to allow novice players to have a chance playing in No Limit Texas Hold’Em tournaments. This is done by moving “all in” more frequently than “normal” players do and force the smart players to make a guess for their tournament lives. Most strong players want to avoid these guesses, figuring they can cream these novice players in other parts of the game, so they fold the all in bets and let the novice players win these particular hands.
The title of Kill Phil sort of fell into author Blair Rodman’s lap, along with co-authors Lee Nelson (Austrailian poker player) and Steven Heston (professor from the University of Maryland who crunched the numbers behind the strategies.) The movie Kill Bill was popular when this book was coming out, and there were several top poker players named Phil, notably Phil Hellmuth, Phil Laak, and Phil Gordon. But the book makes it clear that players named Daniel Negreanu and Antonio Esfandiari, among many others, are all “Phils” with respect to what this book teaches.
I read this book rather closely because of my upcoming interview with Blair Rodman on this Thursday’s Gambling with an Edge. You can find it live in Las Vegas from 7-8 p.m. at radio station 1230AM, or you can listen to it live on www.KLAV1230am.com. If you miss the live broadcast, we archive it the next day on www.progressivevp.com and www.bobdancer.com.
Moving all in all the time is not what this book is about. You need a certain type of hand in order to do this. And this means you fold a high percentage of your hands without playing them. While this eats you up in terms because of the blinds and (sometimes) antes, you play enough hands to make up for it. Playing very few hands in the early rounds of tournaments is not a bad thing. Others will be playing more and busting out, so you’ll move up in position just by sitting quietly.
The “rookie” KP strategy, which you can probably master in about an hour, is very simple. You need one of very few hands to move in with, and your decision isn’t affect by how big your stack is or what your position is. The “basic” strategy is, obviously, more advanced — and there’s even an advanced KP strategy for those inclined.
As you progressed to the higher-level strategies, you differentiate yourself with respect to how big your stack is with respect to how much the antes and blinds take each round. Your stacks can be huge, big, medium, or small.
The second factor that determines your strategy as you progress to higher KPstrategies is position. “Position” refers to whether you bet before or after the other players. Simply put, being late to bet is better than being early to bet. Therefore, correct strategy depends on this.
When you get to advanced KP, you’re taking into consideration such things as whether the other players at the table are tight, loose, aggressive, or some combination.
I’m probably the perfect audience for this book. I don’t play live poker at all, but it’s conceivable that I could be comped into a Texas Hold’Em tournament based on my video poker play. When that’s happened in the past, I let the opportunity go by. I didn’t know much about the game and figured it would be too hard to learn in a short period of time.
This book solves that. Should I want, I can get good enough in a few hours to at least have a small chance. Playing this strategy might not work (it actually probably won’t, as there is only one winner in each tournament and lots of entrants), but I’ll have a fighting chance to stick around for a while. Should the offer be good enough, I just might do this some time in the future.
As it happens, simultaneously while reading Kill Phil, I’m also reading Annie Duke’s Decide to Play Great Poker because Annie will be on the radio show on August 4. While both books are on Texas Hold’Em, they couldn’t be more different. Kill Phil gives me a recipe to follow. Decide to Play Great Poker teaches the things to consider so you can make correct decisions. At this stage of my Texas Hold’Em career (i.e. the very start), Kill Phil is far more useful. Should I choose to become far more knowledgeable about the game, Decide to Play Great Poker would be a very good place to learn a lot more about the game. Both books fulfill their stated purposes well, but their purposes are quite different.