Poker Book Report Wars: Snyder vs. Sklansky

There is an interesting article, Poker Book Report Wars: Snyder vs. Sklansky at Poker Book Reports that reviews The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder, Arnold Snyder has been a professional gambler, blackjack strategist, and poker player for years in the Vegas area.

Snyder’s book outlines a much more gambling style than David Sklansky the resident professor and writer of Tournament Poker for Advanced Players. Sklansky’s book, now several years since its first publication, and before the boom, put into motion the tight-early and tight-aggressive strategy that simply made common sense of hold’em tournaments. This strategy is guided in nature by the Gap Concept described in Sklansky’s book as “you need a better hand to play against someone who has already opened the betting, than you would need to open yourself”.

Where Snyder feels The Gap is a completely misguided concept is in the smaller buy-in tournaments that many players participate daily, in local casinos, regional events and online poker sites. The underlining of Snyder’s book is based largely on position play, and pressuring your opponents, who have likely missed the flop as much as you have. This is executed in spite of your hole cards, not because of them. Snyder’s wolves say this strategy works it sheer numbers in large part because of the Sklansky type tournament opponents who know nothing more than to fold out of position or out of flop weakness.

Both concepts have merit and there is no one way to play poker but the Snyder camp feels they make a lot more final tables than the Sklansky camp. Sklansky’s strategy may get you into the money more but Snyder’s strategy is suppose to get you to the final table more.

Much of the above information was plagiarized from Marty Smith who is webmaster and book reviewer for Poker Book Report. Please check out this website as it has some very good information.