Table of Contents:

Foreword—One of the Phils Fires Back
Introduction

Part One: Beginning Considerations
   The History of Poker Tournaments
   Understanding No-Limit Hold ’Em
   The Benefits of Big-Pot Poker
   Characteristics of Winning No-LimitTournament Players          

Part Two: The Kill Phil Beginner Strategies
   The Basis For The Kill Phil Strategies
   Kill Phil Rookie
   Kill Phil Basic

Part Three: The Kill Phil Intermediate Strategies
   Kill Phil Basic Plus
   Fine-Tuning Kill Phil Basic Plus

Part Four: Advanced Kill Phil Strategies
   Kill Phil Expert
   Kill Phil in Practice          
   Attitudes and Latitudes
   Phil is Dead; Long Live Phil
          
Appendix I
   Poker Hands
Appendix II
   Basics of No-Limit Texas Hold ’Em
Appendix III
   How No-Limit Hold ’Em Tournaments Work
Appendix IV
   Glossary
Appendix V
   Pre-flop Match-Ups
Appendix VI
   Post–flop Match-Ups
Appendix VII
   Probability of Winning a Showdown with A—K™ vs. Black Pairs
Appendix VIII
   Outs
Appendix IX
   Pair Probability
Appendix X
   Deal Formula
Appendix XI
   Recommended Reading and Web sites

Index

Excerpt:

         Poker is like sex—everyone thinks they’re the best at it,
but only a few actually know what they’re doing.  —Layne Flack

     Poker, baby! No longer does the mention of this game evoke images of smoky back rooms, card sharps, and low-lifes. Nowadays, bring up the subject of poker to nearly anyone and you’ll wind up talking about no-limit hold ’em (NLH), the World Poker Tour (WPT), the World Series of Poker (WSOP), or one of the many other televised poker shows. Big-name players of the day have become TV stars. Win a nationally televised tournament and suddenly everyone knows your name. The biggest names, like Gus Hansen, Howard Lederer, Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke, and of course, the “Phils”—Hellmuth, Ivey, etc.—are living the lives of celebrities. They hang with Hollywood stars, get preferred treatment, sign autographs, and garner lucrative endorsement deals. 
     No less than Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire have won big-time poker tournaments. Affleck pocketed a cool $350,000 for winning a major event in Los Angeles, and Lord knows he needs the money! Almost any day in L.A. you’ll find a big-name star in one of the huge card rooms. The star-studded cast playing in the last two World Series in Las Vegas would make a film producer drool: James Woods, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gabe Kaplan, Matt Damon, and, of course, Ben Affleck. In 2005, Jennifer Tilley beat 600 other ladies to win a coveted bracelet and more than $158,000. There’s even a TV show dedicated entirely to celebrity poker.
     The money involved in poker today is staggering. First prize at the 2004 WSOP main event was $5 million and in 2005 it was a cool $7.5 million. No other sporting event comes close. Winning poker’s World Series is worth more than winning Wimbledon, the Masters, and the Kentucky Derby combined! Players from all parts of the globe vie for multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars every week in poker tournaments around the world. TV audiences thrive on the excitement, as hidden cameras that reveal the play-ers’ cards allow the viewers to get into the game. It’s like the ultimate “Survivor” show, as players use every trick in the book to send their competition home. The hundreds of thousands of dollars (sometimes a million or more) in cash dramatically stacked up on the green-felt tables goes to the last man (or woman) left standing—it’s a seductive arena. Meanwhile, online tournaments can now attract more than 2,000 players at a time, and they continue to grow. Big money, movie stars, glamorous venues, television—no wonder poker is exploding. 
     And the phenomenon shows no signs of slowing down. Today, an estimated 50 million Americans play poker. This American pastime has become a worldwide mania, especially when played in the form that’s all the rage—no-limit hold ’em. This is the game played in virtually all major tournaments today. Teaching you how to compete in no-limit hold ’em tournaments is the focus of this book. But not just compete; you’ll also learn how to win! That’s right. Assiduously applied, the principles you learn here will give you a real shot at the big money. 
     Once you’ve cultivated the necessary skills, the tour-naments you see on TV aren’t out of reach. There’s no special qualifying. You don’t have to be drafted or invited. All it takes is the money to enter and the guts to sit down and play. Coming up with the money is your job. Providing you with an approach to playing that will give you a chance, regardless of your level of experience, is ours. 
     Think about the big-name players you’ve seen on TV. Do they really have that big an edge over a player who’s relatively new to the game? Certainly, they have an advan-tage in knowledge and experience. But because of the fundamental nature of no-limit tournaments, if you know how to tailor your game to your own level of experience, you can compete in the no-limit arena with a very real chance of success. The application of certain key concepts allows you first to level the playing field, then move to a point where you become a player to be feared—especially by the best players! Imagine walking up to a table and hearing a player you recognize from TV say something like, “Oh, no, not you.” Wouldn’t that be fun? It’s possible, because it’s the style of play that they fear. The style you’ll learn from reading this book. We show you the type of player top pros love to see at their table, and the type that they hate. Then we show you how to become the real threat that they detest. 
     Is it a gimmick, nothing but an over-simplified answer to a complex question? Yes and no. Simple strategies won’t give you a long-term edge against the best. But idiosyncrasies in tournament no-limit poker open the door for an in-experienced player who’s been properly trained. 
     We begin with Kill Phil Rookie, a simplified strategy for those who’ve never played a tournament before. We then move on to Kill Phil Basic. Armed with the basic strategy alone, even a complete novice has a decent shot at get-ting in the money. Later, we improve on basic by incorpo-rating some powerful poker concepts. Understanding and modifying your game in accordance with these concepts will make you an above average player. Finally, we cover some high-level plays and strategies. Master everything in this book and you could be the next superstar!

Who is Kill Phil For?
     Kill Phil is for tournament players of all levels.
     Complete novices benefit from a strategy that offers a genuine chance of success while they acquire the valuable real-time experience needed to make consistent profits in tournament play. Beginners also benefit from primers on the mechanics of no-limit hold ’em and tournaments in general, as well as the sections on rules and ethics.
Players who’ve had some experience, but little success, gain from the more advanced strategies, which could put them over the top on their way to success.
“Old-school-style” players who’ve been struggling learn how to transform their games to the modern style of play.  
     Players who are competent in the small-ball arena, but are having problems with the nuances of long ball may find the strategies enlightening.
     Even already successful players can find valuable nuggets of information.
     Regardless of your current level of expertise, the many pointers throughout this book can help you gain perspec-tive and add ammunition to your playing arsenal. 
     These pages contain strategies for both online and live play. If you’re exclusively an online player, the strategies presented allow you to successfully modify your playing style to adapt to live-tournament play.

Who’s Phil?
     “Phil” is our code name for any accomplished tournament player. Certainly, several poker superstars are named Phil—Phil Hellmuth, Ivey, Laak, and Gordon among them—but we’ve lumped all the best players into the Phil category. We had to call them something. Plus, we thought it made for a damn funny title.
     Many of the Phils with whom we confided our plans for this book begged us to abort. Their fears were genuine, because this strategy hurts the best players the most. Their lifeblood, the timid inexperienced player, suddenly becomes a threat. That’s the essence of Kill Phil—prey becomes predator and vice versa.

Who are We?
     Blair Rodman
     Blair Rodman has been a full-time professional gambler for more than 20 years and has experi-enced success in many different areas of the gambling world. He’s an accomplished blackjack player, was a member of Stanford Wong’s famous gambling-tournament team in the ’80s, was part of a highly successful sports-betting group for more than 10 years, and has in-depth knowledge and experience in many other areas of casino advantage play. But his first love is, and always has been, poker—both as a tournament and live-game player. Blair participated in his first WSOP event in 1982. While the pursuit of other gambling interests took him in and out of the poker scene over the years, the recent explosion in the popularity of poker tournaments led him to refocus his efforts in this area. 
     Blair has enjoyed a strong reputation for years, but it was his 2004 WSOP result that put him on the poker map. That year, Blair had six cashes and made three final tables. He topped it off with a terrific five-day run in the main event, finishing 54th in the 2,576 field. In 2005, he made two final tables on the WSOP circuit and finished second in a World Poker Tour event in Reno and second in the nationally televised Ultimate Poker Challenge from a field made up of many of the world’s best players. Finally, in 2007, Blair bagged a coveted WSOP bracelet and $707,000 by winning the $2,000 no-limit hold ’em tournament, outlasting more than 3,000 players.

     Lee Nelson
     Lee Nelson is a retired doctor whose medical fields of interest are nutrition and prostate cancer. He’s the author of the book Prostate Cancer Prevention and Cure. Over the past six years, Lee has performed with remarkable consistently, making final tables with such regularity in international tournaments that he’s now known by the nickname “Final Table.” At the 2006 Aussie Millions, Lee made three final tables and won the Main Event and it’s A$1,295,800 (about $1,000,000US). In 2005 Lee also won two events at the Aussis Millions and won the Party Poker World Open with its $400,000 first prize. Lee has a won a number of other tournaments both live and online, in addition to multiple final-tabel appearances.
Lee was recognized as the top-ranked player in Australia/New Zealand by PokerNetwork for the period from 2000 to 2005, and is also the leader in 2006. Although playng far fewer events than most touring pros, at the time of this writ-ing Lee ranks 74th in all-time world-wide winnings. Lee has been selected to join 2005 WSOP Champion Joe Hachem on Team PokerStars.

How This Book Came About
     Blair Rodman met Lee Nelson through Huntington Press publisher Anthony Curtis. Blair and Anthony have been friends and gambling partners for years, while Lee had authored his prostate-cancer-prevention book for Huntington Press. Anthony knew Lee originally through poker and when Lee decided to author a book on poker tournaments, he came to HP for publishing. What Lee didn’t know was that Anthony was already talking to Blair about a poker book (Blair and Lee knew each other by reputation only at this point). Anthony told Lee about Blair’s ideas and it was decided that Blair Rodman and Lee Nelson should meet.
It didn’t take long for the two authors to come to the conclusion that, together, they could produce a work on tournament poker that would rival anything done by the other professional players. They set to work on the project, putting together a comprehensive outline on no-limit hold ’em poker tournaments. 
     Time was of the essence, as it was obvious that there would soon be a wave of books on the market. In fact, not long after serious work began, the authors realized that a masterwork on the subject would take far too long to complete, given that the flood of new poker books had already begun. Both concluded that their work, regardless of its merits, would get lost in the shuffle. On the verge of aban-doning the project, Blair proposed an alternative—a simple method that would encourage novice players to participate immediately, allowing them to accumulate valuable real-action experience, while maintaining a reasonable chance of success—in essence, a simple, but effective, basic strategy for no-limit hold ’em tournaments. 
     This approach fit in perfectly with the Huntington Press philosophy. While other gambling-publishing companies often focus on the elite player, over the years HP has catered to the many occasional gamblers that have neither the time nor inclination to become experts, but still want to have a fighting chance. In fairness, the fundamentals of a no-limit tournament basic strategy had been touched on before, most notably by David Sklansky in Tournament Poker for Advanced Players. However, the idea hadn’t been thoroughly explored.
     An outline was prepared and the authors spent several intensive weeks perfecting the strategies. Blair has a long history as a blackjack player; consequently, the Kill Phil basic strategy is similar in many ways to blackjack basic strategy. It takes about as long to assimilate and memorize and is adaptable to strategy cards, which can be used as learning aids or even brought along to the table. Like blackjack, it greatly evens the odds and allows beginners to be competitive, though it doesn’t yield a long-term advantage. But just as blackjack basic strategy provides a gateway to that game’s powerful count strategies, so too does the Kill Phil basic strategy lead to more powerful and winning strategies for tournament poker.
     Finally, our silent partner throughout development of the Kill Phil strategy is a math and gambling expert known in gambling circles as Kim Lee. He worked with us to craft the strategic framework and developed computer programs to generate and test strategies.

More Help
     The poker world is changing so rapidly that any book is subject to become outdated quickly. Kill Phil principles are being employed effectively in tournaments by more and more players every day. In order to keep our followers abreast of how these changes relate to the Kill Phil strategy as presented in this book, the authors will maintain a Web site at KillPhilPoker.com, which will provide articles, blogs from our tournaments, a message board, and other interesting features pertaining to the world of poker.
     Additionally, as a supplement to this book, condensed versions of the Kill Phil strategies are available on portable strategy cards. The cards reference the Rookie, Basic, and Advanced strategies, and can be taken with you to consult or use at the tournament table. There’s also an online card for use when playing computer tournaments.

Description:
     With this year’s $50 million prize pool, the World Series of Poker is now the richest sporting event in the world—and anyone can enter. There’s only one problem: No-limit hold ’em, is a tough game. That’s where HP’s newest blockbuster title, Kill Phil, comes in. The Kill Phil strategies have been designed so that even a rank novice can compete with the world’s best players.

• Master “Kill Phil Rookie” in an hour and hold your own in your first tournament.
• Implement Kill Phil’s advanced strategies as you gain real-time experience.
• Adjust your play for online tournaments, Sit-n-Gos, and single-table satellites.

     Phil Hellmuth, Jr. wrote the Foreword to the book that aims to put him out of business.

To view a larger image of the front cover, click here

To view a larger image of the back cover, click here

Reviews/Media Mentions:

"A great tournament poker book for newcomers and advanced players alike."  —Chicago Tribune

"The text is every bit as good as the title. … you'd be wise to pick up a copy."  —ESPN Poker Club

"Blair Rodman and Lee Nelson have come up with an aggressive and excellent strategy for anyone to step into the tournament arena and succeed from the start. With 'Kill Phil', they have given players a chance to knock heads against the greatest in the game and, in many ways, take the professionals' game from them … 'Kill Phil' will definitely help anyone's game on a variety of fronts and should be something that poker players, from beginners to the greatest 'experts', should read and have in their libraries!"  —pokernews.com