Foreword—One of the Phils Fires Back

Introduction to the New Edition and Important Strategy Updates

The Mathematics Behind Kill Phil

Let’s Kill Phil

Part One--Beginning Considerations

1   The History of Poker Tournaments

2   Understanding No-Limit Hold ’Em

3   The Benefits of Big-Pot Poker

4   Characteristics of Winning No-Limit Tournament Players

Part Two--The Kill Phil Beginner Strategies

5   The Basis For The Kill Phil Strategies

6   Kill Phil Rookie

7   Kill Phil Basic

Part Three--The Kill Phil Intermediate Strategies

8   Kill Phil Basic Plus

9   Fine-Tuning Kill Phil Basic Plus

Part Four--Advanced Kill Phil Strategies

10  Kill Phil Expert

11  Kill Phil in Practice

12  Attitudes and Latitudes

13  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 AHKS vs. Black Pairs

Appendix VIII--Outs

Appendix IX--Pair Probability

Appendix X--Deal Formula

Appendix XI--Recommended Reading and Websites

Appendix XII--The Kill Phil Strategy Cards

Index

Introduction to the New Edition and Important Strategy Updates

      Kill Phil (KP) was published in 2006. At that time, it was impossible to envision the changes that would occur in the world of poker in the next three-plus years. To this day, when a tournament player at our table pushes all-in, a la Kill Phil, other players at the table stare at us, like it was our doing! The truth is, the all-in move is a viable strategy, and accepted poker wisdom was headed in that direction, KP or no KP.
      We released Kill Phil before the flood of modern-era poker books had reached the market and the poker explosion hit full swing. At the time, we were a bit apprehensive about unleashing the KP strategies on the poker world. We asked ourselves: While these strategies are the great equalizer for tournament novices, is publicizing them and “dumbing down” tournament poker the right thing to do? 
     In fact, while KP sold more than 30,000 copies and many players, rookie and experienced, used the strategies and concepts to improve their results, the phenomenon and evolution of no-limit hold ’em were bigger than any one book. The all-in move, especially at later stages of no-limit tournaments, is now utilized as a matter of course. KP didn’t bring this about; it was just a bellwether of things to come.
      From the advent of poker tournaments in the early ’70s until the popularity explosion fueled by the Internet craze and hole-card camera took hold in 2003, advancement in the strategies of tournament poker had come about very slowly. Since the early 2000s, however, books, televised poker, and Internet forums and teaching sites have propelled poker knowledge forward in hyperspeed. Today’s low-rung tournament specialist would likely have been a star in the ’70s and ’80s. Astute players attempt to stay on the cutting edge of evolving trends and strategies.
     For example, pre-2003, if a player went all-in with a stack of any reasonable size, he’d generally only get called by players with a top hand. This was a function of the fact that players would only move in with very strong hands. Today, move-in ranges are much wider and calling ranges have adjusted accordingly. Young online-honed players who’ve played millions of hands of tournament poker online are now entering live tournaments and playing uber-aggressive poker. Inexorably, new-school poker, characterized by loose-aggressive small-ball play and tight-aggressive long-ball strategies, is crowding out old-school poker. Old-school players who are either unwilling or incapable of adjusting to the modern game will most assuredly struggle in the current climate.
     The original KP move-in strategies were based on the calling ranges we estimated at that time. While generalized calling ranges today (2009) are significantly wider than they were at the time of the first edition, revamping the strategies isn’t the solution. Wider calling ranges will lead to players tightening their all-in requirements, and so on. If we started trying to change the strategies to keep up with the evolving trends, we might chase our tails until we came full circle to the pre-2003 dynamic. The solution as we see it is to give you some guidelines to bring the strategies up to the present, but be aware that trends will continue to evolve. Top players constantly monitor changing conditions.Here are our suggestions.
     For new players: Stick with the Rookie strategy as presented. This should still give you the best chance for success until you gain some experience and move on to the more advanced strategies.
     For intermediate and advanced players: The play of AA and KK was a major point of discussion when we developed the basic and advanced strategies. Our original idea was to give players a reasonable chance to garner some chips with those powerful and infrequent hands by raising less than all-in. However, in the modern climate, all-in moves tend to be viewed with more suspicion than smaller raises, so we suggest altering the play of these hands as follows.
     Early in a tournament with huge stacks, if your opponents haven’t yet pegged you as a KP player, the strategy as presented on pg. 73-76 is still viable, though not necessarily the best course of action. In the latter stages or if you’re recognized as a KP’er, just move in with your aces and kings rather than messing around with a smaller raise. Your chances of getting called are much greater today than at the time of the first edition, so move in and hope to get action.
     An advanced adaptation to the new style of hyper-aggressive play is to occasionally limp in with AA after a couple of mid-position raisers if you have some aggressive players yet to act who likely can’t resist putting in a big raise when everyone appears to be weak. You can then come over the top and put them to a tough decision. They might think you’re making a play at them and call you down with small to medium pairs or hands as weak as AJ or AT.A play that we like making with AA or KK when short-stacked (CSI of 7 or less) is limping from middle to late position and just calling a raise pre-flop. We then check on the flop and call an all-in bet or move in over any bet. If our opponent checks back on the flop, we push all-in on the turn. This may be interpreted as a bluff and called by a weaker hand. We’re willing to accept greater risks when short-stacked in exchange for a greater possibility of doubling up and garnering a decent stack size.
     When we developed the Online Strategy, we did so with the understanding that online players were much looser and called with more hands than did live players. The influx of online players into live tournaments has caused a shift toward the online dynamic. Our suggestion at the present time is to lean heavily toward the Online Strategy in live tournaments. The essential differences are that Group 2 hands, and to a lesser degree Group 3 hands, are given greater value, while suited connectors are downplayed.
     Another adjustment can be made in the area of defending against late-position raises, employed by aggressive players with a considerably wider range of hands than at the time of the first edition. You might consider adding suited connectors and 1-gap suited connectors to your re-raise arsenal against suspicious late-position raises if you have enough chips that you retain fold equity. For our purposes, we consider fold equity as offering our opponent less than 1.5/1 odds to make the call.
     As your experience and skill at playing the player (pgs. 114-117) increase, the more success you’ll have when you use these variations. While variations make a simple strategy more complex, players work very hard to improve their game these days and if you want to retain your respective edge, you need to follow suit. However, for the player who simply wants a strategy that gives him a reasonable chance of success without requiring a major effort, the strategies as presented still give you a better chance than anything else out there.
     While we received some criticism when the book was released that we were simply telling players to become push-monkeys, not only was that never our intention, but it’s not true. In fact, that criticism often came from players who hadn’t read the book and would likely benefit from some of the concepts we cover.
      Kill Phil is a learning platform that’s different from other teaching approaches in that we come at the game from the top down. Other books give pre-flop starting-hand charts, but once they get to post-flop play, they become hopelessly confusing to the rookie. Players adopting that approach to learning the game have little chance of success until they’ve paid for lots of expensive real-life lessons. Kill Phil provides a method that gives a new player a realistic chance of success, while gaining real-time experience at the tables to observe and learn from good players.
     Opponents’ reactions to Kill Phil practitioners have been varied and often comical. Some players become frustrated to the point of losing their cool and making huge mistakes. Blair vividly remembers an online player who berated him endlessly in the chat while he was experimenting with the strategies, then decided to teach him a lesson by calling a huge all-in with Q3!
     Similarly, Blair was on a radio show with Gavin Smith, one of the top players who’s known for playing many pots and outplaying opponents post-flop. Blair asked Gavin how he’d react to a KP player at his table. “I guess I’d have to tighten up and stop splashing around.” Amazing how a complete novice could force a top player to change his game. Powerful stuff, indeed!
     After the publication of Kill Phil, we did numerous interviews and radio shows. One of the questions we frequently heard was how to counteract a KP player. It would have been silly to present an immediate solution to the problems we created for opponents in Kill Phil. However, while Blair chose not to get involved in writing a follow-up poker book, in 2007 Lee teamed up with math-modeling expert Tysen Streib and Kill Phil co-author Steve Heston to write Kill Everyone, which presents the answers to many questions raised by Kill Phil, and much more. After reading Kill Phil and gaining some playing experience, we suggest you advance by reading Kill Everyone. It targets intermediate to advanced players and is replete with useful information about unexploitable equilibrium strategies for multi-table tournaments, Sit-and-Go’s, and satellite tournaments. Kill Phil and Kill Everyone together are a powerful tandem that needs to be on every tournament player’s bookshelf.
     While Kill Phil was being prepared for publication, other poker books were hitting the market, notably Dan Harrington’s Harrington on Hold ’Em. Some of the concepts we covered were simultaneously being treated by Harrington, so similar concepts had different names. What we call “CSI” he calls “M.” Likewise, our “Power Re-Raise” is his “Squeeze Play.” While M and squeeze play have become the accepted poker terms, we’ve decided not to change the KP nomenclature, since our readers are familiar with the KP terminology. Just be aware that they’re the same concepts.
     Our forum, KillPhilPoker.com, came online shortly after the publication of the book. A bunch of new players took to the book and shared their ideas and progress on the forum. Many of them developed into skilled players with notable successes. Our forum members are very willing to share their experiences and help new members with their poker education. They even put together a series of private small-buy-in online tournaments that are fun and educational. They have become some of the toughest tournaments around! Check it out—it’s a cool place to hang out on the Net.
      Finally, one more key change in this second edition is the inclusion of the strategies in the Kill Phil Strategy Card format, which you can find in Appendix XII. After much discussion, we decided to do this for a couple of reasons. First, it adds significant value to your investment in this book. But more important, it gives you an alternate and possibly more familiar method for memorizing and applying the strategies. When Kill Phil was published, the formatting in the book was the common style of the time. Soon after, however, a different method—using hand values instead of hand groups—became the standard, and when Steve Heston formulated the strategy cards, he used that method to lay out the strategies. This is the method used in most of today’s poker literature. Experiment with both methods and use whichever works best for you.

When the first edition of Kill Phil was released it took no limit hold 'em tournaments by storm—with the Kill Phil Strategy, the big guys could no longer out-maneuver the newbies, as acknowledged by the ultimate "Phil" -- Hellmuth Jr. -- in the Foreward he contributed.

As a result of the book, the big guys caught on and changed their game to allow for the new Kill Phil style of play—so now it's Kill Phil that's adapted. In this 2nd edition, the authors (Aussie Millions champ Lee Nelson and WSOP bracelet-winner Blair Rodman) have recommended tweaks that take into account the effects of evolving strategies. Still, the essence of Kill Phil remains the same, and reading this book will allow new players to compete immediately in poker tournaments, even against seasoned pros. Highly recommended for all no limit hold 'em tournament players.