The Poker Tournament Formula 2 has been a great read. Arnold Snyder took his book to the next level and explored slow structure tournaments and all of the elements needed to win in them. PTF1 explored fast structure tournaments and what is needed marvelously but this book took even some of Dan Harrington’s concepts and expanded upon them even further.

Arnold doesn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about crunching numbers. Instead he takes the approach of getting directly into what you need to know. He analyzes tournament structure and explains how to determine just how aggressive or passively you will need to play. He takes on Chip Utility and explains why it is so important to maintain an above average chip stack instead of simply calling them Red, Yellow, Orange, and Green.  Arnold also talks about the various stages of slow structure tournaments and how each of them should be approached. This includes final table play and deal making.

Snyder also goes in-depth in explaining why Dan Harrington’s approach may not be the ideal way of playing tournaments today versus three years ago. Overall, this book has excellent material for the above average player that is looking to take his or her game to the next level. It also gives you an entirely different way of thinking about tournament play in terms of concepts and there application. This is a MUST HAVE book and a very worthy rival to the Harrington on Hold’em series.