[Arnold_Snyder]

Harrington II, to vastly oversimplify, is a discussion of optimal tournament strategies in which periods of solid, aggressive poker play are interspersed with heightened opportunities for theft, which exist primarily due to tournament structure.

My book shows that poker tournament structure factors can radically dislocate both these opportunities for theft, and the necessity of theft (as opposed to good poker play) in your overall results. As Leavenfish pointed out above, the blind structure is one aspect of tournament structure that impacts optimal tournament strategy. But there are other important aspects of tournament structures that also impact optimal strategies, including rebuy structures and, especially, field size.

Harrington’s M (and Sklansky’s “System” in Tournament Poker for Advanced Players), both address the need to change speed of play when the costs of a round reach a certain relation to your stack and the average stack in the tournament. My book expands on Harrington’s and Sklansky’s insights to consider tournaments with structures where the M is moving so fast that it is distorted almost beyond recognition.

Also, my book provides a simple method for quantifying any tournament’s speed based on its blind structure. Many fast tournaments are so fast they have little if any value for skillful players, regardless of the players’ understanding of poker or tournament strategies. Good players should choose tournaments based on their profit potential, and the buy-in cost and prize pool are not good indicators of value. The blind structure is the key.

A number of perceptive players in this thread realized during a quick look at the Formula in a bookstore that the Rock/Paper/Scissors strategy presented in it is very different from the solid, aggressive poker tournament strategies they have learned at 2+2. That’s quite right, and the reason for that is important. In fast tournaments, you are faced with a gambling problem that is impossible to solve with good poker play. The Rock/Paper/Scissors model simply identifies the power relationships that are conducive to solving a non-poker gambling problem. Essentially, The Poker Tournament Formula is an advanced course in theft.