Re: After Harrington
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In fact the PTF was written specifically to exploit mechanical Harrington style players in tournaments with fast blind structures.
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This is shameful and you know it. I have previously posted email from Snyder where he claims that the advice in his book and Harrington II are very similar, and you have read this.
Snyder only began attacking Harrington when we pointed out some flaws in his book. Now he's claiming, and you mimic it, that his book was written to expose the flaws in Harrington. Shame on you. If you remember my email from Snyder, he claimed that his book was actually written well before Harrington was published and that his publisher took a very long time to get his book to press. So how can you write a book to exploit a style in another book when you do the writing well before you have even seen the other book?
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Mason,
I agree that the short stack strategies in HoHII and the PTF are similar. However the recommendations for earlier in a tournament (the area generally covered in HoHI) are not. However you are right in regard to my falling into the revisionist history trap regarding Harrington vs Snyder and I apologize for that. Although Harrington is mentioned in the bibliography and the introduction of the PTF (I'm not sure about elsewhere) I believe you are probably right that Snyder's manuscript was essentially complete prior to publication of Harrington. (To be clear, I assume that the mentions of Harrington were added as a part of minor revisions just prior to publication). Let me attempt to restate the part you quoted above with this revisionist bias removed. This is based on my interpretation after a re-reading of the introduction chapter of the PTF.
Snyder wrote the PTF because he believed the strategy recommended in the books on tournament play published prior to him writing the manuscript for the PTF, while probably appropriate for slower structure tournaments (he even recommends several authors including Harrington and Sklansky at that point) did not work well for small buy-in, fast structured tournaments. His explanation of the reasons include faster structure (less time to get chips by waiting for cards considered playable by conventional wisdom) and a different mix of opponents. He explains that he met several players who were obviously highly skilled (in the sense of poker skills and the ability to do well in tournaments with slower structures) who did poorly in these small buy-in, fast structure tournaments. The style described in the PTF was devised through observation of those who were successful in these and trying things out himself.
The PTF as written describes a style that is a plausible counter attack to a tighter playing style (at least in a fast structured tournament since in a slow structured tournament they'll eventually figure you out). I used Harrington as a proxy to describe that tighter, "traditional" style. (Yes, I know HoH doesn't advocate always playing tight - I'm talking about his default style when reasonably deep stacked. Replace with whatever author proceeded Harrington and advocated a conservative style if you wish.)
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Also, as for Snyder not being a very good poker player, that's exactly what he and his wife told me and a friend of mine a couple of years back. He explained that he did have experience with casino tournaments where you moved your chips in a lot and that the small poker tournaments were somewhat similar to these and that he was doing better there.
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My objection was not to whether or not this statement was true. My objection was that I doubted the poster who said it had anything to base the statement on. In your case people can decide for themself what Snyder meant when he said this to you. I'd tell you the same thing (because I'm not a very good player relative to your experience and overall poker skills). I'd say something entirely different to any member of my bar league because with few exceptions none of them are close to as good as I am. It's all relative.
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Again, just so there is no mistake on this, I do recommend Snyder's book, but it does have some flaws.
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Thanks for reiterating this. In the contentiousness that so often creeps in to discussion of this book and, to a greater extent, discussion around what has been said since it's easy to lose sight of this fact.
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