if you've read Arnold Snyder's book "poker tournament formula", what are your thoughts on his strategy?

One point very controversial: He argued that the true M was much greater than the M as Harrington had it simply because time limits meant that you would not get to play the number of hands as Harrington's M suggested.

Huge pushback on this point by Mason Malmuth.

I agree with Snyder.

His formula for deciding on which tournaments were playable was on the money. I think this is where the real value is.

Al Mirpuri

In my Gambling Theory book I point out, especially late in a tournament, the penalty for a large stack losing a pot is not as great as the penalty for a small stack losing a pot. I'm the first one to point this out and it impacts how you should play your hands. This is essentially the same thing that Snyder was saying.

Specifically on page 221 it says:

Concept No. 17: Late in a tournament, if you are in a good chip position, be willing to make bets with seemingly negative expectations against a short stack.

M is simply the ration of your chips to the cost of playing a round (blinds plus antes). That doesn't change.

Also, when it comes to tournament speed, I think you're confusing McEvoy and Snyder.

MM

John,

i like Arnold's work, although Harrington is the king (and i lump Mason in with Harrington),

Arnold is a very good writer, a very good thinker and has some awesome ideas explained very well... but then it's just "repetition after repetition after repetition" with i believe ZERO ACTUAL EXAMPLES of anything.. and then he does it a second time with much of the same stuff in the first book... hope my memory is correct but very repetitive for sure.

there was a huge battle over M and a lesser battle over ICM here on the 2P2 forums....

i think it was somewhat self-explanatory with Harrington's M that you had to adjust to the circumstances, whether DH said so explicitly for every plausible scenario..

what i do think was never emphasized enough until Arnold wrote his book (and maybe his book didn't even emphasize it enough) is that your is seriously depreciating asset when your m is fairly low. like under 10x (i can't remember all the exact definitions..... but 15x the big blind (and usually there is an ante by that time)

i didn't realize until recently that inflation in the economy can cause very strong consumer spending. spend the money before it depreciates.

on ICM, i think it got take to silly levels, like fold kings at way too deep a stack level............. i also think top poker writers were way too conservative as their formative years were when half the table had zero clue how to play poker. i'd say at WSOP ME 2021 that most players have some basic idea to how to play decent poker