Kill Everyone: Book Review
by Lee Nelson, Tyson Streib and Kim Lee
First of all, don’t take this book on an airplane. If you do, be sure to cover it discretely. All kidding aside, I was a bit self-conscious reading this book in public. It’s not just anywhere you can whip out a book called “Kill Everyone” without drawing some strange looks. This sequel to Kill Phil, is not a handbook on how to be a homicidal maniac, but it is a guide on how to be a stone cold killer at the poker table. Kill Everyone is the most compact and comprehensive guide to No-Limit Hold’em tournament play I have come across.
In the sequel to Kill Phil (reviewed here) we lose the voice of Pocketfiver and World Series of Poker bracelet winner Blair Rodman. While Rodman’s contribution is missed, Kill Everyone is one of those rare sequels that surpass the original. Kill Phil was geared towards the hordes of internet qualifiers playing in major tournaments for the first time. It offered the amateur advice on how to level the playing field with the seasoned tourney pro by taking them out of their comfort zone and playing big pot, “long ball” poker. This advice was very valuable two and three years ago, and the underlying theme of aggression holds true to this day, but the style of play described in Kill Phil is really only useful in a few select scenarios. Kill Everyone takes a big leap forward and attempts to lay out winning strategies that will serve the reader well in any game against any opponent.
Lee Nelson returns in this book with a vast amount of poker knowledge and experience to contribute, as well as an accessible writing style. Kim Lee is a university professor of math and finance, who apparently was a contributor to the first book, although he is not a named author. Newcomer Tyson Streib is a frequent contributor to 2+2 online magazine and adds a good deal of math based reasoning to the book, which he lays out in extensive charts and graphs. These visual aids are not self-explanatory, as they involve complex ideas that the authors explain in detail in the text. So those of you who were looking forward to flipping through the pages for the pretty pictures, I am sorry to disappoint. Once you have read and digested the appropriate chapter, though, the charts and graphs do provide quick reference material for further study to keep the ideas fresh.
My one complaint about Kill Everyone is that the terminology used in the book to discuss stack size, tournament situations and the math of NLHE tournament play is, well awkward. The terms used throughout the book are Cost Per Round (CPR) and Chip-Status Index (CSI). Even if I hadn’t ever read Harrington’s books, I might fumble over these terms flashing back to my lifeguard certification class and wondering what is on TV tonight. As it is, I really had trouble with these terms as I felt like Nelson and company were reinventing the wheel. To be fair, these are concepts no one owns, I am just more used to thinking in terms of M than I am in terms of CSI.
Kill Everyone keeps the scope of its instruction very tight, and that focus is one of the strongest parts of this book. First off, it does not attempt to teach any other game than NLHE. Second, the main focus is tournament play. You do get a bonus chapter at the end by Mark Vos with some excellent tips on Shorthanded (6-max) NLHE online cash games, but the book is 95% tournament play. This is divided probably 60-40 between MTTs and Sit and Gos, although the others will often switch back and forth between types to compare the different flex points and strategies appropriate to the game in question.
Even with this tight focus, Kill Everyone manages to pack a ton of information into its three hundred pages. There is one slim chapter on tells and reads in live play that somehow manages to rival Mike Caro’s famous volume for detail. That is followed by a chapter on tournament preparation that everyone planning to play a major live tournament should read. Lee Nelson’s detailed pre-tournament routine may not be for everyone, but he offers a variety of suggestions, including ways to beat jet-lag, the importance of exercise and diet, guided meditation, and more.
The last chapter is by Mark Vos on six-max online cash games. This brief chapter is not sufficient to cover the topic in full, but it does include some solid hints and tips for the average player. Overall, Kill Everyone provides excellent advice in a detail-rich, step by step format that most people with a solid understanding of the game going in will be able to follow. This is not a beginner’s text. You should definitely go into this book with some playing experience and familiarity with real game situations and a variety of poker concepts.
Kill Everyone enters a crowded marketplace of ideas and titles in the poker instruction industry. New titles hit the book shelves every day, and online there are an abundance of poker tools and training resources available. The advantages this book have over some poker titles already out there is that it is as cutting edge as one can expect a poker book to be. The discussion of new-school aggression and recent changes in tournament play is very current. All-in-all, Kill Everyone is a quality book well worth reading and a valuable addition to anyone’s poker library.
