"The System"

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone had managed to improve upon Slansky's "System" mentioned in his Tournamant poker for advanced players book. Or if not, has anyone tried it, what were its results?

[Iceman]

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Hi, I was just wondering if anyone had managed to improve upon Slansky's "System" mentioned in his Tournamant poker for advanced players book. Or if not, has anyone tried it, what were its results?

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I don't think it would work in real life, since you would get called much more often than the System assumes. The System's success depends on your opponents being overly tight relative to your all-in raises, allowing you to slowly build your stack. That may have been the case prior to 1993, but many of the bad players in today's NL holdem tournaments, both online and live, tend to call and raise too easily rather than fold too easily. And if good players are aware that you are playing the System, they can counter it by lowering their calling standards - calling your all-ins with hands that you wouldn't normally call someone's all-in raise with, but that do very well against the System hands. There are many instances where the System play is clearly inferior to other strategies - like going all-in with a drawing hand after other players have limped rather than limping behind them. The bottom line is that a simple all-in or fold strategy doesn't work in a complicated game like no-limit holdem.

[disjunction]

I used it in a PokerStars play money tournaments when I was first starting out [Summary of play money tournments as of 2 years ago: almost everybody tries, but a lot of players are terrible. Actually, by sticking to preflop poker, you're playing against the strongest part of their game]. It worked great. In the beginning I got called with smaller cards and doubled up. In the middle I kept stealing blinds. I finished 12th out of a couple thousand.

But opponents who know how to play will have a large (for poker) advantage on you. It's easy to see how to improve on the system, because it was oversimplified for the book. But if you're capable of doing that you're capable of playing good postflop poker anyway.

[stud7champ]

Disagree. A modified system should allow you to raise with premium hands, hammer stacks less than yours or top pros who are a bit tight. This type of play is used by pros against players like Gus Hansen (all in before flop) to prevent getting outplayed.
I agree there has to be a lot of modifications depending on what kind of player is at your table.
what I will be doing is running some computer sims with the system.
Thx for reminding me about the system

[binions]

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Hi, I was just wondering if anyone had managed to improve upon Slansky's "System" mentioned in his Tournamant poker for advanced players book. Or if not, has anyone tried it, what were its results?

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Somewhere, Sklansky wrote an improved system. It uses your position, the number of limpers and the blinds/antes compared to your stack to come up with a key number, which you multiply by number of players left to act. That number is used to determine which hands to push.

Sklansky's inproved "System" is also in the book Tournament Poker for Advanced Players. I've meant to do some sims on it myself. When I do I'll post the results.

[Dan Mezick]

I understand these guys have refined and tweaked 'the system' such that pretty much anyone can use it.

The System (online only)

[Sniper]

I can't stop laughing, well done Dan!