I've seen that method and variations on it before but I've never tried it. I'm more of a brute force kind of guy, hook the chain to the tractor and the tree and take off at 30 mph.
However, a variation on that is how my F-I-L used to pull T-posts out of the ground until he built his mechanical T-post puller that was based on the lever principle and relied on brute force ... my brute force.
