Many of you may have seen my top ten smartest gamblers list that I posted here a while ago. Bill Chen, Mark Weitzmann, Howard Lederer etc. etc. My true opinion, though admittedly somtimes based on sparse information.

But that was actually the second time I had done that. I puiblished an earlier list about 15 years ago, headed by Weitzmann and Kit Woolsey. The man I ranked fourth, took exception to my opinion, and expressed his displeasure in a letter to the editor. He was not on my second list at all. Which I now realize was a travesty. Because for anybody to think he is anything but the clevest among all the gambling experts would be ignorant. My oversight occurred because I had not been following his career closely.

So it is time to right that wrong. These things are often somewhat a matter of opinion. But not in this case. Could anyone in his right mind dispute that the world's smartest gambling theoretician is the author of Winning Poker Systems? I speak of course of the one and only Norman Zadeh.

where's Phil ranked?

Jerry Yang obv tops the list

I confess to not having heard of Norman Zadeh until I read this thread, but why am I not surprised that Mr. Sklansky chose as the "smartest gambler" a guy who was also both a math professor and founder of a porno magazine?

From Wiki: "He is the son of the creator of fuzzy logic, computer scientist Lotfi Zadeh."

Now that's cool.

Fuzzy logic is pretty lowbrow concept. It's one of those ideas that someone was bound to think up no matter what, the creator is just whichever douchebag crossed the line first.

I'm curious where Sklansky puts himself in the list?

Where's VanVeen?

Fuzzy set theory may be just that for statistics, pretty lowbrow. But it was certainly a highly valuable concept to linguistics and artificial intelligence. In fact, it still is. Predicate logic had been static and binary since the days of Aristotle. Formalizing your dynamic or fuzzy logic to work from axiomas and be accepted is a big accomplishment, no matter how intuitive and simple the concept is viewed afterwards.

Gravity theorems were bound to come up too, it was just a matter on whos head landed the apple.

About Sklansky's rating I found this pearl in Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold'em (On the the Road to the World Series of Poker)
by T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy

Tom has said that no-limit hold'em probably is the most
patient of all the poker games. Being patient is good, up to a
point. Players like David Sklansky are very patient players,
very good players, but they aren't going to get there very often
because they play the same all the way through the tournament.
You have to be very changeable as situations arise
while you are going through the stages of a tournament. This
is why some of the theoreticians like Sklansky and Malmuth
do not do exceptionally well in tournaments: They don't adapt
to the ebb and flow of tournament competition. Tom thinks
that this may be because their play is too math-oriented, too
mechanical... they lack flair.

Link to origional 2 articles?

Zadeh is anti-breast implants. Would only publish nudes of women with real boobs.

At least second.

From wikipedia:

He (Norm) estimates losing approximately $46 million on Perfect 10 since 1996, when the magazine was first published.

Great mag, but not sure that it was a smart gamble financially. You were likely correct in not including him on the list.

It is possible that he could have gotten greater than $46 million in extremely high quality tail out of the arrangement.

having $46000000 to lose in the first place is smarter than most people ever manage.

I got "Winning Poker Systems" by Zadeh and given the timeframe, it looks like a nice book written by an amateur with a bit of mathematical background. Still in my opinion "Poker Strategy" by Nesmith Ankeny is way better and nobody even came close to putting Ankeny on any sort of gambler ranking.

If anyone from the 70s writers should be on such a list, then John Fox would be my candidate.

LOL TMAC is so bad at poker