I'm not convinced that the top poker players of the past were always the most intelligent people. Perhaps other factors such as experience, stamina and aspects of character (eg emotional stability) were more important. With basically only one book on the subject and limited shared knowledge the most successful players were probably those that focussed on ways of finding and exploiting the fish.

However, in the modern game, intelligence is just the starting point for the top levels (not all intelligent people will make good poker players - a certain kind of mind is required). There has been an explosion of poker theory and knowledge. Modern players have had opportunities to experiment and develop rapidly online among a much larger professional player pool. Intelligence is not a well defined concept but widely accepted aspects of it are definitely important to poker success, e.g. pattern recognition, rapid number crunching, information assimilation, interpretation of complex situations with many variables. As time moves on I suspect such attributes will become even more critical to top level success.

Intelligence is not the same as academic success (although there is obv a strong correlation). I doubt Viffer has ever made it into the top academic circles but he has a certain perceptive ability which means he could take the wages off any professor at the poker tables.

Phil writes the best blogs on Poker. PERIOD>

this is where st ungar would have a mind like a computer.So when 10,000 hands later you play a hand again in a certain way, hell remember how you did it 10,000 hands ago (something everyone else has long forgot) and thats how he wins

very good post, hugely agree with bolded part- i think stability is soo important in cash games especially. John Nash himself was insanely intelligent but also pretty unstable.

Korean fruit-salad makers are just too damn intelligent/lacking in wisdom for their own good...

Nice article

http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...n=&page=0&vc=1

They are having a HU PLO battle at $600 FT atm.

Looks like Galfond is punting his bankroll weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

OMG this is sad.

The days work:

OMGClayAiken 5967 hands, Lost $1,418,730

Isildur1 7319 hands, Won $1,367,069

Man, I just read the whole thread. A few things that came to mind:

Astyanax seemed to have little knowledge of poker and became stubborn. It probably would of been easier to ignore him. Easy to say this in hindsight.

Viktor is smart.

So is Ike.

Is Galfond really that good a writer? I mean, he is not bad but he doesn't stand out to me. If he wasn't a HS legend who many have a hard on for would so many people acclaim his writing? Dunno.

My fav post in the thread was the 1st one made by Sauce but then some of my least fav few lines were when he later talked about HS regs being better dinner guests because they are intelligent.

I wish tourneys & S&G's didn't exist and everyone was forced to play cash.

The two others Galfond wasn't sure he had a PLO edge on were obviously Durrr & Ziggy

why phil take his blog down?

why you take this thread up?

why you both end in 22 and post in same old thread on 3/22?

Any chance anyone knows where i could find this? Link no longer works.

Here's an archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20120829...th-the-legend/

P.S. I was excited to see Viktor Blom when I was playing the $1500 8-Game tournament at the WSOP the other day. And now he's made day 2 of the $3000 9-Game. It's kind of like the old days when I used to watch his crazy runs online. Fun times, I hope he makes a PokerGO streamed FT. Maybe the PPC?

Hopefully, Isildur1 wins a bracelet in the 9-game he’s currently in and gets staked for the $50k PPC.

Then he can get to a final table with Jungleman, Ivey, Hastings, and Antonius (unfortunately Galfond says he doesn’t plant to play any live tournaments this year).