Quote:
Originally Posted by Mason Malmuth
Can you be specific? For this statement to be true there must be some things that you are saying which are very different from what is written in Harrington on Online Cash Games; 6-Max No-Limit Hold 'em, and this implies that there must be some hands where your advice on how to play them must also be different from what the Harrington Online book states. Can you give an example or two?
You need to understand that you're on another publisher's website and when you make statements that imply that what we publish and sell is out of date you're implying that our products should not be purchased. Now I'm not saying that you're wrong and perhaps you're correct, but you really need to be specific.
Mason
Hi Mason,
i'd personally disregard Harrington's advice if it were under the premise of specific "how to play QJ from the SB", simply because his competitors have played and analyzed this situation a million times and actually use it in practise while afaik Harrington is not 12-tabling online cash games nor ever had any outstanding results (online).
While that might sound harsh, i am absolutely a big fan of his work at the same time. There are a few things that i have learnt from reading him many years ago that i still teach my own students every single time (he once said to at least account a 10% chance that people will do something totally random).
I changed that to 5-10%, but it's incredible how wise and rich his advice in regards to the human element is. It has made myself and students incredible amounts of money.
It's so simple and there are a lot of golden nuggets of wisdom hidden in the books of all-time-champs like him and Doyle.
In other words, it depends by which metrics we judge somebody in order to put things into perspective.
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OP is a very talented critique which whom i rarely agree, not based on theory, but on practice.
He is like the great theoretical physicist, but he is not an engineer and will only judge based on his (limited) set of tools.
If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.
He will save you from Charlatans, but also kill all imagination and vision to reach a new level of understanding.
Those are the same people who say the Internet is useless, that we can never fly etc... and often they were right.
In practise:
We need better and more metrics to evaluate publications.
a) Evergreen Wisdom would be one category where Harrington would do very well
b) Pragmatic data analytics of "what works" and produces results is another category (the one i believe to be the best in)
c) Theoretical concepts (this is where Sklansky is the go-to guy)
If we look at this, we can see that:
a) Culture/Religion/Ideas
b) Business
c) Science
I have not read the book in question, but if we evaluate publications based on those 3 metrics, we can come to a better understanding of what value is provided without having to call Harrington BAD or outdated.