Hi baca:

What you’re saying here is correct. I learned many things at the Census Bureau that not only helped me in my next job at Northrup but also here at Two Plus Two.

As an example, at Northrup I once got into a major afight with a Reliability Engineering manager over probably estimates which he had presented to a super high level company director. I was the only one who worked in Reliability Engineering who understood why they were wrong — they were based on ratio estimation which I knew from my days at Census was a biased procedure and had the potential to produce probability estimates greater than one.

Best wishes,
Mason

While not part of this conversation, there are many things that were introduced in our books which are in common use today that very few people know first came from us. Two examples: The idea of a standard deviation was unknown among poker players until I started writing about, and the idea of a semi-bluff was originally defined by David. So, it’s a shame that more people today haven’t read my Gambing Theory book, especially those competing writers who make ridiculous bankroll recommendations.

Best wishes,
Mason

Old white people. My god. It’s aways a different version of the same fundamental thing: projection.

Hey on page 53 of the "How Much Do You Need?" section there's a special note about Bruce Zastera being one of the most knowledgeable posters on the forums. You're gonna have to add a special, special note on the next printing.

Mason, your message board isn't even reactive in 2018 (showing posts without reloading). There are also speed and caching issues and I can't even upload photos directly to the board.

Your message board in terms of quality, performance and features is literally out of 2005.

It is true that the competition has always been terrible but people post here almost entirely because of the network effect.

the guy in his avatar was not just supportive, but also complicit in at least the economic operates of a chilean government that illegally stole power from a democratically elected government and then organized death squads to torment the people who supported the democratically elected gov.

was he complicit in the death squads? proly not. but he surely knew about them and yet still supported the gov not just with words but by actually working for them to help dismantle the previous economy and create a new one.

Larry David did all that?

We're looking at new software.

Mason

And today? Isn't Chile the best country in South America in terms of freedom and economic success. Perhaps "the guy" in my avatar had a role in helping to make things much better. Also, why don't you do a search and see exactly what "the guy" in my avatar said about the government in Chile at that time.

MM

Bang on.

Honestly, allowing people to more effectively take money from others and not providing a single service that provides a positive contribution to society is detrimental if anything.

Mason's Census work is infinitely more worthwhile and beneficial to America than anything he did in gambling.

lol this is totally expected of Mason

Gonna defend 2+2 a little and say that the content of the books is not trivial, or at least it generally wasn't when they were published. HPFAP, which was the first poker book I ever read, is basically wall to wall nonsense now and it's easy to look at it and go "either trivial or wrong" but when I read it 20 years ago, that stuff was not common knowledge. Furthermore, the quality of 2+2 books has in general been better than other poker books, with some exceptions on both sides obviously.

Poker books died with Dan Harrington.

If you're good at something, never do it for free.

Cherry picking Friedman's idealistic theories (biz responsible only to owners) while ignoring the immense challenges of implementing them under his constraints (biz should be honest) is why Trump got elected.

And certainly never hold up that you did it for free as a point of pride.

well, I guess since chile has a strong middle class today that it was all worth it. certainly worth the cia and american business working to destroy the economy to install a regime (against the "will of the people" no less) that disappeared, tortured, and deported hundreds of thousands of ppl.

and yet it was still necessary to make "socialist" reforms bc the free market institutions failed so badly so quickly.

This is the same thing that happens with America vs Europe where people say that America's free market system produces so much more than Europe but when you look at hours worked and income distribution its not very clear if America is actually better off in terms of general welfare

https://medium.com/@pseudoerasmus/to...s-fc44ddd93ce3

Meh, the 2+2 poker books (the ones from like 2003-2006 anyway, not DUCY) were good. I learned how to actually play from them, I’m sure countless others did too. The 2+2 strategy forums used to be good as well, I, and I’m sure countless others who now just post in politics posted in them and found them very helpful. The irony of the forum though is that once I found the forum and started posting in the strat forums, I stopped buying the books, so i don’t know that it had it’s intended purpose from a business perspective.

I think the forums likely helped book sales a ton.

At the beginning, the books were good and the forums were good.

Then, 2+2 hit the absolute jackpot with Moneymaker and the emergence of online poker.

They should have, and easily could have, with any level of competence and business sense, leveraged their position into a 9 figure payday.

Instead, the owner is here a decade later ranting against Eric Holder.

For those of us of legal drinking age in 2005 this is a feature rather than a bug. All those flashing lights are confusing.

Wood paneling too. Like, it could be a lot worse.

vBulletin has improved by tonnns if you want to pay for it. Features like auto saving and restoring drafts, updates you on the fly if there's new posts on a thread you're viewing, etc.

It's too bad that ACA has made an economy that prevents Mason from being able to afford it.