[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
But as I pointed out in my original post, the strongest theoretical players actually look down upon 2+2 books.
[/ QUOTE ]
Where are you getting this from? I see it in your post, but I don't see your references.
[/ QUOTE ]
Search for posts from Tom Weideman, Abdul Jalib, Jerrod Ankenman, or Bill Chen either on RGP or here.
Or just believe me.
[/ QUOTE ].
I just did a search for 3 of the 4. No luck. Can you link 2 or 3 of the posts on 2+2 you are referring to ? I quit RGP years ago.
[/ QUOTE ]
Most of those posters were active on 2+2 years ago. Abdul got banned actually.
If you search the RGP archives for Abdul Jalib as author and the term "2+2" you get this:
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=2%2...07&safe=off
I guess you can try the same with the other names as authors.
But really I can boil it down for you. As of a few years ago at least 2+2 books were known for being highly exploitive, as opposed to game theoretical, in their strategy recommendations.
Basically they were premised on the notion that your opponents are bad, and that you have very specific knowledge of how they play.
The 'optimal' approach is based on trying to construct unexploitable strategies that should be effective against almost any real world opponent and do not require specific knowledge of opponent tendencies.
All the theorists I mentioned believe that the game theoretical/optimal approach is both more valuable and more interesting in the long run. It is also more difficult to productively research. They also believed that Sklansky lacked the rigor to do productive research in this area.
Also as a side note Abdul thought 2+2 was way too narrowminded about the value of computer sims. (They were.)
This is why those people mostly had a somewhat low opinion of 2+2 work.
(I should note that we have digressed from the topic of whether 'great players' are big 2+2 fans, since the theoreticians I have mentioned are not necessarily 'great players' by the as yet undefined standards of this thread.)