Lee Jones Flawed Thinking

[AJFenix]

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When someone is correct that one of us is wrong we acknowledge it and make the correction as soon as we can.

Best wishes,
Mason

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This is a quote from his other thread on this forum. I am not meaning to bash Mason, and I deeply respect 2+2. I have HUGE respect for this forum and a lot of the products the company has put out. However, take a look at the link I provided and be the judge for yourself as to whether this quote rings true. I wish David had participated in that discussion. I am not sure if he was not made aware of it or consciously avoided taking part. Perhaps he can voice his opinion in this thread?

[MicroBob]

disclaimer: I have only skimmed the article and haven't studied it fully...so I'm kind of making some assumptions here that may or may not be incorrect.


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The problem with this statement is that if "lesser players" were to call at the frequency that SAGE suggests, they will do not as well as they should if they take into account that most of their opponents will not be playing as aggressively as SAGE assumes.


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I suspect that this is correct.

The biggest flaw with the SAGE system (as best I can determine) is just assuming that your opponent plays a certain way.

It is also a huge mistake that this particular way that we are to assume he plays also happens to be a fairly unlikely way to play (at least in my low-stakes experience).


Maybe there are more players who play more 'ideally' at higher levels.
But when I get heads-up with small stack-size (relative to blinds of course) I have found that a vast majority of my opponents play far too weak.

For some, this would include folding pre-flop when they are so short that they are leaving themselves with only .25 BB for the next hand.
They had OBVIOUS pot-odds to call with any two on that hand and are making a huge mistake by folding.

And it's a much bigger mistake than the miniscule advantage we MIGHT have with Q7 on the very weird off-chance that they actually play close to correctly.


Some opponents will just let themselves be pushed around all over the place heads-up and 3-handed...and I think it would be a big mistake to waste the chance of having such a significant advantage (relatively speaking) on just Q7 just because you barely MIGHT have correct odds to call with it.

One needs to assume that the opponent PROBABLY is too tight heads-up...because THAT is the standard.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Masked Man:

There's a very big difference.

Let's look at a hypothetical article that gets published in our magazine that turns out to be inaccurate. What happens is that there is instant feedback on our magazine forum that there is a problem with this article. Therefore, our readers are very quickly informed of this and what the possible problems are. Also, if an article does appear in our magazine that is badly flawed, we do have the option to take it down (even though we have not yet chosen to do this).

Taking this a step further, you in particular are known to quickly point out these type of errors and you don't let up. That's fine with us by the way, and even though at times some may find your approach a little irritating, I for one applaud it even when I happen to be on the receiving end because of the long run good that it actually does.

Now consider when something gets published in a hard copy magazine like Card Player. There will be no counter discussions showing its flaws, and no option to the publisher to remove it. Many readers of the magazine will just think that it must be correct and in this case, since Card Player claims to be the poker authority, they will just assume that Harrington isn't so good after all. That sort of thing, especially if it gets picked up by posters and chatters on the Internet can be long term damaging to Dan (and Bill Robertie) and we're not real fond of it either.

Now let's get a little more specific. This article of Jones not only is badly flawed and very inaccurate, but he went a step further to prove Dan Harrington wrong on something that Dan got absolutely correct.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Bob:

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The biggest flaw with the SAGE system (as best I can determine) is just assuming that your opponent plays a certain way.


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Not quite, there's a little more. It also assumes that you really can't figure out exactly how your opponent is playing. That is you are confused and don't know what to do.

I do agree with everything else you state.

best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi AJ:

You need to understand that posts to these forums are not the same as well thought out and written articles that present specific strategies. I'm sure that over time there will be a fair number of errors that will appear in my posts, and sometimes it will take a while to convince me of that error. But also be assured that the process of possibly changing my thinking (or David or Ray or Dan Harrington for that matter) has already been completed before something becomes an official Two Plus Two book publication.

For example, for both Harrington I and Harrington II we had many days of meetings where literally hundreds of points in the texts were debated. So it's very unfair and disingenuous of you to compare what happens in posts that I make to what gets published in our books.

Best wishes,
Mason

[El Diablo]

Mason,

I understand your points. However, as an impartial observer (if anything, I'm biased in favor of 2+2 when it comes to matters of poker), it simply feels that you guys are far more harsh on Lee than is deserved.

The very titles of the two posts you and David made "Lee Jones Flawed Thinking" and "Lee Jones Confusion" come off as petty and unnecessary to me, and I'm sure many others.

Both you and David appear to feel that Lee is attacking Dan (and by extension 2+2), but speaking again as an impartial observer, it simply appears that Lee is pointing out an example from what he considers an excellent book where he believes an excellent player gives some advice that is incorrect based on Lee's system (again, I have not read what this system is, so I don't have any opinion wrt the poker advice from either side). This is not an attack imo, it's a disagreement. Lee thinks his way is correct and respectfully disagrees w/ the advice in Dan's book. It does not seem to me that the same level of respect has been accorded to Lee when you disagree with him.

All of this is subjective, of course, and you clearly don't agree, so no need to respond to this post. Just some thoughts from someone observing from the sidelines.

[MicroBob]

I think that many many articles in card-player attempt to 'prove' many 2+2 theories incorrect just by advocating an alternate (re: flawed) way of playing.

So Lee is not unique in this regard.


However, in this situation he specifically sited HOH and thought that he had proved one of the concepts incorrect.

There isn't much stuff out there for him to compare his system to and he chose an example from HOH where he would have played differently (and somehow believes it shouldn't be considered a close decision).

Big deal.
He was wrong.


On cardplayer I read flawed strategies all the time and this seems to happen quite a bit so I'm not that bothered by it.


What if in the article he had used language such as, "Harrington says to fold Q7 here...and with the SAGE system we FEEL (or BELIEVE) that we have proved that this is incorrect."

Would using such language have made it better?

It certainly would have been more accurate because I believe that just pushing the SAGE system as the 'best' way (and bordering on being, 'the only good way') is incorrect.
I don't necessarily think the language shows that they are all hyper about a flaw in Harrington's methods.
They are so excited about their SAGE system that they think they have developed a new way of doing things that actually IS a bit different than how Harrington would do it.

And they claim it to be better.


There are lots of other people out there who will tell you to not bother with the 2+2 stuff and instead to read Krieger or Hellmuth's limit advice or whoever.


So Jones is just another person who has some flawed (or horribly wrong) advice in my mind.

I do believe it was mistaken for them to simply assert that this new SAGE system is obviously correct (has it even been implemented in actual play over a reasonable sample size?)

But I find that cardplayer does this a lot with other situations too. Just pushing some not-so-great way of playing and the writer insisting it is the best.


So really, it seems that the big issue here is that he directly compared his system with a 2+2 work and made the mistake of thinking that he was right.

[Josh W]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi AJ:

You need to understand that posts to these forums are not the same as well thought out and written articles that present specific strategies. I'm sure that over time there will be a fair number of errors that will appear in my posts, and sometimes it will take a while to convince me of that error. But also be assured that the process of possibly changing my thinking (or David or Ray or Dan Harrington for that matter) has already been completed before something becomes an official Two Plus Two book publication.

For example, for both Harrington I and Harrington II we had many days of meetings where literally hundreds of points in the texts were debated. So it's very unfair and disingenuous of you to campare what happens in posts that I make to what gets published in our books.

Best wishes,
Mason

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Mason -

I'm pretty sure people are NOT busting your chops over being wrong. Everybody (save, possibly, Ray), is wrong from time to time. It's the way that you handle it that is under fire.

And since so many people are bringing it up (in a number of threads), there's probably something to it. Are you considering that a possibility?

Josh

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Josh:

No I'm not, and here's why.

I had my first article published on gambling way back in 1983, and my first poker article was also published that year. From the very beginning I have constantly been told that I either have it wrong and are impossible to deal with. I suspect that you and many others are probably quite happy that my attitude has been consistent all these years.

By the way, I'm also totally convinced that I could have done much better in the short run years ago and had much smoother sailing (so to speak). But I'm glad that I stuck to my ideals of insisting on only being associated with a top quality product and refusing to deal with people who wouldn't make the extra effort that a top quality product requires.

Best wishes,
Mason

[AJFenix]

Mason, I was personally very happy when you admitted your mistake in that thread, and thought you made the right move. I do not compare what goes on in the forums to what gets published, and I apologize if it came off that way. As I said, I have huge respect for a lot of the products 2+2 has put out and have read several of the books myself. If it wasn't for 2+2 (both the forums and the books), I feel I would never have been able to get to where I am now as far as poker is concerned. I feel I am constantly learning and improving in large part due to 2+2. This is not brown nosing, this is the truth, and I know MANY people on these forums feel the same way.

I understand your quarrel with Lee is on a business level, as what he said could potentially hurt the credibility of two of your authors. That being said, I am not sure the way you guys chose to go about addressing the issue was the best. Lee shows respect to you guys, you guys could at least do the same for him. Not necessarily crediting him as a good author, you are entitled to your opinion on that, but just showing some common courtesy and respect.