[morphball]

I get a laugh at people wanting to keep the knowledge in the dark, and to me, it speaks of their lack of confidence in their own game.

(Calling to mind one poster's repeated brags of questionable plays which he believes are great...)

The truth of the matter is whenever I fire up PLO8 games, or limit games (been playing 6-max lately), 2 to 4 people (and sometimes many more) are known to me on every table, meaning I have hundreds of hands on them, and many of these winning regulars, including some regular 2+2'ers here, are pretty much nut-peddlers who are hard to make money from because they are weak tight, and who don't make money from me because I know how they play, barring the exceptional fluke scenarios of quads vs. boats, etc..

Now this is fine, but lets' compare this to hold'em... which I also play a lot of, I rarely have more than 1 known player at any of the SnG's I play, and I play hundreds of them each month. Moreover, my ROI in hold'em is quite healthy, if not enviable, for the stakes I play.

Now, let's look see at NL ring games. In these, I run into very few "knowns". Plus, like O8, I certainly study my frequent opponents' styles.

From this, I have recognized a pattern which I submit every serious player has as well. Barring known "losers," the bulk of my money comes from "unknowns," and I win and lose very little to "known" winners.

But there's a ton of books on hold'em, how can that be? Simple, because as more information gets out there about a game, more people want to play that game. Information generates interest. One guy reads an O8 book, and he teaches his friends at a low stakes home game. 6 to 8 people are now interested in O8 who have not read the book, and these people will sooner or later find they way to on-line or B&M card O8 tables. If you want to bring more dead money into the game, more information will do the trick.

If you want to restrict the info, it's only because one, you have a mediocre confidence in your game at best, and two, you have no desire to improve your game at all.

Btw, O8 in any form is not simpler than hold'em. That's a myth. Any game that has more than two unknown cards, is simply more complicated than a game with only two. I know some respected posters here disagree, but respectfully, they are wrong.

Finally, I didn't know that article was Buzz's...fanastic job, Buzz!!!