Re: On Ghosting
Yuv,
The first part of SM's post is the part that I strongly disagree with and is inconsistent with the pinch hitter analogy (although the JJP = Bonds reference is quite good in a lot of ways).
SM says:
"it baffles me as to why people wouldn't blindly follow the advice of the better player?"
To me this is laughable statement.
He then says "But isn't that kind of like.... not having Barry Bonds pinch hit for you? "
But that's not what it's like at all.
It is true that, ethics be damned, if having our name at the top of the results is all we care about we should hand over the controls to the better player, I agree with that (although notice that I said, if all we care about is having our account win the tournament, rather than if all we care about is $$$. Although off-topic, I'll mention that if all we care about is money I think it isn't the right decision in a lot of sitautions to hand over the controls, given the real possibility of being caught and the monetary consequences of having our account(s) frozen and/or having our reputation in the poker community destroyed).
However, having a pinch hitter, i.e. handing over the controls, is very, very different then "blindly following the advice" of the better player while we are in the hand. There are a bunch of times better players than I have ghosted me given me a piece of advice that I wouldn't agree with because of X, Y and Z and we would then talk about it, and sometimes I can convince the player that my line was better, but more important than convincing him after the fact, I understood at the time I rejected the advice why it was flawed IMO.
Similarly, I've sweated worse players than me and they've made moves contrary to my advice which, upon further inspection, made a lot of sense.
A huge part of this is in what Shaniac posted, but also it's just the nature of the game, in fact it's kind of what 2p2 hand posting is based on. There are a ton of posters on here who are way better than me, but in a given thread, on a given line, my decision might actually be better. In fact, the idea that where there is disagreement the better player's line is always right, is completely preposterous, and I stand by my statement that someone who thinks like that still has a lot to learn about poker.
Even if JJP is 100 times the player Platts is overall, it doesn't change the fact that even JJP has leaks (ZOMG NO!!) and in some spots Platts might, because he is better in that situation and/or he is in the tournament in a way JJP can't be, recognize that the advice is flawed and ignore it.
This is so completely different than having a pitch hitter. The analogy breaks down because the cards have already been dealt so there is concurrency between the advice and the situation, which is totally different than choosing to hand off before the next decision arises (which again, is the way to go if you are amoral, know the pinch hitter is better than you and you're primarily interested in getting the gold FTOPS avatar for your account).
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