[adanthar]

The point that Jason's trying to make is not that you shouldn't adjust, it's that you should always think about what the 'optimal' play against a thinking player would be and *then* downgrade it against a bad one. It's not enough to say something like 'he's a donk, push', because in order to advance your game, you have to know what you would do in the same situation against somebody who bought in for $215 and expects to make money on the buyin every single time. (I disagree with this. I think that it is imperative that you learn 'he's a donk, push' first, and *then* add layers of thought to your game, because overthinking can be as bad as not thinking at all and still costs me money on a regular basis. But there's room for disagreement here.)

The second part of your post is simply not true as almost all of the top players here that I know of respond to a good chunk of the messages they get both on and offline. Yeah, nobody responds to every random thread, but if you've got some really interesting question it's tough to think of a legitimate poster who wouldn't ever answer a PM.

Finally, to address one thing about Jason's post - most of the top tournament players are not as good as the top cash game players in deep stack poker. However, most cash game players, including many of the top pros, *suck* at shallow stack poker. Sometimes, especially in WPT events, that doesn't matter very much, but in most online tournaments I would put a dozen people in this forum up against a dozen cash game pros and absolutely own them all with 8-15 BB. (Not to say that any winner at, say, 300/600 and higher couldn't be just as good at tournaments if given a few months of intensive study/hands. But for whatever reason, they usually don't seem to bother.)