First time poster here to FCP, but likely going to hang out more and more as I've been banned by PocketFives, and I find two plus two to be ghhheeyyyy.

First off I enjoy the video blog, and am a big Daniel supporter, but there are a few things that always put me off about things he's mentioned in the blogs, and what he mentioned on the WPT Season 2 DVD commentaries. I've yet to really understand completely why he's chosen to just bash poker books and authors. He mentioned in his recent vlog that he was raising a lot of pots on a weak table and to "throw the books away".

Although I agree that some of the books (Sklansky for example) are pretty laughable in their ideas of what hands they consider playable in grouping hands by title, but some of the concepts are right on for what every player should understand.

I could go on and on forever about this, but I won't because it's unnecessary. In reality, the only poker book that should ever been read should be called "It's Purely Situational", and it would be about 5,000 pages long because any good poker player knows that you can't teach anyone anything in 200 pages of literature. There are times when the Gap Concept is right on and should be followed, and there are times when the Gap Concept is a piece of **** philosophy and be ignored much like this post will be.

And I'm also tired of this consistent "I'm playing to win the tournament" schtick that we get spewed out of the mouths of the tournament players who seemed detirmined that the only way you can win a tournament is jamming the pot early in tournaments with flush draws. Ok, we get it, you guys love to gamble, we all love to gamble. But there are more than a few ways to win a tournament. Some of these players act as if the other X-amount of entrants are just there out of curiousity and aren't even interested in winning anything.

Granted it's going to be unlikely if a player waits for "ACES AND KINGS" (which is another made up faccade....like anyone in this day throws away 99 on an 8 high flop), playing solid and picking apart weakness can be just as successful or more so than the other styles of play. (BTW, I play fairly LAG myself, but I just felt the need to laugh in the face of what I hear often about the "tight" players).

And I also want to apologize to Daniel for ever doubting him. Before the ME, I was talking to a buddy of mine on AIM, and somehow we got into the discussion of how far the pro's would make it, Daniel's vlog, and how far Daniel would go. So we made a small prop bet, I gave him about 5 to 1 (yeah, I know, not really huge odds, but I don't have a ton to gamble with right now) that Daniel wouldn't make the top 500. Which isn't a big knock on his game, I just felt with 8,000 players it would just be tough to make it that far with a minefield to go through. So nonetheless I've lost, and I'm officially a moron.

ANYWAY, not exactly the nicest of an entrance to a forum, but I've figured I'd give my two cents.

LongBall42

PS, as a fellow hacker, I enjoy hearing any kind of golf discussion.

I don't mean to sound rude here, but what is your point?

there is none

Call me crazy but, I think you just disagreed with him in paragraph 1 and agreed with him in 2 & 3. How's that for confusing?

Oh boy! Just what we need... another pointless newbie.

My whole point is this, there are phrases that are said over and over again that make little sense including "I'm playing to win the tournament" and I would like an explanation as to why these make any sense at all.

I agree that some of the Poker books are stupid to follow, but I disagree that some should be ignored because they don't advocate "raising a lot of pots" or calling raises with 8-9 of clubs or something like that. In fact I don't think some of them really mention it a lot. The ones I've dabbled into don't really talk about running over a weak table or outplaying your opponents post flop? Why? Because those are skills you don't get in a book, so why bash something that doesn't even exist?

That one is very easy to explain. Some people play to maximize their ev. Others care more about winning the whole thing, even if a play is slightly lower ev. For example, someone playing to win the tourney would happily call with two jacks, knowing that his opponent had precisely ak. Playing to maximize ev, though, assuming that you believe you are one of the best in the tourney (and you, in fact, are), you might muck the jacks and wait for a better spot. Scott Fischman did exactly this against Kent Washington in the tourney where Fischman beat Joe Awada heads up, though in that case, it was more that he believed he could find a better spot than playing to move up.