[gumpzilla]

This is a pet peeve of mine.

What the great players are doing doesn't go against mathematical formulations of the game at all. The key to making those kinds of plays is excellent reads - what does your opponent have, what do they think you have, what are they going to need to continue based on what they think about the current situation and the information you're giving them? All of this stuff is input that you feed into a mathematical approach. The ICM approach and mathematical analysis practiced here is a great example of garbage in, garbage out; if you put in completely wrong ranges, you're going to get nonsense.

STT is also definitely the wrong forum to talk about plays that Negreanu or Giga make in the MTT realm, because in general the situations are going to be very, very different. Making really fancy plays generally requires opposition that is sophisticated enough to try interpreting the information that you're giving them, which you don't get at low buyin STTs. It frequently also requires relatively deep stacks, so that people have freedom to get away from hands. This is something else you don't really see in STTs. Live play enhances the ability to make good reads. So we can talk about these plays all we want, but they aren't very relevant to the topic of this forum because they aren't much use in online STTs, as a rule.