[fnurt]

I think you're arguing against a bit of a strawman here. I don't see many people talking about the difference between an M of 5 versus 5.7. Even Harrington only talks about the importance of M in broad categories (1-5, 5-10, 10-20, etc).

Back before Harrington wrote his books we used to say that if you have less than 10xBB your opening raise should always be a push. I hope no one took that to mean that it's illegal to push if you have 10.2 BB.

The point of M, which most people still are not getting, is that when your M is low you need to make your first priority getting back to a high M, not merely surviving in your low-M state. I still see people with an M of 4 wanting to avoid a likely coinflip and save their chips for a better spot. This is generally wrong.

The idea behind Harringon's theory of M is to get your warning bells to go off earlier than they otherwise might. You shouldn't be thinking "I have enough chips to fold for 4 orbits, so I don't need to get involved here." You should be thinking, "With an M of 4, I really need to take a gamble soon." And yes, the importance of this idea is completely independent of calculating your M down to 3 decimal places, so I don't disagree with the original post in that respect.