[jdl22]

[ QUOTE ]
its not like saying that at all, what a thoughtless comment.

but i wouldnt expect a mod of this forum to do anything but dismiss the point i brought up - well done for living up to my expectations!

[/ QUOTE ]

As a mod of this forum, I have absolutely nothing to do with the magazine itself. Personally however, I have published one article here (on risk aversion if you remember from several months ago) and have submitted an article which will be published next month. I don't feel that either of these things has biased my opinion of your post. Your criticism that my post was thoughtless may have been correct. Here's a longer, more thought out version (not surprisingly with the same conclusion):

Could you explain how they are different? If I understand you correctly you are asking whether I would prefer that the magazine have a,b,c,d, and e which are solid strategy articles or would I prefer for it to have a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i, and j where a-e are the exact articles from the above scenario and f-j are humor articles or filler. Unless articles f-j actually have bad advice and lead you astray I don't see how you could possibly prefer just a-e. Being an economist I'm biased here, but more articles should be better than less, no? Some have complained about the Atlantic City article being incorrect as well as given the same criticism to past articles, I agreed with many of the criticisms in the past though I don't know about AC as I've never been so I can't comment on that. I don't see how the table coach articles could possibly lead you to play worse than you are now nor any of the other filler articles.

If you're suggesting that 2+2 cut the number of articles in half and double the amount offered to improve the chances of getting better articles, I don't think that would work either. There is evidence from experimental psychology and behavioral economics. The problem is that those who write for the magazine tend not to do it for the money anyway. Increasing the amount by $200 will cause more people to want to write, but the people affected by this are most likely those whose articles we wouldn't expect to be as good. The top people would still most likely lose money by not playing poker during the time it takes to write the articles so doubling the amount offered won't cause them to write when they wouldn't before. It would also have the effect of some people not submitting good articles because they fear them getting rejected with the tougher guidelines. They had similar problems in England when they tried to increase blood donations by offering money (20 quid or so iirc) for donating blood. They did get an increase in blood donations, but this was all from people that weren't likely to have desirable blood - drug abusers etc. When they gave away the 20 pounds there was actually a decrease in the number of people that donated who had done so before.