In Response To sthief's Shot At Strassa...

[ML4L]

sthief,

I've never in my life gotten personal with a stranger on an online discussion forum, but I'm going to have to make an exception... I've got a number of problems with your post in which you blame Jason Strasser for "selling out" 2+2er's in the SI article. In no particular order:

1) First of all, you clearly don't know Jason personally. He is one of the most humble, modest, down-to-earth people I've ever met in my life. I know for a FACT that he didn't participate in this article to get an ego-boost, brag, show-off, etc. I called him yesterday to congratulate him on being featured in the article, and he said,

"Congratulations? Why? It's not like it's a real accomplishment."

He has NOT been showing the article off to his friends, girls, or anyone else. So, your assessment of his motives is ridiculously off-base.

2) For your information, he wasn't the only 2+2er in the article. He's just the only one whose real name is also his 2+2 handle.

3) Next, the guy who wrote about the article didn't write about 2+2 because Strasser or anyone else told him to. He knew about 2+2 completely independently of Strasser and the other people featured in the article and would have included it regardless of the specific people that he chose to profile in the article.

4) While the first three points are iron-clad fact, I'll give my two cents about something a little more subjective. In my opinion (and the opinion of every other 2+2er that I've discussed the matter with), this is NOT going to make the games tougher on the whole. There are a number of reasons for this:

- Most people aren't going to come to the forum after reading about it.

- Most people who DO come to the forum aren't going to become regular posters.

- Lastly, and most importantly, even if someone does become a regular poster, that does NOT mean that the person will become good at poker. Most people on this forum aren't very good. Most are better than the average fish, but they still aren't very good. I hope that everyone in the world comes to 2+2 and buys books and plays 40 hours a week. Any decent player shouldn't feel threatened.

But, even if the pieces of the article which mention 2+2 were going to hurt good players (I contend that they will NOT), the article on the whole will be INCREDIBLY beneficial to the player pool. For every player who dedicates himself to the game and becomes a high-level player, there will be 100 who are too dumb/lazy to get good, yet will play anyway.

You are essentially saying, "The article would have been good, as long as the author had been a crappy journalist and just not mentioned how these college guys were getting so good at poker." The author doesn't owe us (the people already at 2+2) ANYTHING. He included what he thought would make the article complete.

5) Along another line, why do you get to be so privileged to be a 2+2er, but others don't? Should we have shut the gates as soon as you registered? Your attitude is immature and selfish.

I could keep going (maybe I'll come back and add more if I get fired up again), but I think that I've gotten my point across. I think that it would be appropriate for you to start another thread in which you apologize to Jason for misdirecting your anger at him.

Again, I don't know you from Adam, nor do you know me. But, I'm not going to let a good friend of mine take crap from people for something that is not his fault and that, in my opinion, isn't a bad thing anyway.

ML4L