SS2 comment/question

[KeyToTheMint]

I am debating getting SS2, I have never read the first one, so
it's irrelevant if the NL section is pretty much the same in both to me. However, I remembered a passage in Big Deal by
Anthony Holden. It's a book along the lines of Positively Fifth
Street only more entertaining in my opinion. Here's a quote,
from the 1990 edition of Big Deal, pg 121:

"The most celebrated example is the great Doyle Brunson, whose 656 page textbook Super/System can be said to have altered the game's history. Originally published in 1978 (under the title How I made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker, which even Doyle eventually deemed a mite guady), it was read and reread so universally as to raise standards of play all over the world. Tourists like me thought the excess baggage payable on this hefty tome, the first book since Yardley to be acclaimed as "the bible," more than worth the improvement it brought to our game. Doyle himself now ruefully admits that some of its ideas have become out of date, so widely have they been put into practice. "It's become a Frankenstein's Monster," he told me. "For years I kept comin' up against people playin' like me. I had to think up a few new moves of my own, and I sure ain't puttin' those in no goddam book."

So is Doyle holding out on us?

Sklansky and Malmuth fear no one and leave nothing out of print. You guys are the best, keep up the good work.

[betgo]

Brunson gave away a lot of information in SS1. I guess he learned his lesson, because in SS2 there is really no new material in the no limit section, and his sections on tournament and internet play are pretty uninformative.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Mint:

I've been reading and hearing this stuff for years, and I think it's garbage.

No limit hold 'em as a cash game was essentially dead for perhaps 20 years. The structure of limit hold 'em changed in the early 1980s making the limit hold 'em section not very applicable anymore. Stud split becane eight-or-better in the early 1980s making that section not very applicable. Jacks or better draw and ace-to-five draw were games that Brunson didn't play and when the California law was changed in 1987 they quickly died off, and razz has pretty much been gone since the late 1980s.

Seven-card stud is still played and the information in that section still applies, and no limit deuce-to-seven, while not a widely played game, was played some in the very biggest games so the little bit of information in the original SS that appears did have value.

The book did contain a lot of good general poker information, but I don't accept what Holden states.

Best wishes,
Mason