Another interesting hand from the game's "smartest player"

[Gramps]

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i took Sklansky's fingering of Bill Chen to exactly what it was:

Sklansky sees Bill as the smartest person who plays poker. i honestly don't think he meant that Bill is the smartest poker player , which most would argue translate into being the best or among the most successful.

Sklansky even says in his OP that in letting the newbies know who the smartest players are, " that doesn't always mean the best players, but again there is a correlation ". he then goes on to say that no one on the list would have trouble making a pretty good living playing poker if they had to.

if you go back and take a look at the Top 10 list, at least [4] players already make a nice living playing poker [i'm including Ed Miller because he also makes money from his poker authoring thru 2+2, as well as, his play at the tables]. Paul Phillips, although he's already financially well off, lead all tourney players in money won in 2003 [outside of Chris Moneymaker's $2.5 million WSOP ME win].

up until he [Sklansky] made the list, i had never even heard of
William Chen, Mark Weitzman, Tom Weideman, and Jimmy Warren. Jim Geary is the only other one that sounds vaguely familiar and i strongly emphasize vaguely ! if you were to google Chen and Weideman, you'll see exactly why the key word is SMARTEST .

when ZeeJustin came in thread and posted Bill's hand, it almost seemed as he intended to [negatively] show the guy up and make him look bad. Bill Chen certainly may not be on Giga's or Zee's level in playing SNGs online but from what i've gathered, he does make a good deal of money playing poker and it's definitely probably something he doesn't solely have to rely on.

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Yeah, that makes more sense. And I didn't in any way mean to show this guy up by posting this hand - I kind of regret that I didn't just block out the names, b/c I just don't like to do that sort of thing - I've made a number of mistakes that people could post and critique. I guess my point is that just because you're "smart" or "brilliant" in one sense, that doesn't at all mean that you're the best poker player out there - in fact, since the point of poker is to make the most $$ you can, the "smartest" poker players are the ones who can do that - not work some crazy number/theory magic in their own world of fixed variables and assumptions (which definitely has it's own validity/value, but is qualitatively a bit different from actually playing poker and deriving results therefrom, etc.).

However, people that can do the number/theory magic but are lacking a bit on the practical application still get put up on a pedastool, while people that have a sick earn (practical application skills) but don't have the ability/spend the time to work the number/theory magic (i.e. Phil Ivey) don't get labelled as "smart" or "brilliant" as often. That just doesn't make sense to me, I took issue with the Sklansky thread (and the way he defines "smart"/intelligence), I guess this is a 12 month-later manifestation of that.

Yada-yada, etc., etc....