August 15, 2004
Life Is Too Short to Read rec.gambling.poker
Paul Phillips is wading through the muck of Usenet newsgroup rec.gambling.poker so that you don't have to. Two of the diamonds in the muck he has found are:
you are obviously to stoooopid to have a job
Once upon a time, back in the day when you could have an intelligent conversation about sex on alt.sex, rec.gambling.poker had a reputation of being one of the better, more congenial newsgroups on any topic on the Net. I started reading it regularly a little past its heyday, in 1997. Nevertheless, it was reading r.g.p. that gave me the foundation of my poker skills and the direction to build them and hone them. There was a core group consisting of a blend of Internet geeks and people who played for a living (and one could watch some of the former transition into the latter). Mathematical theory was developed and promulgated. It was a valuable resource for people of just about any level of experience. Mike Caro was a regular participant, and David Skansky and Mason Malmuth intermittently so. We got to watch the emergence of today's generation of world-class players, people like John Juanda and Dan Negreanu, through their posts.
Alas, the culture of flamewar and trash-talk emerged to dominate the group's discourse. I no longer recommend it as a place for new people to learn about poker and the poker community.
Want to learn how to play poker, and participate in a vigorous community of people like yourself? Go to Two Plus Two. Don't waste your time with r.g.p.
Posted by abostick at August 15, 2004 10:37 AMOuch, quite a scathing review of RGP. I think that RGP is still much a better interface than 2+2, but I'll concede that 2+2 is more directed. I was never a member of the cult of personality, so I never put more value into their posts than the poker content (which was usually void). Still, RGP has become a veritable wasteland.
It's still my primary source though.
Posted by: Andrew at August 16, 2004 07:20 AMOuch, quite a scathing review of RGP. I think that RGP is still much a better interface than 2+2, but I'll concede that 2+2 is more directed. I was never a member of the cult of personality, so I never put more value into their posts than the poker content (which was usually void). Still, RGP has become a veritable wasteland.
It's still my primary source though.
Posted by: Andrew at August 16, 2004 07:20 AMDitto the ouch and the interface. It's kind of sad to see the people I'm impressed by so turned off by current day rpg. And 2+2 really doesn't seem as much fun, original, and just a tad too much on the authoritarian side compared to old rpg (eg no carson/sklansky flamewars :-().
Someone said that rgp wasn't all that different when it came to the signal-part of the signal:noise-ration, the big difference is the huge increas in the noise-part. I think there is a lot to that statement; Chen & Ankenman, Weideman and some other people still occasionally posts very interesting/useful stuff, but they are largely drowned out.
Still I, a developing player with a math-benth, appreciate a lot of both of your posts over the years even if I did read them after the fact. Just thought I'd point that out, to give some long over-due feedback.
Oh well, I suppose I'll go and give 2+2 a try now.
Posted by: John Forsberg at August 16, 2004 07:43 AM
