Plagerism as a writing style

Hard-boiled Poker has a thoughtful post about some recently discovered plagerism on the part of Mason Malmuth and David Sklansky and it's possible relationship with Malmtuths lack of respect for the craft of writing.

I've written elsewhere about the importance of language in communication of technical ideas, and I've written specifically about Malmuths self-delusions about the writing craft.

A cardroom to avoid

Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington, Iowa appears to have a poker room.

I don't really know anything about the poker room, but I know enough about the casino it's located in to know that you should avoid the place.

It's the casino that fired a supervisor for posting a Dilbert cartoon on an employee bulliten board.

Casinos run by drunken lemurs are not good places to play poker.

Tough games and game selection

Random Shuffle has an interesting post that touches on the idea that even tough games are good games if the dead money is deep enough.

At higher stakes the good games tend to have just one or two players who can be counted on to piss off a whole bunch of money. At lower stakes a good game tends to be one that has a bunch of players who can be counted on to piss off at least some money.

It's not really worthwhile to pick a game based on some rigid concept of how tough the lineup is, it's really just all about the amount of money that will be left on the table, not about how tough the lineup is.