I didnt think i’d feel ripped off twice
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LOL. I wish I could short this book. Who the fuck does he think will read it?
There are going to be way more copies printed than legitimate buyers, I think.
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Another example of missing end quotation marks in the Lincoln-Douglas chapter.
I am always annoyed by the seemingly random capitalization: “Democrats would be the majority Party”, “1860 Presidential Election”.
More inconsistency in the chapter about Pea Ridge. “Brig. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis” but “Brigadier General Albert Pike”.
Bruce Catton’s Terrible Swift Sword was credited in a previous chapter. It was not credited in this one, despite a quote being used from that book. Even then, the book changes the word “tribesmen” to “Indians”. Mason seems really attached to calling them “Indians” in the same way that Trump likes to toss around “Wuhan flu”.
In the Atlanta chapter, improper use of a semicolon to separate a dependent clause.
An extra period in “General Joseph. E. Johnston.”
In the chapter on Emperor Maximillian, Benito Juárez has his name spelled using a circumflex (â) rather than an accute accent (á). This is done five times before the correct diacritical mark is used. The correct usage occurs in a quote, so there’s a good chance it was cut-and-pasted.
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Not that I thought this book would be good by any stretch of the imagination, but the overt laziness is absolutely shocking to me.
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I bought Mason’s Blackjack Essays in a thrift store for like $1.50 some time ago. I dug it out just now and spotted a misspelling on the FRONT COVER: biases is spelled “biasis” lol.
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He classifies it as a foolish gamble that didn’t enhance Douglas’ chances of remaining a senator and could only hurt him in his presidential aspirations.
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Yes.
If Malmouth assessed writing this book as +EV what does that say about the views in the book?
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FYP
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Mason claims that Douglas was the favorite for 1860 before the debates, but that Lincoln getting Douglas to delineate the Freeport Doctrine cost him the support of Southern Democrats, which cost him the election.
And who can forget Lincoln’s killer closing: “No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet”. Truly inspirational stuff.
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Did you know that Lincoln was a Republican? A lot of people don’t know that.
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I was starting to suspect the whole book was an elaborate troll, butnah, it’s just terrible
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Fresh copies are gonna wind up by the truckload at used bookstores nationwide much to the chagrin of employees who will torture themselves debating if this belongs in the history section or gambling section. It will be an unexpected Saturday afternoon when @jmakin is killing time at an upscale strip mall bookstore when we get wind of their choice: the clearance section.
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So why not switch that erudition of yours to the last two thirds of TOP Applied To No limit that you have not yet read? Perhaps you didn’t realize that it gets more advanced since the chapter titles duplicate the original and the original starts with the basics… I’m curious whether you will find it easy to identify errors that aren’t spelling or grammar. Or do you just enjoy picking low hanging fruit?
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Please tell us something that only David Sklansky would know.
I haven’t really tackled that book because I don’t play as much NLHE these days, so it’s not a priority. This is also not the forum I would use to discuss any mistakes I might find.
There have been times in my life when I was paid for writing/editing. My eye is naturally drawn to these mistakes. Poor spelling and grammar offends me.
More wordsmithery: “Since, gambling is never a sure thing, and remember, if it was it wouldn’t be gambling, there’s always risk involved (which is just another term for the luck factor that we so often talk about in this book.”
I’m not going to go back and listen to the Thinking Poker podcast, but I swear some of what Mason said was verbatim what he wrote in the Jack Johnson chapter. Was he reading from it or does he really talk this way? Also, did co-host Nate Meyvis have some spirited arguments with Mason on twoplustwo that led to a temp-ban or am I misremembering? Nate. was his username.
This chapter uses “middleweight”, “middle-weight”, and “middle weight” at various points.
The chapter says we need to consider that instant communication did not exist in 1909, but doesn’t explain why.
“[T]he Russian soldiers bean to refuse to ‘obey orders’ and ceased to be an effective fighting force.” It’s a weird choice to quote only two words from, I presume, Wikipedia. Doing so often suggests a euphemism, but that is not the case here.
Claiming that the Kerensky Offensive was the “worse one” compared to other foolish gambles in the book because it led to the rise of the Soviet Union seems like results-oriented thinking. There’s a lot of that in this book and an advanced gambler should avoid thinking that way.
The Polish-Soviet War chapter relies on a claim that Poland was gambling on a Ukrainian uprising to support them, but that this was an example of “expectation bias”, interpreting data in a favorable way. No data is presented, no explanation for how it was misinterpreted is given. The alliance with exiled Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura and his troops is unmentioned.
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The chapter on Pearl Harbor refers to Hideki Tojo as the “Japanese Premiere” in its title.
The premise is that Tojo was an over-confident gambler who underestimated American resolve. While the US oil embargo is mentioned, there is no mention of the narrative that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because it’s strategic oil reserves were running low. Thus, a different interpretation would be that Japan made its move before it could be blinded out, picking a course that had some chance of victory.
The “Not a Step Back” chapter uses a quote with the date in a day-month-year format inconsistent with the rest of the book.
More inconsistent formatting in the Stalingrad chapter, as the “th” in “6th Army” is not always in superscript form.
Mussolini is portrayed as a “live one” who continues betting, as if he could simply withdraw from the war and wasn’t pot-committed to his alliance with Hitler.
The chapter “Bugsy Bets on Vegas: And Loses His Life as the Flamingo Losses Money” goes 1-2 in correctly spelling “loses” in the title. This misspelling is repeated in the text.
While Prohibition is normally capitalized when referring to that era of American history, it is not in this chapter.
Siegel is accused of not thinking things through and not realizing that something could go wrong with the Flamingo to put his life at risk. This assumes that he was killed over losses at the Flamingo, but the motive remains unknown and there are alternate theories out there which would not fit the narrative of Siegel making this foolish gamble.
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