nice post..

i'm probably moving from stage 2 to 3 at the moment. i would probably say that good players who have mastered stage 3 would find that this skill is much more applicable to the 6max shorthanded games than the full ring ones.

i basically learned the holdem basics from the internet sites such as this one, pokertips.org and others. i haven't read sklansky but pokertips had a pretty good synopsis of his theories on their site. i would say that all that information (hand rankings, pot odds) and stuff is very useful from moving from stage 1 to 2, but once you have mastered stage three, you realise that in certain situations, these rules have to be broken. this is especially true for nl over limit, and shorthanded v longhanded.

i must say the catalyst for realising the existence of a third stage was watching phil ivey and ted forrest play in the WPT first season finals. those guys are excellent...