Quote Originally Posted by fkn2pt
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...
with the difference being ivey has skill, and where as ted forrest is a straight up gambler, and loves the rush.