RIP DAVID SKLANSKY
Oh, I know my facts. And I've stated facts about David as well, they got deleted.
Maybe not by you, I cant see that, but certainly by 2+2.
And since you were the head honcho that was happening under your supervision.
You cant be the top dog and not take responsibility for whats happening beneath you.
It's their site. You are here by their permission. They can delete any post of yours they want, any time, for any reason and be perfectly justified in doing so.
Oh, I know my facts. And I've stated facts about David as well, they got deleted.
Maybe not by you, I cant see that, but certainly by 2+2.
And since you were the head honcho that was happening under your supervision.
You cant be the top dog and not take responsibility for whats happening beneath you.
Can you think of many sites/companies that have hosted anywhere near as much airing of dirty laundry, vitriol and hatred aimed at the owner and the key figure DS was?
Oh, I know my facts. And I've stated facts about David as well, they got deleted.
Maybe not by you, I cant see that, but certainly by 2+2.
And since you were the head honcho that was happening under your supervision.
You cant be the top dog and not take responsibility for whats happening beneath you.
You have no understanding of how things worked. At our peak we had well over 1 million unique visitors a month. I can't look at every post.
All we could do was setup guidelines to help our voluntary moderators. So, if a post got deleted that you think should have stayed, that's not mu fault.
As someone who was a mod on this site for basically all of 2+2’s peak, I can confirm what Mason is saying. He had zero interaction with the mod group outside of some basic site wide guidelines, and one time where he gave us all a free book or two as a thank you from the site.
Mat Sklansky handled all day to day interactions with the mods, and he was very hands off as well. That’s why many will remember various sub forums were moderated very differently at the time, because the trust was put into individual mods to guide those sub forums as they saw best.
Can I confirm that Mason never deleted anything? Of course not, that would be impossible to say. But as a general practice, what he is saying was true of the time.
I've said before I dont know it they were deleted by Mason or anyone else.
But it did happen, and it still does.
Maybe even more so now, so thats credit to Mason in his heydays.
I get that Mat had a hands off approach and even now he is very mature about people having their own opinions about David and isnt trying to make the discussion one-sided. Perhaps we should all be a little more like Mat.
But ITT its amazing to see which posts are staying and which are deleted.
In the latest discussion we have some people backing Mason. Thats fine, they are entitled to their opinion, but they all still exist.
There are some people not backing Mason, Rickroll posting a silly meme, they all got deleted. Apparently those opinions need to be deleted yea??? Really?
I then said thats actually funny/ironic they got deleted... you guessed it, that post got deleted as well.
So read this very quickly, because you might not have much time :p
But my point was basically that certain views are staying up and other get deleted regularly, even now, maybe especially now.
Others said I was definitely wrong and I dont know how it works, meanwhile opposite-view posts got deleted (and not for anything vulgar or anything)
South park said it well "if irony were made of strawberries, we'd all be drinking a lot of smoothies right now"
Oh, I know my facts. And I've stated facts about David as well, they got deleted.
Maybe not by you, I cant see that, but certainly by 2+2.
And since you were the head honcho that was happening under your supervision.
You cant be the top dog and not take responsibility for whats happening beneath you.
From the outside looking in it looks like Mason was not aware of your vast importance
God this is cringe
Never said I am important. I am not.
If you read that into the 4 sentences you've quoted it might be a bit of a biased take.
Which I do get actually, because from the outside looking in your view can become a bit biased because you still see a lot of posts on one side but not the posts on the other side.
Which was the point.
This was Sklansky's coauthor's site and Sklansky's son was the chief moderator. What do you expect? This was the main poker discussion site, but you could discuss dirt on Sklansky elsewhere.
I thought id had a couple posts in this thread. They weren't negative if I recall so not sure why they were deleted.
It’s more of an X account with pictures of abandoned Rust Belt buildings than a live stream.
My favorite memory is not quite with David. In 1994, we went through his then titled book Winning Poker and made a bunch of fixes and updates (to reflect the way the game had changed since the early 1980s), and changed the title to The Theory of Poker.
My copy from the 80's
RIP David
Thanks for posting that obit, Mason. It was quite interesting.
Mr. Sklansky described himself as having a “mega IQ” and could be a polarizing figure. In 2006, he offered a public wager of $50,000 that he could beat any Christian of faith in a standardized math test. His stipulation was that his opponent would first have to pass a lie detector exam attesting to a belief in Jesus’s resurrection and also to a belief that those who disagreed with that cardinal tenet of the New Testament were destined for hell.
That was an interesting wager for Christians. Was David an atheist? The other interesting tidbit is his one year at Wharton overlapped with Trump's time there.
I imagine a "standardized test" could be constructed where an equivalent to Von Neumann would score 100% and Sklansky would score 0%. But mathematicians at those levels likely have zero interest in participating in such a stunt.
dang that sucks. way he Rip
RIP Sklansky, just saw this when I came back to the forum today (not being playing for a while now).
Also people are wrong to expect Mason Malmuth to perform grief on demand for the peanut gallery.
Spoiler
DUCY?
David had an obsession with standardized tests dating back to at least 1981 and his conversations with Alvarez. Not a sign of a mega IQ; neither was getting involved with a troubled 16yo girl and her dumbass, apparently at her wits end albeit also deserving of sympathy/empathy, mother.
He also had no influence on Brandi’s tragic decision to take her own life, he influenced how poker was played more than anyone from 1980-2005, and he should’ve been in the HOF long ago—I’ll choose to believe he truly didn’t want to be in it, and would’ve been otherwise.
RIP Sklansky, just saw this when I came back to the forum today (not being playing for a while now).
Also people are wrong to expect Mason Malmuth to perform grief on demand for the peanut gallery.
Spoiler
DUCY?
It wasn't that people expected him to show grief i dont think. It was his reaction, which I think a lot thought was odd due to its abruptness. I think silence might have made more sense than what he said.
That was just my thought at the time. But he doesnt owe any display of grief of course.
His son posted "It is almost over." Mallmuth posted "It was a low probability event that he would still be alive." and "we worked together for 40 years." Maybe Vegas poker player culture is cold, but it is conventional to express some sort of grief, even if it isn't totally sincere. It may also be that people close to him had mixed feelings about him, and that is how they express it.
He was in some ways a great man. Only Doyle rated a longer NY Times obituary. He developed poker and gambling theory, as well as being a top player at one time. Probably the HOF voters also have mixed feelings about him that he has not been nominated.
In some ways, I feel grief, although I was only slightly acquainted with him and read his books etc., and it isn't unusual with someone to die at his age. It is sad in a way that the death of a pioneer in approaches to poker gets this kind of mixed reaction.
It is a sad and poignant situation, and not just sad about his death.
RIP
