Well, i discussed mason's thread in my post, and i deliberately named my post after
his to draw attention to the parallel. I also very clearly stated that i had never
seen these things discussed correctly in any book or article, but that i had seen
them alluded to in posts on r.g.p.  For the record, I was thinking of a post by Tom
Weideman a couple years ago concerning how many opponents you'd like to have when
you hold AA, and even more to the point, a reply by Mike Maurer to another post
discussing an old conundrum from lowball about how to play a pat 95 against 3
opponents who each draw one.  I suspect the math behind this lowball discussion is
equivalent to the math in this current thread.  But I certainly haven't read
everything on r.g.p. and i know several threads have skated around this topic, so I
certainly didn't mean to claim that this idea started with me.

As for Sklansky and the FToP, no, i was not simply re-stating what he's written
before.  And as i described in my original post, it seems very likely that the FToP
does not apply to most multiway situations.  Imho, the FToP has created much more
confusion on this group, where people are trying to think carefully about poker,
than it has dispelled.  I'm willing to swallow hole the statement made by Erik the
other day for discussion, that in every situation there is one set of decisions
that maximize your EV (given a knowledge of everyone's holdings), and that you
should make your decisions accordingly.  "Maximize your EV" -- that's _the_
fundamental theorem of poker. (hmmm, assuming the stakes aren't too high for your
bankroll.)

btw, a good example of the confusion caused by trying to use the FToP is this
situation where you flop a good hand against a lot of players, and you know that
your bet will get so many calls that each call will be correct, both here and then
again on the turn.  So people sometimes suggest you should check the flop so that
calling your bet on the turn will be a mistake for the chasers.  I'm not sure what
the correct play would be in those circumstances, but it seems that the way to
determine it isn't to try to manipulate the pot size so that your opponents are
making mistakes. The way to figure out your best strategy is to play the way that
will maximize your own EV, regardless of whether your opponents are making mistakes
or not. (Don't misunderstand me: manipulating pot size is still an important
weapon, it's just that you're not doing it to force mistakes, you're doing it to
maximize your own EV.)

As a sort of caveat, i'll mention that mason started another thread last year,
"Giving Up EV," which i never understood.  If what he had in mind was really that
playing weakly on the flop and strongly on the turn had a greater net EV than
trying on every street to maximize your EV at that instant, then i guess his ideas
still are consistent with the belief that you should play to maximize your own EV,
not simply to maximize the mistakes made by others.

At any rate, I'd like to think that the one idea you can take to the bank from this
thread is that maximizing the mistakes made by others is not the same as maximizing
your own profit in a particular situation.

As for Stephen's comment about how to learn to exploit these ideas:

I agree completely.  If i sounded like i was more interested in convincing than
learning what's what, i misspoke.

Regards,
Andy