Let's address Mr. Mendelson first. I am sick of repeating this, but there are new posters, so here we go.

The reasons Mr. Mendelson's support of and spewing of voodoo gambling opinions is so egregious, and so wrong, and so irresponsible are:

1) He is a top notch journalist. He knows where to find the experts, how to vet the experts, and how to interview the experts.
2) He could therefore track down, interview, and share information from any probability professors, game theory experts, and people with doctorates and math teaching experience.
3) He could also, therefore, access expertise and share it with everyone on these forums. He is a journalist. He has clout and followers.

Instead, Mr. Mendelson:

1) For decades, purposefully avoids accessing or interviewing probability, game theory, and gambling expertise.
2) Provides video access to people promoting voodoo math. Publicizing them facilitates their ideas.
3) Provides public access to people using anecdotal stories or personal histories as substitutes for cause-and-effect and/or math.
4) Posts again and again his personal opinions, arguing for this and that, even though he himself has no math, game theory, or gambling expertise.

The fact that he does this is maddening because he is and has always been positioned to gather and provide good, accurate, vetted information from experts. He has chosen not to do that. That in and of itself would not be a bad thing, but substituting his expertise-less opinions for good information has the potential to do harm.

Here's where I will briefly tie blackhole into this. Blackhole argues that the APs spin their stories into Disney-fied tales of success. That kind of rosy spinning has the potential to draw in the naïve and set them on a yellow brick road to disaster. I more-than-halfway agree with that. If blackhole's going to come down on APs for that, then he should certainly be all over Mr. Mendelson for spewing voodoo math and bad ideas that will certainly set people down a bad yellow brick road.

Then we come to the question of, "Why does Mr. Mendelson choose to promulgate voodoo instead of consulting experts?" I have only theories.

1) It's a kind of arrogance, where he values his own anecdotal gambling experiences over gambling expertise.
2) He doesn't really want anyone to win. I can't argue with this one. I'm not sure I want people to win, other than those who are my partners. I have a rule where anyone who's versus the casinos, I try to help, but I usually tell them what NOT to do. I don't explain how or why I do things.
3) Mr. Mendelson's some kind of casino avatar/shill/sycophant.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. It's Mr. Mendelson's position as a respected journalist who spews voodoo concepts that I find maddening. I'm an old journalism major, and I did work for a couple of newspapers in my youth. Mr. Mendelson could have gone in any direction with his gambling advice decades ago, and this is the path he chose. He could dial up half a dozen game theory experts tomorrow and go in a different direction. He probably will not.