I agree that it should be discouraged for those reasons. I'll tell you this though. If I found myself playing against someone successfully employing that strategy then I'd have to do it too...if only to eliminate the DD for the other person. When one person out of three is committed to it they definitely gain an…

I was just saying this too. I found people discussing this exact thing on a a message board from 2005. It's not a new strategy at all, it's actually a bit amazing that more people don't do it.

This isn't new. Most of the really exceptional players do this too. Roger Craig(I think his name was) not only did this, but had some sort of category database set up before hand to help him know what to study.