Is Google Search Slipping?

I’m a bookmarker. Everything that piques my interest gets zapped to delicious.com like a gerbil on a fresh wheel. But every so often I recall something that I want to refer to only to find it wasn’t quite worthy of bookmarking. LMGTFMyself and I’m Googling for it. The pieces of the story are coming back slowly. I remember it had elements of

a poker player who entered a tournament he didn’t mean to in a format he’d never played — where you try to get the worst hand possible. But he ended up winning.

It was on learning and unlearning and quality learning and spoke of newly trained pilots who could test better than experienced pilots on reading instruments and such. I kept recalling more details and refining the search terms and subtracting terms and plussing things I absolutely knew were in the article.

To no avail. I still can’t find that article. Why? What has happened? My theory is that the Internet has grown so large it’s diluting the potency of search. My sub-theory is that Google favors money making results. “Poker” was a jaded term bringing spam like results. What are we to do? So many search results fit the things I was seeking that the thing I was looking for became a piece of hay in a haystack.

Google needs to get smarter and at least know I was looking for a document on educational research rather than a flight training course or how to win at poker.