I think the big innovation highlighted in the video is that he used historical data on frequency of certain topics, the dollar value assigned to those topics, a

I think the big innovation highlighted in the video is that he used historical data on frequency of certain topics, the dollar value assigned to those topics, and his personal performance on certain categories to figure out which categories were most important to study. I know that I am bad at fashion and 19th century French literature but what relative fraction should I spend on one over the other? His code gave him a number and that's the ratio he studied them. So you're right, at that point it's not much different from flipping through a giant study manual, other than the manual telling you should should really look at pages 3, 11, 21, 47, 96, ... because that's what the solution to the nonlinear optimization problem said would give you the best chance at winning against simulated opponents.