My Thoughts on BTP

[kennyg]

Obviously you guys all know I'm a fairly prolific poster here as well as a Mod. Granted I don't do all THAT much as a mod but I do let my opinion be known on occasion. I was also the second member behind Iceman. We were both decently known posters on UPF who got sick of all the riff-raff. We just wanted a good poker forum with sage advice and a decent community. When I heard he was making a new forum I immediately jumped ship.

BTP grew quickly in quality and in members. I remember back in the day when we were helping Mad Genius through cold runs when he was taking shots. (For those of you who don't know, he's now a successful nose-bleed stakes player.) In BTP's hey-day I thought this was the most informative forum on poker. Maybe we were all prone to being a little weak-tight now and then, but great advice was always here for the taking.

Slowly but surely this community has lost that edge. Instead of discussing poker indepth, we're posting random pictures/videos of disgusting porn on anything goes, or hiding links to make people click on random disgusting porn.

I didn't agree with the ban of MVP or Northview, but I understand it. I'm a personal friend of MVP and I talk on AIM with NV occasionally. I thought warnings were the best way to go, but it's not like a 10 day ban is going to kill them. Iceman thinks that the community is sinking ship and something had to be done quickly or it couldn't be recovered. I completely agree with him in that respect. Poker on this forum has taken a severe nosedive.

Many of us are not winning as much as we used to, or we've had to drop limits etc (me included.) One of the more important reasons is because of the games getting tougher. However, maybe a contributing factor is that the poker forum has become so lacking. We don't think about poker enough anymore, we don't write about it, we don't read about it, we don't learn new things. We just continue to play our same games without much adjustment.

This forum started as a poker first, fun second approach as T-Rod stated. I think it should stay that way. Don't get me wrong, I've many friends through this forum and that's awesome. But the overall quality of poker advice has gone way down. BTP was there when I started my big run up to the higher stakes. Maybe it's no coincidence that when I started to post less I started to lose more.

Perhaps we're all to blame for this crap. We've let the site deteriorate. I know I have been posting less. I'm starting to get reminded of UPF more and more each day. I've had enough of it.

I'm going to start posting more indepth strategy posts in the NL section (Something I feel we've been missing for a long time.) I'm going to post more hands as well. I hope others will join me in the crusade to make BTP a force again in poker. I think it will help us all and help the community.

Lets get over all this drama shit and get back to basics. Poker is what this forum is about.

[iceman5]

This is one of many PMs Ive received lately. Most of these people saying that they are also tired of the direction that BTP has taken lately dont want to post in the open forum because they dont want to be ridiculed by the "mafia". Im reposting with the authors permission. The bolded sections are some of my responses to him.
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I, for one, would like you to know that I appreciate what BTP has given to us, free of charge. Believe it or not, most of us still do here to learn and talk about poker and improve our game. I'm pretty sure that was the original intent of this site despite what others may think its purpose is currently. I whole heartedly agree with T-Rod's post the other day about how aggressive the personalities have become too. Just look at the replies in the NL forum. It's like you beat their grandmother sometimes when you disagree with some of them or bring up a different viewpoint.

So somebody got 10 days off from an internet forum. I don't see why it's such a huge deal. I personally like all of the people in question or who have been suspended but a couple of weeks off from posting here is not the end of your life. Whether or not the banning was justified, which I won't argue for or against here, the mass over-reaction is consuming this entire site right now.

Anyway, here's a couple of possible solutions to the current state of affairs.
1 - I assume you wanted a poker site first, a place for civil discussion on other issues second (if not then please disregard this). If so, get rid of the AG forum entirely. Then everyone who doesn't want to be here for poker reasons can't blame the mods and administrators anymore. Maybe open a new forum in it's place with stricter guidelines up front so everyone knows what to expect, but not even entirely necessary. Although I enjoy most of the conversation in AG, having nothing is better than what's going on now.

2 - There must be some function that makes it so that admin has to manually approve all new memberships/accounts before they can post. This way, you can cut some of these clowns off before they get started.

Like I said, I'd post this to the entire forum, but I just don't have the time, nor do I feel like dealing with all the bullshit it would most of it would result in.


You dont think i started cracking down out of the blue do you? I did it because i was getting alot of complaints...but again, none of them want to complain publicly. Its easier to let me be the bad guy.

Your in a shitty situation. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I don't want you to think that I'm complaining about anybody because I'm not and I doubt I ever will in a PM. If I have a problem with something someone posts, I would say it to them, not you. I wouldn't ever want to put you in the position of asking you to ban someone behind their back. I'm pretty thick skinned though, so not much bothers me.

I was just PMing you to say that despite what whoever it was saying that everyone wants you to leave, I appreciate what the BTP admin has created and to let you know that you still do have supporters. I can't say and won't give an opinion on whether the supspensions were warranted or not because I didn't open the threads or click on the links. AG seems to have become more trouble than it's worth for you guys to moderate. I'm looking to improve my poker game, not start fights with people that I barely even know.


Your idea of having all new accounts approved in advance is a good one and Im going to see if its possible.

[DoctorHandles]

I agree this whole drauma thing is stupid and those who like iceman or just don't care are staying quiet.

And KennyG, I think btp has gone downhill in the NL section because Roy, Xaston, Shobute, Zmej, and you post much less than you used to. The vast majority of posts are by beginners while no real difficult hands are being posted.

[shobute]

[GodlikeRoy]

[The Golden 1]

I originally came here as a limit player looking for help, and did get a lot here. MK, Piers, Xaston, and Tiburon were the regs I remembered the most helping me there. But I think I already had a decent grasp of the game at that point. I think a major difference then was the high volume posters were all higher level players, and thus the majority of the help came from them.

Nowadays, its mostly the new guys helping each other out, and the forums are pretty much dominated with 25NL or 1/2 limit posts. I have read that those games have gotten tougher, but for a lot of the higher players its hard to take those posts seriously. They're often simple in nature (not necessarily knocking them, its just what they are). Like when someone posts something like this (not picking on you red there are a lot of posts like this) what are most people going to do besides say what 80 did in the first response in the thread?

Occasionally though there are posts that will generate good discussion in my opinion, as seen here . I think the main difference in the past was posts like this were the norm while posts like the first one were the outliers, and they've now switched. Some people think its a deterioration, some think its growth, but in the end it is what it is.

PS: I know we're trying to be nicer on here now, but seriously Roy, My Poker Coach?

[GodlikeRoy]

[AlexMR]

[AlexMR]

[Pok 7's]

[The Golden 1]

[DoctorHandles]

[RedBarracuda]

[stickdude]

[kennyg]