Hi Everyone:
I'm going to try to give a fuller explanation as to where we are coming from regarding Gary Wise/Never Win Poker. But first, I want to note that we are having some private conversations behind the scenes, and by putting this explanation here it will hurt our private efforts.
First off, there are groups and politicians out there that are very anti-gambling and are working hard to disrupt our industry. But there's more to it than just that, part of their argument is that gambling is a cancer that leads to a host of other evils such as pornography, drugs, prostitution, general hate, and who knows what else which have the effect of destroying the family.
We at Two Plus Two don't agree that playing poker does this, and we also are of the opinion that even though there are a relatively small number of problem gamblers, gambling in general is a form of entertainment that many people like to participate in and only disposable money gets budgeted for it.
So on Two Plus Two, we're very aware of the anti-gambling argument that gambling leads to many other evils and destroys the family, and that's part of the reason why we have certain restrictions in place. (In fact, one of our major advertisers now requires that we sign a document stating that things like pornography are not allowed on
www.twoplustwo.com.) We want to make sure that nothing on our site can lead to the argument that poker/gambling is some sort of societal ill that will destroy the underlining fabric of our society.
Now this brings us to Never Win Poker. It's our opinion that it is simply a ticking time bomb that has the potential to damage our whole industry. We have had private conversations with a representative of Poker News who is the majority owner of Never Win Poker, and this person agrees with us and he has assured that work is being done to solve this problem.
We have also made it clear on
www.twoplustwo.com that the principles of Never Win Poker are no longer welcome here for these reasons. Furthermore, in a private conversation with Gary Wise a couple of weeks ago, we tried to make this point clear to him as well, but he refused to listen to what we said and thus our conversation did not last very long.
We also have no objection to any Two Plus Two member looking at another site, or being critical of our policies. We do object, and object strongly, to anyone who is some sort of public figure in poker, and Wise does qualify here, to publicly supporting what we believe will eventually severely damage our industry.
Let me put it another way. I believe if you were to talk to a top executive from any of the major Internet poker sites, they would tell you that the vast majority of participants in their games do so for entertainment, and that playing poker for these people is good wholesome fun. They would also point out that the expense of playing poker on their site is very minimal for the vast majority of their customers -- an amount similar to going to a movie or dinner in a nice restaurant. The idea that playing poker on the Internet can lead to all sorts of other perceived (by some) evils is something they would scoff at as being ridiculous. And of course we agree.
But this brings us back to Never Win Poker. The potential damage that this site can do to all of us is again, in our opinion, severe, and we believe it needs to be cleaned up. Once that is done, we will re-instate Wise, Witteles (aka known as Dan Druff), etc. Wise can also be re-instated by disassociating himself with the principles of NWP.
Best wishes,
Mason
Two Plus Two
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