Haha, no. I dont care. I just find it odd that OP thinks its ok if he bullies someone, but when he gets bullied by the site he makes this thread

If FT told me not to sit some specific guy I wanted to play I would be pissed. But if I was FT and saw Nemo bully that played I'd do what FT did.

I think it could be solved without a 7 day ban, but asking him for a monthly fee for not sitting him is absolutely ***** absurd and is tapping the glass man.

ac on,
I mostly agree with the gist of your position. FTP should err on the side of pragmatic and fitting responses to cases like this. So: Chat ban for verbal harassment during play, 7 day site ban for attempted extortion while on and through the medium of the FTP site, and so on -- but not permanently removing Nemo's right to sit this guy HU, a right everyone else on the site has.

It just seems terrible to me that FTP feels it can take such measures (stripping one player of a fundamental site-wide right that everyone else enjoys) without extreme necessity.

My guess is that it's meant to scare or deter Nemo (and others who hear about this?) from ever repeating the behaviors FTP found objectionable?

In any case, here's my take on the whole situation in outline form:
- Nemo sitting this guy HU for 100+ games was fine.
- Nemo following this guy to 45 man tourneys is, by itself, fine. They're open tourneys, ffs!
- Nemo verbally harassing, intimidating, extorting this guy is wrong. So Nemo should be chat banned (maybe permanently?), and site banned for a bit.
- Nemo's 'victim' should accept the reality that poker players can follow and target him game-selection-wise, while rightfully expecting that FTP will shield him from chat abuse.

Am I missing something here? People who are okay with FTP's actions against Nemo, it seems to me, are taking a personal, subjective gut reaction (they dislike Nemo's bullying and want him to 'pay') and letting it justify a punishment that goes way too far and violates principles that ought to be protected.

I believe that poker is a game of skill in witch people compete each other for money. Therefore when u join a game u know that the other player(some of them at least) are pros that are after your money.

So u cannot bitch about some pro joining u with the only purpose to get your money. At any time in the game the other guy has the same chances/luck and he could have won the game not the other way around. The games were fair there is nothing to complain , this is online poker.

But in this case asking for a fee is illegal and u should be punished worse. Like banned for life. It is what mobsters do and they end in prison. U cannot threaten somebody and charge money to leave him alone.

U were not banned because u sat him down too much , u were banned cuz u were doing something illegal. U should be ashamed of yourself and not post it on 2+2. Ironic , in the 7 days of ban u r losing money and that dude is going on with his game.

U are missing that he asked a FEE to leave that guy alone. This is ILLEGAL. Go to a shop owner near u and ask a fee to leave him alone - u end in jail.
U cannot ask people for money like that , it is ILLEGAL. U end in prison and black dudes have butt sex with u.

The dude was not over playing that guy, he was asking a fee to leave him alone
- this is what is wrong here.

pokerfun666 and others,
You are allowing psychological forces to muddle your thinking. People comparing Nemo to the mafia and mobsters should consider not getting too emotionally deluded by such a thin analogy. Remember that the mental association that leads us to think of the mafia or the mob when we hear about Nemo proposing a fee to leave his victim alone is problematic. Because the mafia's way of extorting people is much more real, is backed by a genuine threat of physical violence, and is only one of the many vile things done by organized crime. Nemo is very, very far from doing and being any of those things. So the moral indignation and desire to punish him we feel when we say "OMG! That's what the mafia does!" is artificially amplified by dragging in all of the enormously negative things we associate with the mafia, all of which don't apply to Nemo whatsoever.

So basically I'm recommending a more down-to-earth and realistic attitude towards this situation when discussing what Nemo did and how FTP should respond.

did FTP cite a T&C that was broken or did they instead get all emo because what Nemo did somehow offended one of their supervisor's little world view of right/wrong?

Just to clarify for any Stars regs that might be curious:

You are allowed to sit anybody in Stars husngs. This doesn't take into consideration heavy harassment or asking somebody for money to get you to stop, though. Those things may be enforced differently (as appears to be the case on FTP).

But to anybody that wants to sit somebody over and over on Stars: You can absolutely do this and Stars has no issue with it and the player cannot do anything to prevent this other than to stop sitting first or playing games you may not sit them in (as in your choice, not their's, you can follow them down to $115 in the above example).

You can shear a sheep many times but you can only skin it once.

You really think joining his 45 mans decreased his EV in them...kinda odd, maybe like 1 or 2 for fun to tell him you really want to keep playing but you playing 45 mans, not being your specialty probably hurts your own EV.

Yes this was never an issue in the thread imo, it's the asking for monthly monies to stop him from doing so is the issue. I know he says he regrets it but he should also regret sitting him after FTP warned him to stop after the extortion attempt. I think 7 days is fair could be worse.

OP also told me that he was disconnected out of running games when they banned him. People think that him losing his games and money is acceptable?

At the very least FTP could have given him notice that he will be banned for 7 days. Not just shut down any game he was in without notice.

i think the original ruling that u can never sit w/ him again is prob pretty bad and sets a terrible precedent. that said i havent really given much thought to what would be a good/better punishment for ur trying to extort him into paying u not to play him.

so as far as everything goes i think FTP possibly could have handled ur original offense better. but now that uv been warned and sat w/ him again i dont really feel sorry for u that u got banned for 7 days. u repeatedly put FTP in a spot where they had to take some sort of action against u.

I think you guys are unaware of how often these fees are paid by people across ftp/stars, at the time I didnt think it was very wrong to ask, ' Hey I was offering him a good deal" but now that alot of people seem to think its absurd that I did this I have started to think about it more but I still cannot see it in the same light as alot of you, suppose my mentality alot different then yours.

YOU DESERVE IT.

Honestly, I read the comments here and I can't see what's so hard to understand in the site's reaction. Full Tilt Poker is a BUSINESS, and this business provides FUN for people. Good for you that you make profit playing poker, but more than 90 percent of their customers don't. When you stalk someone like this and make the site a less fun place to be in, you're hurting their business and it's their right to stop it.

You guys treat poker like it's a competitive league run by an international sports union or something. You can argue that's how 5000NL treat the game but at the 20's? 30's? The core business is fun. I would even say that full tilt must protect their paying customers from these situations. It would even be unethical to say to this guy "Listen, we can't protect you, either play him quit playing".

You really brought this on yourself. And I still didn't mention your behavior being absolutely PATHETIC.

I think blocking chat would have been a better option here, cause players are allowed to sit anywhere they want, and would not allow any conversations that led to this 7 days ban.

it's completely acceptable to ask someone for a fee not to sit/play you...don't really know how often it is practiced, maybe more on stars cause the lobbies suck so horribly but on ftp i can't imagine its practiced very often.

This is total BS. It should be refunded.

I think Nemo's chat should have been banned a long time ago and that would have helped not get into this situation. That's usually the first line of recourse for a harrassing/abusive player and should have been used here.

That doesn't make it right.

Sorry Nemo but I am afraid I am on FTP's side on this one.
Asking for a fee to leave him alone would be illegal in most places and should not be tolerated on FTP more than anywhere else. It’s extortion pure and simple. The only time it could be alright is if it's a common agreement. Here it's not. You are trying to impose it on him.
If someone was bullying you down the road everyday and ask you for a fee to leave him alone what would you do? Would that be ok?

That said, I don't have a problem with you sitting the guy every time he is in the lobby , but by following him around and making it obvious in the chat that you are doing it with intent constitute harassment.
once again, ask yourself what would happen to you if you did this to someone in your city? It probably wouldn't be tolerated either.

You're being one-sided and omitting the bigger picture. At bottom, yes, FTP is a business and has a lot of power in terms of what policies it can set forth, what its Terms of Service are, and how it deals with particular individuals. (Though obviously in an ideal world its customers would have certain enforceable rights, like not having their funds stolen or being cheated by superusing site employees, and so on.)

But you can't assert that the FTP business model is only about some vague concept called 'FUN' and not much else. Because so-called "regs" or semi-professional/profitable/regular players are an important part of FTP's clientele (from the high profile Red Pros who generate publicity to the lower stakes high volume grinders who help keep games going and generate rake in a variety of formats.)

So when FTP starts doing things like restricting the basic game selection or freedom-to-sit abilities of particular individuals, this can represent a threatening regime or climate not only to other regulars, but even to recreational players who wouldn't want this done to them either. When you factor in the existence of competing sites where such freedoms are never or less likely to be individually restricted (where all players have the same freedoms), and where punishments are more pragmatic and less about short-sighted moral retribution, then FTP has a business incentive to balance and moderate its treatment of cases like Nemo's.

On the other hand, if somebody asks him if he will stop sitting them for $200, that is then ok by you? Or is neither player allowed to do that. Or just not allowed to do that in the chat of the game? Or can they not ask outside of the poker site too?

LiarsDice, I agree, if that is what happened then it's atrocious and he should be refunded his equity in those matches. Acting on this while he's in a game and letting him lose money is by far the worst thing FTP has done in this whole thread imo.

Extortion is already against the rules in real life. It's legal for local governments to collect tolls for roads, though, and I imagine it would be quite alright if they offered people the option of paying some sort of yearly fee rather than a toll for every use.

There is nothing inherently wrong with asking if the player would be willing to pay a fee to be left alone, as long as it wasn't something like "give me money or i will ruin your poker time."

Telling someone you will continue to act in a way that is allowed by the rules if they don't pay you a fee is not extortion, sorry, or local governments offering yearly fees could be considered to be extorting their people.

How can you permit yourself this kind of logic?

There is no equivalence between what Nemo did and some guy in your city following you around and demanding money!

In the second case, the guy is violating your personal privacy and is likely threatening physical harm if you don't pay him.

In Nemo's case, he has every right to follow and target a player on a poker site. It's just game selection. When he then offers the guy a proposition wherein he'll accept a fee to stop sitting in the guy's games, this proposition is not backed by anything like a threat of violence or force. The guy can laugh in Nemo's face and tell him no, and there's nothing Nemo can do about it, other than keep sitting the guy, which is already his right and not in itself a violation.

The only real violation I see is chat abuse, verbal intimidation, and possibly the fact that Nemo made his fee proposition through the medium of FTP chat, which FTP is uncomfortable with, out of fear that such a proposition coupled with verbal abuse "looks bad" for its image.

But calling it extortion in the real-world sense of the term is incorrect. It is at most a kind of verbally applied (non-coercive) psychological pressure and should be punished as part of Nemo's chat abuse.

LMAO

this is so so so so wrong

nemo im really sorry for the hard time you're getting ITT