you see where i'm going here?

you should be begging these celebs to represent the PPA on these matters not waiting for them to call you. WTF!? they'd probably do it for free if they care at all about poker.

if the PPA is just sitting around like the prom queen waiting to field offers for a date then you are doing something wrong.

as the public and lobbying face of us poker players why wouldn't you want to utilize the celeb power that the avearage american, who doesn't give a sh*t about poker but cares what someone like matt damon eats for breakfast, is held in awe of?

do a stupid "we are the world" scenario for poker. enlist these famous people to do a interview segment or panel discussion on cnn or whatever news network. the network doesn't have to care about our issue but they sure as f*ck want the matt damons of this world on their programs.

the only coverage i've seen on this whole fiasco has been on poker news and poker content websites. yahoo news had the doj seizure story for a single, solitary day on the front page of their website.

seriously, do some goddamn outreach to mass media and stop pointing the finger at us, and now these poker playing celebs, with the "what have you done" accusation. "i know you are but what am i" is hardly an effective tactic when questioned as to why the PPA hasn't raised a f*cking sh*tstorm in the mass media and used every resource at its disposal to keep this on the front page of every news outlet in the country.

and yeah, i'm angry



Edit: get every single one of those c*nts from the oceans 11 movies to do a PSA, put it on youtube for f*cks sake. get them on jay leno, i'm sure that as*hole plays poker. you need any more good ideas? jesus f'in christ it's too easy.

oh yeah, i forgot. you are waiting for them to act first. man up and be a leader PPA. that's what we donate to you for.

shut up. +1,000,000

what the **** are you doing to help huh?

Everyone is angry. Not everyone is taking out their anger on the folks trying to help make things better.

The problem, as I have been trying to explain, is precisely that the PPA has been doing everything it can to raise this issue in the mass media. The mass media is not responding as you would like. I think it is unfair to claim that is the PPA's fault, but what the hell do I know.

Similarly, you are now about the third or fourth person who has quoted that "point 1" of mine. God how I now wish I had made it point 2 because apparently no one reads past point 1.

The majority of the celebs you think care about you and care about poker actually care much more about themselves and how being associated with a poker rights movement might negatively affect their career. Many have simply refused to help (at least so far). Should we put a gun to their head to get them to say something about poker the next time they are on Letterman?

The ones who are regularly willing to speak up for the game hardly get media attention because they are only poker pro celebrities like Raymer and Greenstein and Bloch. And you would be surprised at how many poker pro celebs don't speak up when asked.

The only thing I am asking you to accept is that if the task of getting poker voices in the media were easy, it would already have been done. It is not easy but we are still trying.

Skallagrim

I've been writing letters all morning - stop bitching and get to work making change


And link this to your twitter and FB pages
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...wOE_story.html

great post.

Seriously, stop bitching and whinning about things not going our way. If you want something to change, start doing something about it.

If not you then who? If not now then when?

If you want something to change, be the first person to start working towards that change and people will follow. There is already threads on here that are working towards doing just that.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57...hread-1024101/

i seriously want a good guy/bad guy list of people who will not openly support the PPA and the rights of american poker players. 'cause f them

There are 8 people on the PPA Board of Directions and 4 Honorary Members.

Seeing how important our issue is now, do we need more people working for the PPA?

what? one is incapable of doing both?

i haven't been doing much posting in these threads or on 2p2 recently because of the fact that i'm doing something to work making a change.

should we compare lists/dick size so you'll know if my efforts have been worthy enough so that i may post in this stupid thread???

I still have a couple of questions that hasn't been answered: how many employees are on the payroll? And it seems like Poker was ruled a game of chance in a federal court in a Dec. case against one of fulltilt's payment processors. All the sites knew the sh*t was gonna hit the fan after that. Why didn't the PPA warn the players so we could pull our money? http://www.scribd.com/doc/45458126/P...es-Davitt-Case

From the PPA editorial in the post...

"Only after players protested did the Department of Justice agree to allow access to money deposited in personal accounts on these Web sites."

I am somewhat confused by this statement. I don't think anyone has access to their funds. Why is the PPA acting like this is a lock. For those of us that our still nervous about getting our money back I wish the PPA would message this more appropriately. I suggest...

"Only after players protested did the Department of Justice agree to return the domain names to the these Web sites. This is an important first step in assuring that players will have access to money deposited in personal accounts on these Web sites."

Grunching here.


OP I hope you come to realize that the PPA is a small, grassroots representative on behalf of us players. It can only be as successful as we allow it to be. The PPA is to be blamed only insomuch as we are to be blamed.


To think that some entity that you may have donated $20 bucks to is supposed to fix this for you is well....childish. That's not even considering the uphill battle the PPA has to begin with.

I will say this you are definitely an American.

The PPA has 5 full time paid employees. The PPA contracts out a lot of its work (Lobbying, lawyers, media managers, etc ... ) as contracting for these services is cheaper than hiring an in-house person to do that work.

You are incorrect in declaring that poker was ruled a game of chance in the case you linked. What you linked was the DOJ's memorandum arguing that poker is a game of chance. As the defendant in that case pled guilty, no opposing argument was submitted and the Court did not have to rule whether the argument was correct.

The PPA has argued that poker is a game of skill in many courts. In some we have won, in some we have lost. We have reported those decisions each time they occurred.

Skallagrim

Yes. Such an attitude is widespread. But if any poker player uses that as a basis for claiming that the PPA is incompetent, he is being grossly unjust. For me? No. I am not part of the PPA. As somebody who is not a US citizen and who lives outside the US there wouldn't be much point for me to join, nor would it be appropriate. However, as a poker player I do recognize the advantage of getting online poker clearly recognized as legal in the US. Therefore I do a bit on an internet forum to try to help the organization.

My intervention in this thead however, is intended mostly for the benefit of misguided souls such as yourself. You have a lot more to gain by helping to improve the PPA than you do by tearing it down.

Neither do I want the poker community to feel sorry for the PPA. I just want them to cut the sanctimonious, judgemental crap, and instead do something useful to help gain what should be a common goal. I want people who have established their right to do so to hold the PPA to reasonable standards of accountability. I also want the PPA to establish a reasonable accountability framework. This would include a formal mechanism for member input into decision-making and formal reporting requirements for the executive. People who have not both donated and been active members have no standing to hold the PPA leadership to account. People who say that the only acceptable standard is total success, despite the lack of adequate tools for the job, clearly do not understand what proper accountability is. No not at all. I want them to channel energy in appropriate, helpful directions. Yes, I expect people to be happy with the PPA's performance if the organization achieves results at the top of the expected possible range of results. I use the word 'expect' in the sense of "I think there is moral obligation that they feel this way", not in the sense that I think it will actually happen. It does not surprise me one bit that there are people like you who blame the PPA for not doing the impossible. I do not expect (in either sense of the word) people to be happy with the outcome, but I expect (again in the moral but not the predictive sense) people to have the maturity to distinguish between disappointment in the outcome and disappointment with the work done. That sounds more like a dream check than a reality check to me. Since you are the dreamer here, why haven't you accomplished the dream of legal internet poker? Is it your fault that we haven't got legal internet poker because you havent dreamed hard enough?

Good. It was intended to be. The best way to get a message across is to use the language of the person to whom one is communicating, and you have established, by calling the PPA incompetent, that insult is the currency of communication for you. When you resort to rational discourse, I will too. (If I was a member of the PPA, I might not risk this approach.)

Obviously this is you again blaming the PPA for something for which it cannot be held accountable.

I note that you haven't responded about your ridiculous accusation of some mythical 1% elite getting benefits.

I have no doubt of your sincerity, nor of your passion. Both are commendable. It is your judgement (and judgementalism) that needs a bit of work.

There is nothing wrong with forcefully expressing your frustration at the current situation WRT poker in America. What is wrong is negatively directing that emotion at the people who have been working hardest at trying to change that situation.

If you don't like the results to date, see what you can do to improve them, rather than sitting aroung ranting. At the very least offer constructive, not destructive, criticism.

How come no one knew that some payment processors were being charged and taken to court in Dec. and pleading guilty ?

I agree. PPA = big letdown.

i'm grunching. tho saw a blog on this:

http://www.billrini.com/2011/04/22/the-ppa-is-pathetic/

cliffz PPA taking credit for getting FTP and Stars to give back US players moneys.

How come you have not been following the news?

Poker Payment processors have been taken down by the DOJ every few months for the last 2 years.

How come you have not been following the discussion?

Early last December this forum was the place where thousands upon thousands of people viewed the debate over whether Poker Players (and the PPA_ should support Sen. Reid's proposal for establishing licensed online poker in the US. Many, maybe most, on this forum opposed Sen. Reid's proposal because it called for a 15 month blackout period before letting online poker start up again. I personally participated in that discussion and I was attacked then just like I am being attacked now. Only back then I was attacked as being a "fear mongerer" for saying that the constant indictments of the processors shows that the status quo will one day crumble. Today you attack me (well the PPA I guess) for not telling you that the constant indictment of the processors was indicative of the fact that the status quo would crumble.

Rather than reply myself, can I ask you to tell me how you would reply to this situation?

Skallagrim

are you surprised ?

Not attacking the PPA just wondering if everyone knew processors were being charged, how could everyone be so surprised about these charges? IMO as a retired law enforcement officer (who worked for a time as a investigator for a DA's office) it would be just be a matter of time since the DOJ was building cases and would eventually go for bigger charges.

Exactly my point. If you are powerful enough to make the DOJ buckle to your will (laughable) and get us back our money how can you cry and say that you guys are just doing the best you can without much support. Well which one is it. You talk out of both sides of your mouth.

And once again to make it clear. I AM NOT discounting what the PPA has done I appreciate what little they have done because it is at least something.
My main CONCERN is how THIS situation has been handled. Passive, meek, unprepared...you guys must have known that this day was a huge possibility yet you guys had no plan set up.

Sorry for assuming you were attacking the PPA. I hope you can understand why I am disposed to making that assumption in this thread.

Skallagrim

^^ He did all that in not so much more time than you have done NOTHING for online poker players !

You can take all these shots personally and rant back if you want Skallagrim and I really dont care. People call it like we see it and your organization has been a true Joke !

Right now people in China and Russia are enjoying the game we invented on the computer we invented on the internet we invented and the supposed leader of the free world has told its people they cannot play.

We should all be ashamed of ourselves, but more so our leaders and definitely the PPA who claim to fight for players rights when they actually do nothing more than play political games along with everyone else !

Nobody is saying the PPA made the DOJ "buckle."

All we have said is that the public outcry of poker players, in which the PPA played a significant part organizing, put enough pressure on Capitol Hill that pressure was applied to the DOJ to settle the issue of Player money.

The sites seeking this agreement, and the DOJ realizing it was in a bad PR place also were factors.

This is not an all or nothing situation. This was a team effort. And PPA was part of the team.

And your description of us as "passive, weak and unprepared" is basically your description of what you saw. What you saw was far from all that was going on, sorry.

And more is going on as we speak. I realize that in the internet era not having solved this problem in a few days is a failure. But most of politics is not done at internet speed. Changing things will take lots of effort and lots of time.

Skallagrim

Well, I always think 'multi' in this sense implies 2 or more, and <2 =/= >=2

However, you have provided evidence that they are indeed a multi-million dollar organizaton. Thank-you for that.

It is a far cry from the $22M claimed upthread.

Looking at their salary costs, it seems they have between 1 and 10 employees. Their Board members receive, on average, 5 figures each in fees. I don't know if they have to cover their own expenses.

I expect they have $49K in membership revenue because only about 2,450 people actually paid for membership. That's a far cry from 1.2M members.

I believe it is a matter of record that the vast majority of their funding comes from the Interactive Gaming Council, an industry association in which Stars and Tilt are two of the largest (perhaps the largest two) income earners. I have no idea whether they have any other funding sources. Looking at the IGC membership list, I'm going to guess that the various members don't make equal financial contributions. Therefore it is likely that a significant portion of the money come indirectly from Stars and Tilt. Isn't that horrible?

Look closely at that again. Poker players have not been funding the PPA. If their 1.2M 'members' each bought a $20 membership they'd have 4-5 times the budget and wouldn't have to rely on industry handouts. If, OTOH, poker players continue to support at the current level, but insist that the PPA be 'pure' by refusing money from sites, then the PPA wouldn't be able to afford any paid staff, or paid lobbyists or consultants. It might as well shut down.

So, if you don't want the PPA to take industry money, either put your money where your mouth is, or be content to have no organization working for the cause.

And we can all be thankful that Martin Luther King never listened to the folks (just like you) who told him he was a failure for not "winning" during those 7 years he needed to get the Nobel Prize and the Passage of the Civil Rights Act.

And just like I am no Ghandi. I am no MLK either. Not even close. And not being able to play online poker is not even in the same league as a whole race being denied their basic civil rights for decades.

Do really think about what you post?

Skallagrim