Dear Mason,

It feels very surreal writing a letter like this to you. Just six years ago, I was a big admirer of yours and David's, having read "Hold 'Em for Advanced Players" and hoping to one day become an accomplished limit hold 'em player. At the time, I never could have imagined Mr. Sklansky threatening to "pay gorgeous actors" to seduce my girlfriend, nor would I have thought you would label me a hate-monger. However, through the odd twists and turns of life, this is where 2008 has brought us.

Let me start out by saying that, in one way, I understand where you're coming from. Two Plus Two publishing is a thriving publishing business -- not just a poker forum -- and surely the health of the business takes priority over the fairness of the forum. I can respect that. You have been put in a tough position lately. The David Sklansky/Brandi Hawbaker/Sue situation has boiled over to the point of becoming a major distraction, and the circus surrounding it threatens to make a mockery of your well-respected company. It has also raised doubts in some people's minds regarding the morality of your most prolific author. With David unable to calm the situation himself, but rather appearing to be throwing oil on the rapidly-spreading fire, you had to step in and restore order. That is totally understandable, and I do not question you for attempting to "clean up" 2+2. In fact, I must admit I have been surprised over the past few years how much your NVG and BBV4LIFE forums have started to resemble our own NWP forum.

However, I feel you have made a few grave errors in your handling of this situation.

First, you need to realize who is and isn't really at fault. I would completely understand if you decided to ban anyone who attempted to embarrass David Sklansky or violate the privacy of his personal life. After all, he is an important part of Two Plus Two Publishing, and you need to protect him, as both a business commodity and a friend. Had David kept his personal business off of the forums, and had NWP dug up the "Inbred Sue" story and broke it to the world, I would fully understand your retaliatory banning of anyone associated with our site. After all, such an act would be a malicious attempt to smear Mr. Sklansky's name, regardless of whether or not the allegations were true. However, that is not what happened here. There are two and only two people at fault for the current amount of hoopla surrounding David's personal life. Those people are Brandi Hawbaker and David Sklansky himself. Remember, it was Brandi who blackmailed David regarding posting secret details of his personal life and relationship with Sue. And it was David who, once again, seemed content sharing private, detailed information about Sue and his follies with Brandi. David was the one who posted that Sue was inbred. David was the one who revealed that she can't distinguish left from right, and that after 22+ years on this earth, she still does not realize she has a physical deformity. David was the one who revealed that she was "attracted to Brandi", thus lending credence to Brandi's claims that David attempted to get them together. While David may have had his hand forced by Brandi to explain his situation with Sue, he gave everyone FAR too much detail. In fact, his highly detailed post on the matter fueled everyone's interest far more than had he quickly explained it with simply a sentence or two.

Where is NWP's fault in all of this? Nowhere. We did not uncover any new information. We did not violate anyone's privacy. We did not reveal anything that David himself didn't already reveal. While Sue's pictures were first posted on NWP, they came from Sue's Myspace. This was very easy to find, as she was one of David's top Myspace friends on his public profile. All of the information revealed on NWP could have been easily found by anyone who wanted to take a few minutes to look into the matter.

Second, you have mislabeled NWP as a "hate site". This is completely untrue. If you browse our site, you will see no statements from NWP staff -- whether official or unofficial -- condoning any form of hatred or bigotry. As we have stated many times, NWP is a free-speech site. People are welcome to show up and express their opinions, even if such opinions are offensive, hateful, or bigoted. That is part of operating a free-speech site. You need to allow messages that you may not personally agree with or condone. For example, if someone were to start a thread on NWP entitled, "I hate ******s and ****", we would let it stand because NWP is about letting people express any opinion that they want. At the same time, however, we would not condone or agree with such a thread, and in fact would very likely speak out against the one who posted it.

Perhaps you refer to us as a "hate site", however, not as a site that promotes hatred such as racism or homophobia, but rather a site that promotes hatred on specific individuals. Perhaps you feel that we are getting some sick pleasure out of posting Sue's pictures, and you believe that our intention is to hurt Sue and David for no apparent reason. This is all completely false. NWP reports on poker gossip. We try very hard to make sure that we report on true gossip, as false accusations against someone can be extremely harmful. In this case, we were simply reporting upon something that David posted himself on your own site. As mentioned earlier, the pictures were quite easy to find with all of the information that David revealed. Even our posting of David's letters to Brandi did not appear to be violating his privacy, as David continued sending several additional letters AFTER he became aware that every one of them was being forwarded to NWP by Brandi. Furthermore, we were never contacted by David to remove those letters at any point. Contrary to what you might believe, we do not hate David, and we do not have a desire to see him suffer. Furthermore, we believe that Sue is a victim in this entire mess, and I have personally stated several times that I take offense to people mocking her disability. I believe that Sue is probably a sweet girl who deserves to be left alone. However, the circus created by Brandi and David is preventing that from happening at the moment.

Finally, I believe you are making a serious mistake in attempting to solve the problem by simply covering it up. You have banned a staggering number of 2+2 posters, and most are not guilty of anything. I have never broken a 2+2 rule. I did not even participate in posting any of the David/Brandi/Sue stuff on NWP. I have spoken up on David and Sue's behalf on more than one occasion since this whole mess has started. My past contirbutions on 2+2 have been substantial, and as you can see by the majority of comments about my banning, most regulars on your site enjoyed my posts and feel that the site will be worse without me. It seems that you don't believe I am going to be a danger to the new, "cleaner" 2+2. I'm sure you believe that, if you were to lay down ground rules regarding what can and can't be posted on your site, I would follow them. So why was I banned? I've done nothing wrong, I am not a threat to the continued smooth operation of the site, and I have not hurt anyone. Are you really going to start banning people for being ASSOCIATED with people you're angry at?

Mason, obviously you have realized by now that David was out of control. That's why you have directed him not to post for awhile, and further demanded that he restrict future postings to innocuous and non-controversial matters, such as poker strategy. You must realize that this whole mess was his creation, and that punishing others for commenting on it -- something that was A-OK on 2+2 up until a few days ago, is not the right answer.

If you want to set new ground rules for your site, that's fine. Set them, let everyone know what they are, and ban those who don't comply. However, you changed the rules on the fly, and you banned everyone retroactively who involved themselves in a topic that you didn't want to see discussed. That by itself is bad enough, but when the topic itself was encouraged (and started) by one of your site's principals, this screams hypocrisy in the worst way.

I would like to ask you to reverse the recent wave of bannings, even if you want to keep the rules in place to where the Sklansky/Brandi/Sue issue can't be discussed on 2+2. Obviously Brandi herself deserves to be banned, and I doubt you will have many that could put a coherent argument together otherwise. However, the NWP-related bannings are a case of simply killing the messenger. If you don't want us reporting on David's personal exploits in the future, it would be best to simply make sure he doesn't post about them anymore.

Please consider everything I've said. I would appreciate a response a bit more detailed than, "Dan Druff needs to resign from NWP if he wants to come back." Obviously that is an unreasonable demand, essentially equivalent to someone demanding David Sklansky resign from Two Plus Two Publishing.

Sincerely,

Todd "Dan Druff" Witteles

well said shampoo man

Rebuttal?

I like the whole thing with the exception of the "free speech site" argument. That's a lame excuse for letting people act like jerks.

well said dan

Why do you want to be on 2+2?

Seems like a guy who's buddy starts a fight in a bar, and everyone of them gets 86'd. Guy comes back asking "why me"? If I worked there I'd say "why you so desperate to drink here, there are plenty of bars, some of which your friends never started a fight in".

Your insistence seems insincere when you don't say anything positive about the place you are asking to return.

KJS

"Spoken like a true gentleman"--Sonny (A Bronx Tale)

Bah he has his own forum, no idea why they are in such an uproar about being banned here. They didn't post much anyways and publically ridiculed it. Anyways, they got enough publicity from all the bannings, they should be thanking Mason.

this claim seems to be weak.

Dandruff has a "I must be right" complex. Ask his fellow NWP members and they will gladly agree.

True, but as I have mentioned before, Dan always plays the "I am innocent card" and it gets tiring. Dan has stated before that he will ban members for posting pictures of his family (and he has). Yet they seem to think it;s fine to post pictures and information about other families.

It's called owning a site. Find me anywhere in the world where double standards don't apply on a forum between the Admin to the posters.

Obv difference being that David and Brandi made their situation public with Brandi sending the information to NWP knowing full well they would be exposed. Digging up pictures and info. on a forum member without their input/approval/implied approval is a whole different issue and, most would agree, both creepy and dangerous.

Acethiest, although I like your screenname, I have to disagree with your opinion of Todd's fairness.

Exactly my point.... Mason is behaving the same way Dan is in regards to bannings. NWP went after an admins "family" just as people did to druff. And in turn both got banned.

Yes unfortunately I made my screename on a whim and mispelled it.... but being dyslexic that comes often.

I like druff as a poster actually, and probably most of my anger directed at him is more towards NWP. what they did to Sue was terrible and I pray that she hasn't seen it. The fact that Dan refuses to apologize and continues to allow her pictures posted is very unexcusable. I can only imagine how hard this situation has been on her and her family.

Druff

If I owned a business and I thought there was more than a .01% chance a person from a "rival" site would say things to harm my business I would pre-emptively ban them just on that basis. I think Mason was generous to let the NWP folks on here at all, much less until this whole episode. This site is his business, he is the one taking a risk if it goes badly. He can do what he want, imo.

KJS

El Burro, you do realize the guy in your profile pic once yelled at an audience, "Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underacheiver" after a bunch of idiots heckled him at a show.

If you see the video of it, I think it is genius and hilarious...but it seems discongruent with your "letting them act like jerks" comment, given that the beauty of Bill Hicks is in his well placed misanthropy (of course, the racists and homophobes on NWP are probably the same type of people who made Hicks scream that comment in the first place).

Well the free speech works IMO b/c it is a closed community essentially:
They are not standing in a public park saying "eff this eff that"
They are in a forum where ppl w/ similar interests communicate.

Because the 2+2 forums are the best poker forums around? Because maybe he has made some friends here and enjoys discussing strategy?

Did you people actually read the whole OP? I got through two and a half paragraphs and decided reading the rest would be among the worst possible ways I could spend my time.

Dan,

FWIW, I mostly agree with you, but I also agree that if Mason doesn't want anyone associated with NWP to benefit in any way from participating on his site, then that's perfectly within Mason's rights.

As a user, I definitely would like to see Dan Druff and others participating here. Dan posting here is unquestionably something that provides value to people interested in poker and the poker world. I'd also like to see Abdul here. And Paul Phillips. And many others who for various reasons are either no longer welcome or no longer want to take part here. And if Mason or 2p2 were to treat any personal friends of mine (a number of whom post here) in ways I considered rude/offensive/unreasonable/disrespectful, I would have no desire to participate here.

If I were Mason, I'd probably take a different approach to handling things. However, it's hard to argue strongly against a position of "NWP has a lot of people who talk **** about my company, so I don't want anyone affiliated in any way with that site around here."

Have to agree that 2+2 is the best as far as poker strategy forums go. NWP is not a poker forum, it's a social forum. The only limits over there are exposing personal information about people who don't want that information exposed (at least in the context that the information made available could harm the person).

I only got through the first 17 words of your post...

How could you not read the last paragraph about the Robot Wars of 2174? It was awesome!