Its a trained personal assistant, who i have tought how to do things (answer freuqent questions, pass over new ones. Schedule coaching, you taking notes about coaching, when student comes again, assistant gives you briefing).

We do it via a project management system (basecamp).

This is the only time I've ever made a comment in someone's coaching thread. Actually it was a series of questions, relatively gently asked of Ryan. The fact is that I've posted POSITIVE things in people's coaching threads in the past, even though they were regulars in my games, and possibly could be construed as "competitors" in the coaching world.

Even you admitted that I clearly wasn't involving myself in order to hurt Ryan to improve my own position. If you want to talk about professional ethics, fine.

What's worse?

1) Me asking questions in a coaching thread that others have been asking for months (some of which turned out to be true, some not certain yet).
2) Ryan spamming PTR
3) Ryan spamming PTR, lying about it, and then saying he didn't lie about it.
4) Ryan deleting posts that questioned his product without providing proof beyond a simple statement for many months.
5) Ryan deleting posts, claiming it was a mod who did it, and then never publicly acknowledging that he had instructed the mod to do it?

You tell me.

1)

Ryan wrote to me in skype the following:

"i only remove unfounded unfactual negative comments"

Then he removed comments about his activities on PTR.

2)

He lied publicly when he denied spamming saying Isildur, Nano, and Phil Galfond were his favorite players or whatever and gave that as his reason for posting on their walls on PTR.

3)

He told Nilay that a moderator deleted his post. I know for a fact, from Forum Cop, that Ryan had the post removed by e-mailing FC. That's a demonstrable lie, and a particularly disingenuous one for obvious reasons.

Ryan doesn't respond to the questions I ask of him... so this is really going nowhere. And I shouldn't waste my time or mental energy on it. It should be pretty clear that his actions and words can be put next to his results and reviews and people should be able to make their own determinations. Anything short of that for all coaching threads, and people shouldn't be surprised when they don't like the product they got.

If people want to post in his thread, he can answer or not. It's his choice. Just like he can answer my questions, clearly enumerated multiple times in both threads, or he can choose not to. Either way, I think that both sides of this conversation, and other conversations in other coaching threads, should be completely public and all voices should be heard.

Just remember, it's usually the "trolls" who break the big scandals, not the big name players. Don't shut people up unless it's obviously, gratuitously, provably, ruining a thread and destroying the ability of the thread owner/coach to present himself and his service.

The one thing I disagree with thinkitthrough is this:

Absolutely not in my opinion. I would hope that if anybody had accusations about a coach cheating or scamming they would share them immediately, and if they chose to share it in the coach's thread they would not be deleted provided they had evidence/proof. Whether or not they are a coach is not really relevant to me, if Relvis found that you were lying about results and cheating and had proof, it would not be unethical to post that in your thread.

But I think a coach's listing ad should be the place where the highest burden of proof is needed.

Relvis, if you want a free for all system, fine, but I'll politely withdraw myself from all of this then and let people fight it out. Personally, that would be great, I don't want to referee these conflicts.

But I feel in a more free for all type system the quality of accusation gets thinner and thinner and these threads turn into bbv/nvg, where anybody that sneers at you wrong comes after you in a no-risk slandering style of posting.

If somebody has an issue with a coach and it's not something damning (No, I absolutely do not believe that a coach using his own account name and signing his name on PTR posts is considered some damning breaking news), but a collection of thin accusations (2 reviews look similar, someone pointed that out and the coach had it deleted, the coach signed his name on PTR and made some posts that were too promotional and some of them were deleted on a site that has a liberal policy on this, some people pointed that out, he publicly said he made those posts and signed his name, etc.) seems to be more appropriate in this thread than in his coaching thread.

Just look at how many posts we have in this thread already over 2 or 3 accusations against the coach. If the reviews are legitimate and if PTR doesn't see fit to even ban the guy for making some of his own signature posts too promotional, do we really need to fill 50+ posts in YourDoom's thread about this? That seems over the line to me.

And I will then have to spend 8 hours going through my PMs and infractions for other coaches and training sites that have made posts too promotional here on 2p2, so that we can publicly post those in all of their coaching and training site threads. Coaches have replied in non ad threads saying "I think I can help coach you." That's not allowed on 2p2 and is considered self promotional, as far as I can tell it's taken at least as seriously as PTR took YourDoom's comments, and there's a lot more to gain by making that post in a strategy or self help thread on 2p2 versus making it in a PTR statistics comments page, even if the guy is durr or jman (what % of players that have money and want coaching from a specific NL game type coach with a high hourly do you think are randomly reading durr's PTR results page and will follow a random comment to facebook and then receive coaching?).

So that's kind of my point here, if you want to fill his thread with such flimsy accusations (barring yourdoom's reviews being found as false in some way and barring yourdoom deliberately lying), then the standard for posting in any coach's thread is going to be incredibly low and I think the results will be rather negative for this forum. That's my opinion though, and I'm not nearly always right.

And I don't like that the posts get deleted, it sidetracks the discussion of the allegations into coverups or conspiracies. At the same time I don't want coaches being slandered by extremist accusations or by people sensationalizing minor issues, so I don't like thin accusations or hunches being thrown up all the time.

Also, where is the line then drawn? A 1 post count user can or can't say "this coaches reviews look suspect?" What if nobody agrees? What about a 1k post count user that hasn't posted in a year? What about somebody with a personal past with the coach? What about another coach of the same game type? What about a coach that works for a competing training site?

That looks like a nightmare group of decisions to me, so why not just lower the bar for accusations and evidence by putting it in a place where false accusations are much less damaging and where serious allegations that turn out to be scandals can more quickly and efficiently lead to a conclusion (and real action can be taken against the coach)?

To the bolded...

1 - Have you seen anybody complain about the quality of the product that YourDoom has sold them (barring the one review from yesterday, which is both partially negative and still outstanding)?

2 - What is wrong with putting unproven accusations or accusations that you do not believe warrant the removal of a coach's thread in this forum first, rather than fighting out 50-100 post accusations in a coach's thread. Imagine if I come into your thread and start drawing conclusions from what you've said about YourDoom in posts, especially if I take them out of context... do you want to defend those back and forth for 50 posts and you're happy with how that would reflect in your coaching page? I can't imagine that.

You say it'd be a free-for all if all comments could stay. That implies there are tons of comments with suspicion. I don't think that's the case. That's why I believe they can stay, and be answered in a back and forth.

And there's no free for all on other coaching threads where the other 99% of coaches pay and don't delete posts.

I'd like to point out that I didn't accuse. I asked, and told Ryan the burden of proof was on him. Then other people made other points about other things (spamming) that I don't really think are a huge deal either. Still, Ryan lied about that, so clearly he thought it was a big deal.

What I think doesn't matter, really.

Ryan thought it was a big enough deal that he had the initial screen shots deleted.

And Ryan thought it was a big enough deal that he didn't, and hasn't yet, admitted either to outright spamming OR to lying about it when called on it. Nor has he admitted to lying about who deleted the posts to begin with.

I mean, these were simple questions that required simple, honest answers which I was ready to accept and said privately and publicly. The simple fact is that Ryan has been totally dishonest in responding to all of these questions, or he just hasn't responded at all. When he chooses to lie in his response, and the lie is demonstrable, that shouldn't be deleted when he wants it to.

And when he doesn't answer a question that has never been answered before (like how many times he's deleted posts in the past / would his thread REALLY be a zoo if he let a few questions stand) it doesn't give him any authority to have those deleted. He should need to have the highest burden of proof, as you say, to delete a handful of questions when they don't interfere with the content of what he's selling. Not the other way around.

1) No. And I publicly have said 100 times I'd consider personally buying his coaching. That's not the point.

2) I didn't make accusations. I asked a few questions to understand what was going on. The other accusation that WAS made was PROVEN TO BE TRUE by simply asking PTR.

3) I've had my coaching listing for a long time. I've never had any of the problems Ryan has had. Not once have I felt annoyed or trolled or spammed. Maybe I'm lucky. But when someone questions me, I'm happy to answer until they're content. That's the price I pay for charging so much for a product. It doesn't take long, really, and usually a couple of well grounded answers lets people know what's up. When this is your job, you get paid $425/hour as Ryan does, it strikes me as fairly obvious that you might have to do that.

4) I'll ask again. How many times has Ryan had to do this?

5) I'll ask again. How many posts has he had deleted? Is it so much time that it's unreasonable to expect him to answer a couple questions, even if he has to repeat himself?

Here's something that doesn't add up (to me).

I'm going to post this here, then I'll be gone for awhile, maybe until tomorrow, I have no more time for this issue today:

Two YourDoom posts:

The bolded parts are confusing me, I'd appreciate if YourDoom would respond to those.

Chicago,

if somebody has proof, its a no brainer. But as you pointed out, accusations without bullet proof, should be dealt with very carefully.

Especially if somebody is paying for a service.

In "public" life you can be sued pretty badly for stuff like what people did. Now i´m a realist and pragmatist, and we all know, its not gonna happen. Doesn´t make it right though.

Under what pretense can you be sued? Libel/Slander? It all depends if it is factual or not. In this case, it was and there's nothing Ryan could sue for. That's what I explained to you earlier after your posted that article... In this case, a cursory glance by a mod would have shown that it was evidence being presented, not a baseless accusation. The evidence was pretty obviously factual, or at least very likely to be factual. Instead of instantly deleting it, mods could have used their eyes, seen what it was that Ryan so desperately wanted deleted, and sent the e-mail to PTR to ask about it. The truth would have come out in no time, and it would have been very obvious that no defamation/slander/libel had occurred because Ryan was engaging in the exact behavior he was accused of engaging in.

More importantly, as his business partner, think, please have him come in and respond to Chicago's post with the boldings. And if you would, have him respond to the questions I've asked repeatedly. They don't require long answers. I know he's been reading the thread as this conversation has progressed, so let's give him a moment to respond before we talk about libel and slander.

Revlis,

Burger King could sue you and me if we went into their restaurants with posters of dead animals and post scientific studies of how mayonaise is "bad". Although we would be saying the "TRUTH" that they indeed kill animals .

Are we on the same line here that this would be not cool at best? Just asking, before we discuss further.

Self advertising on PTR is not cheating. Ryan has also never deleted any reviews of his coaching. Based on that i do not know how he ought to answer anything.

He´ll prolly do anyways, just saying, i do think you have a different sense of entitlement (thats why i posted the link above, there is a section about it).

Will respond to the intellectual argument later. It's interesting, and I'm not an expert. I do know that on a PERSONAL level one cannot sue for damages if something someone says is true. I don't know how it works on a corporate level. But I'll read about it and we chat about it another time. I'd like to get to the bottom of this so I can be less annoyed before digressing.

Facts:

I never accused Ryan of cheating.

I never accused him of deleting reviews.

I gently and respectfully advised him to provide proof to people to quiet those with questions. I acknowledged that I had questions as well, but didn't accuse and said it was likely that he didn't need to do what he was alleged by people to have done.

I did ask him why he deleted questions, comments, etc in his thread.
I asked him why he thought that was the right thing to do.
Then I asked him approximately how many times he'd done that.

Since then I've accused him of lying to me, and other people, and provided evidence of numerous instances of that.

We're waiting on his response to that.

I've also indicated my personal opinion that I think that reflects badly on the service you guys are selling which is otherwise probably valuable to players.

So, from a normative perspective, I think Ryan OUGHT to respond to anything people respectfully ask him for his own business/self-interest. Here, and in his thread. If he'd done that initially, he wouldn't be in this situation.

I also think he should respond because he OUGHT to give answers to the people he lied to (like me) when they feel understandably disrespected and deceived, and have asked for them persistently, but without going over the line.

Finally, he should understand that people's levels of respect and tone may be lower than normal because they feel slighted and deceived. I certainly fall into this camp, and can admit that I've lost my cool with his lack of answers more than I normally would.

Revlis,

its not just an intellectual debate, its essential on your philosophy of dealing with other people. Its not that hard.

• On a corporate level its illegal.

• On a "personal" level, the owner will probably just kick you out and you´re not allowed back in. If you do it again, the cops will come. No brainer.

• And if you do such things in a night club, you´ll wake up in a hospital with "rectal pain"

• On the internet - nothing happens. But that aint makin it right. And since you seem to be 100% professional and a correct guy (your thread speaks for itself), i thought you´d care.

Whatever Ryan does is his own business and you have no "right" to get any answer.

Is it in his interest to answer ? Perhaps. But thats totally HIS business, and not mine and not yours.

Fwiw, so that there is no misunderstanding. We´re talking about property rights which is a hot topic for libertarians like myself

In your own home, you can say about burger king whatever you want. In public i think you´re accountable to saying the truth (thus, you can post here w/e you want).
The public part gets complicated with journalistic rights and i´m no legal expert to know all hints.
But thats not the discussion anyways.

On somebody else´s property, MY POST ABOVE is the case.

Ryans thread is his property(2p2) and other rules apply.

I never said I had a right to an answer. I said I thought he should, from a normative perspective. He'd be doing what seems to be the right thing by answering here, instead of hawking his website again in his other listing.

And please answer the question I posed to you on professional/business ethics vis a vis me and Ryan. I spent a great deal of time responding to things you sent me. Please respond back so we can have a good conversation on the topic you're bringing up.

Hey ChicagoRy,

First I wanna say thank you for your assistance in this matter. You are an excellent moderator and I have complete respect for you.

I asked the forum cop to delete nilaynilays original post. I've only ever done this with two other posts in my life. They were both one line posts which accused me of faking reviews after I had already addressed the issue in my thread.

I didn't even know deleting posts from your coaching thread was even an option until very recently.



I said this to revils regarding a post that he made quoting nilaynilay's post in my thread. revils first post was deleted by the forum cop before I ever saw it or even knew it existed. The forum cop told me that he deleted the post bc he assumed that I also wanted that one deleted as well.

I forwarded that PM from forum cop to revils yesterday.

I also just forwarded you the same PM from Forum Cop to confirm this. I'm sure he will also confirm this fact if asked.


Thanks again for your help,
Ryan

i am not happy with the mod forum cop. the idea i get is that doom has a special relationship with him. this is the first time i have also heard any coach del threads. the issue i have with forumcop is that he didnt seem to actually read my post or judge its merits. he just del it coz thats what doom told him to do

i have repeatedy asked for the mod who deleted mhy posts to take ownership and post here.
So far he hasnt even bothered to contact me and tell me why he del my posts. specially when they were true and in fact supported by links in my OP whihc he deleted. I think no body disputes my post wasnt a one liner troll or a made up lie.

Why is a mod not accountable when he deleted a genuine post asking genuine Q which can be addressed in 2 lines by the coach. 2p2 members pay for the coaching and no 2p2 members post deserves to be treated like this.

Are you guys going to look into this or just continue? Are you going to ask Forumcop why he was so eager to del any post yourdoom wanted del. so eager that yourdoom confirms revlis post got del simply coz forumcop thought doom wanted it gone

come on-just coz doom wants it del doesnt mean it gets del. This is exactly the kind of thing we want to avoid at all costs.



Who would be the right person to report forumcop behavior as hasty/misuse/misjudgement of forum powers

Chicago I am looking upto you for guidance for the last one. You are a role model mode IMO. not saying this just based on this thread alone but from what i have seen over 2 yrs.

FWIW:

There is confirmation from Forum Cop, a moderator who takes care of the coaching board, that Ryan did ask for Nilay's post to be deleted. Here's the PM from this morning which I accept as an accident, as far as my post goes.

YourDoom had requested a post by the user "nilaynilay" be deleted from his thread because he was making an unfounded accusation.

In the post of yours which was deleted, you quoted the nilaynilay post that YourDoom had originally requested to be deleted. Your post was deleted for this reason, however it was in error and the quote should have just been edited out.

The post you made has since been restored in its entirety in the YourDoom coaching thread.

This was my error, I apologize.

-FC

----

In this thread, YourDoom wrote:

"Your post looked like spam which is why it was deleted by the 2+2 mods.
But if you really have an actual legit question for me, then I apologize and will now address it."

Now that it has been established that you had a legit question and a legit beef with YourDoom, it seems obvious that he should address it, as he said he would.

some Q for forumcop altho i am not expecting any answers:

# why hasnt my OP in dooms coaching thread being restored? even after screenshots and a written confirmation from PTR?

#DID You bother to check if accusation was unfounded before del it.

#As a mod do you accept it is your job to atleast check the post before del. takes 2 mins tops

#Why did you pm revlis and not me? IT was my OP you del. why do you think i am any less imp to inform.

#IF i had paid for a coaching lisiting would I have been treated diff(you would have pmd me like u did revlis?). if yes explain what makes a diff in this case.

#Why didnt you respond when i repeatedly asked for the said mod to contact me.

#Biggest Q: when a coach requests a del is it your usual policy to del wihtout asking any questions. if not then what caused you to not follow that rule in this instance. if yes then then can we get official statement on this.

I am now in doubt that it is possible that any coaching thread i read is basically a censored edition. my post was del wo any pm to me. If i hadnt stuck around and unless revlis got involved i think nobody would have any clue.

I think its not fair to coaches who have never asked for any del. As rite now i dont know which is which and anyone else either.

2p2 needs to be assured that the coaching threads we read are not censored versions of what a coach wants us to see barring unfounded allegations or trolling(both proven not to be the case here)

You have been proven to lie too many times here and all on record. your word no longer holds any value. It means nothing to me when you say you did it 3 times unless you care to back it up with irrefutable proof.

and stop making a big deal of asked politely(you keep repeating this any chance you get). the tone you use in a PM is between you and the pms recipient. and everyone else has also been more than polite to you and I cant say you have reciprocated.

Since when does a paid thread even remotely compare to a business ? Get real, the thread ain't your property just because you paid for it; in that sense and since it stays a public place there's no such thing as illegality when you post something against the coach's service. I mean wtf, you're implying that because YourDoom paid to advertise for a product, he can just censor everyone ? This is not some room he bought where he can decide wheter or not you're allowed to enter. He's paid to sell a product, the marketplace is open for everyone though.

It bugs me how many amalgams you've made so far to try to dodge out the evidence that the posts on PTR is plain spam, that posts have been deleted because they weren't going in OP's way. I don't have nothing to say about spamming PTR if that is indeed allowed, but deleting the posts that reveal the obvious because they weren't suited to your wishes is a joke, not even mentioning lying about the fact you did ask for a delete and saying that the mods did it on their own.

Thinkitthrough might be the biggest scammer on 2+2. Charging thousands of dollars for coaching when there's no way he actually beats high stakes anymore. My friend will pay you 2bb/100 to play at $25/$50 and I'm absolutely positive you will not take him up on this offer. It's ridiculous what people can get away with because most of you are so stupid.

Last time I checked he charged $250/hour, not thousands. And so what if he can't beat high stakes anymore (not saying he can't, I have no idea) If a guy can beat mid stakes or small stakes he obv has something of value to offer if he can teach a loosing or breakeven player how to win.

The only question is if it's worth $250/hour to the student who is playing NL50 or Nl100 and that ultimately is the student's decision, not anyone else.

3 years ago I was paying Chris Sparks (gomukyaself) $350/Hour while I was grinding NL100. 3 years later he's still my coach but his rates have risen quite a bit since then but so has the limits he plays.

And in case you missed it, this post is about yourdoom, not Thinkitthru, (unless the new standard is guilt by association,) (and I'm not saying that Yourdoom is guilty of anything) and yes I am aware they have a business relationship.

I would really like to keep this thread focused on the questions that have been asked of YourDoom. There is no standard of guilt by association here, or at least there shouldn't be. Thinkitthrough has participated in the discussion, and while I disagree with him and have asked him to respond to a couple of my questions and statements of my own feelings (in response to things he's asked me) he has been honest in explaining how he feels and why he feels that way. That's a fair discussion.

Up to this point, YourDoom has not answered questions (having nothing to do with allegations of faking reviews in his thread) in almost a day. I've asked them (and others have as well) so many times that I won't re-post them again. But this thread is about those questions, and Ryan's answers to them. Not thinkitthrough's win-rate or coaching services.