We didn't close up shop, but we did lay off employees.

MM

That extra 4% on income over 250k really crippled your business, huh? Or maybe it was, you know, Republicans effectively banning online poker?

the initiation of black friday was not political. it was enforcement of bank fraud laws

passing the law banning bank transactions with poker sites (uigea) was political, and was pushed by partisan republicans and passed on party line vote

Mason, you don't have to attempt to gaslight people who are smarter than you are. It won't work.

Maybe you could provide a citation for the democrats initiating black Friday?

While this is different topic from what I wrote about, recessions usually occur because there is a problem that is not well understood until after it does its damage.

In 08, there were loans given to people to purchase houses that they could not afford. In 1930, the money supply was too tight and remained that way (and in 08 the money supply was immediately loosened). And in 1920 the recession was caused by the return of troops from the first world war which created a surge in the civilian labor force and recovery of European agriculture which increased supply.

MM

Did PokerStars commit federal bank fraud? I thought that was only FTP.

I don't like that either.

Mason

While being the majority owner of this site, I certainly have the authority to ban posters. But the moderation has been delegated to someone else and it's rare for me to ban a poster.

MM

I'm going by memory, but I think the last year we gave bonuses was 2008.

Mason

Hi playinggameswithu:

I think this is a different issue. In my opinion, what has happened is that the edge over bad players that skilled no-limit hold 'em players have is too large relative to the short term luck factor. And this requires a completely different discussion of which a number of these has already occurred on these forums.

Best wishes,
Mason

I remember when I could still play in glorious fishy games on PartyPoker. When did that stop, again, and why?

This Stockholm Syndrome of going to bat for the people who wrecked your business is a really amazing display of the power of the conservative cult. In this forum we often clown on poor white people for choosing to vote for racism over voting for their own economic interest (minimum wage, labor rights, etc); it's not as often we see someone like Mason, who would have millions more dollars in his bank account were it not for UIGEA, continue to live in such a delusion that he's spent the last 10 years since then continuing to advocate for the election of members of that party (McCain, Romney, Heller, Trump) that explicitly endorse anti-poker policy. It doesn't matter how much disposable cash people have if they can't play poker on the internet. For someone claiming to have the best interests of poker in mind, holy crap are your priorities misguided.

I bought a lot of 2+2 poker books back in the day, but I think the last one was in 2007. I wonder what changed?

No.

Again no. I'm not an expert on this stuff and what I'm about to say may not be correct, and I haven't talked to our account yet. But Two Plus Two, which is now actually two companies, is set up as a one person LLC. That means that any profit left in the company after all our expenses (which includes things like salaries, rent, printing costs, insurance, server costs, royalties, commissions, other distributions, utilities, and so on) are passed through to me as personal income. Thus the large corporate tax cut does not affect Two Plus Two.

Also, when you say "because of a tax law which was trump's only contribution to the obama economy," even assuming that you're correct, it should be a mighty big contribution.

MM

Grunch:

Who ****ing cares?

A number of years ago, we were contacted by a different printer (from the one we used) that gave us estimates which were less than half what we were current paying. But then they sent us samples, and you're right, the stuff was cheap.

Mason

LOL the biggest giveaway in the tax bill is the pass through deduction.

You're misplacing the blame. It was the fault of people in the poker industry who made Black Friday occur. What do you think lawmakers should do when it appears FTP flat out robbed its clients?

Don't get me wrong. It sucked and still sucks. However, you're using partisan politics to cast a bad light on Democrats for something where others were the primary bad actors.

Also Mason, talk to your tax professional, not taking a salary is begging for an audit; you're evading FICA.

Mason,

1) do you think Trump is capable of being the head of the executive branch, including being CiC of the military?

2) do you think the increased risk of nuclear war under trump (and thus the increased risk of apocalypse) is worth a potential increase in stock market value due to business perception of a friendly regulatory environment?

3) assuming your answer is yes to either 1) or 2), why should thinking individuals care about anything else you have to say?

dth123451:

What's interesting is that over the years, we've actually have had meetings with other organizations who told us the exact same thing. As an example, I remember one meeting in 2006 where the people we were meeting with told us that 2+2 was sitting on a giant oil well that was just gushing money and with their help we would get a lot of it. But what they wanted to do seemed somewhat unethical to us so we didn't work with them.

I remember another meeting a few years later where we were told that there were a ton of advertisers for this website that we weren't getting and if we would just let them help us get these additional advertisers we would make a lot more money. But when they sent us a sample list of some of the advertisers that they could get, these were all entities that we were either currently working with or who we had already worked with.

And there are a number of other examples I could cite.

Yet despite of our ineptness, and remember that I'm a mathematician and not a business man, 2+2 was successful beyond our wildest dreams. I guess it's too bad that you weren't around to guide us.

But I've never claimed to be a nice person. During our heyday, both David and I would say that we could care less if you liked us or thought that we were nice. But we also said that unless you were that extremely rare poker talent, if you wanted to improve your poker game, then you needed to read and study 2+2 books.

Mason

If this is correct, then I'll do better than I thought. Too bad this change didn't happen during the poker boom.

Mason

Hi Paul:

No. I agree that Republicans and Democrats are both to blame. If you go back to before the UIGEA, there was a vote on a bill in the House of Representatives, (which died in the Senate) and someone like Rich Muny can tell you more about this than me, where the vote was overwhelming bipartisan and against Internet poker.

Best wishes,
Mason

Again you don't know what you're talking about. FICA was always paid.

By the way, there were over six years when I worked and didn't didn't pay FICA. This was during the time I was a federal employee and we didn't pay FICA.

Mason

The power of this cult is absolutely incredible. Some House Democrats tried (and failed, but hey, MINOR DETAIL) to do what Senate Republicans ultimately finished off - both sides are equally to blame, vote Trump!

People taking out loans on houses they couldn't afford is just a part of what occurred in 08. The Housing bill from what I recall had bipartisan support. The derivative market which Greenspan and others allowed to go on caused a lot of the damage as well.

Simply put what has hurt the poker world has been from the poker industry itself (FTP, UB, and AP, and so forth), both sides of lawmakers.

And putting your faith in Trump in terms of your business, a guy who panders to the religious right, is questionable at best. There are a whole lot of religious people out there that think gambling is going to turn us into satin suited Satan worshiping degenerates and are opposed to poker. Trump won't raise a finger to help the poker world so long as the religious right is a needed vote.

Ask the leader of Isis.

Shame on you. When I worked for the Census Bureau, one of the things that I learned about was not to ask questions which would condition the person being asked to answer the question in a certain way.

By the way, just to give a more sophisticated example of conditioning, wasn't Winston Churchill the warmonger and Nevile Chamberlain the man who sought peace.

Are you a thinking individual? As for me, I believe in individual freedom. That means that others are free to think in however the way they want to think. And to answer your question, you're concerned with how I think or you wouldn't be posting in this thread. So you should be able to answer your question better than I can.

MM

I agree with most of what you state. However, no one is asking Trump to help the poker industry. We just need government to leave it alone and let free market forces apply.

By the way, while I do agree that many social conservatives are anti-gambling, those on the extreme left usually want to legislate for the social good which can also mean no gambling.

Best wishes,
Mason