Congrats to Rich for destroying Druff in the debate. Congrats to Druff for wasting my morning.
Look forward to the rest of the show.
Congrats to Rich for destroying Druff in the debate. Congrats to Druff for wasting my morning.
Look forward to the rest of the show.
Originally Posted by Jasep
Rich spoke very well and had good answers to the good questions, and was patent when druff asked the completely unnecessary questions like how Rich reacted to a troll on 2p2 lol. debate went on for wayyyy to long ended up shutting it down around 10pm cause druff was beating a dead horse.
if i was a American i would sign up my support for the PPA today.
Rich: Nice work on the debate and your support of the poker community in the USA
all hail Hydra
Originally Posted by DanDruff:Since I'm a 6'2" Republican with an average-sized nose and a last name which doesn't end with "stein", "man", or "berg", I can hide among the goyim and remain undetected unless I open my mouth about money matters.
I'm about halfway through the "debate" now and I definitely agree with the above posters. I've spoken to Rich a bunch in the past few months (I do a weekly/bi-weekly interview with him and went on his podcast a few weeks back) and he is really smart and sees more than one step ahead, so a lot of the criticisms against the PPA (which I have voiced myself) he is able to answer and make a case the other way. If you actually get into specifics with him he will tear apart virtually every arguement. It also helps the PPA's cause that he's a really good guy and straight shooter.
The only criticism I still have of the PPA is they are a bit reactionary. Also, if anyone has any questions they want me to ask Rich in my weekly interview (follow-ups from Druff's interview or whatever), just PM me and I'll give it a look.
I write things about poker at my Poker Blog and elsewhere on the Internets
I will agree that he is ready to "make a case the other way" because he is so used to answering these questions in very similar interviews/discussions/posts, so he pretty much has reasonable-sounding answers prepared in his head to fire off. He's also good at thinking on his feet and responding to unforeseen questions, while still sounding genuine.
However, I found the debate often went like this:
1) I would ask him a question or raise an issue.
2) He would give a long, detailed answer to a different but somewhat similar topic, but would not address the main points of my question.
3) In an attempt to not appear to be interrupting my guest too much, I would let him talk for far longer than I did, also hoping he would eventually answer my direct question.
4) Finally I would interrupt and ask the question again, and he would either say "Let me finish, this is important" and still not really answer, or come back again with an answer that really isn't one.
These are great debate tactics if your goal is to "win" in the eyes of those who aren't really paying attention, but is poor form if you want to really play fair and bring out a frank discussion of the issues.
One segment of the interview that was particularly tilting to me was the UB stuff.
Ask anyone who was closely involved in following/researching the AP/UB scandal, and they will tell you that the PPA was virtually silent on the issue, when their support would have really helped keep people off the site. Remember, UB remained fairly active prior to Black Friday, mostly because casual players were not aware of the scandal, or thought everything had gotten better. If the PPA sent out even a single strongly-worded e-mail, warning people to stay away from AP/UB (and giving the reasons why), that would have done a LOT to inform the casual players who otherwise did not have time/interest to read sites like 2+2.
That didn't happen.
So I took Rich to task for this, and the discussion went something like this:
Me: "How come you guys didn't warn your million-player membership base to stay away from UB?"
Rich: "We did. Senator D'Amato released a statement warning people about the ongoing cheating scandal."
Me: "That's not going to be seen by a lot of people. I'm talking about e-mailing all million members with a strongly-worded e-mail, detailing that it's unsafe to play on AP/UB, and that the previous cheaters are still in power there."
Rich: "We did send an e-mail."
Me: "Where? Nobody ever talked about receiving this on 2+2. You're telling me that a million people got it, and not one came onto 2+2 and discussed it"
Rich: "People don't always discuss everything on 2+2. But we sent out an e-mail."
Me: "How come nobody I know received this e-mail? How come nobody has ever talked about receiving it? What did the e-mail say?"
Rich: "As I said, Senator D'Amato released a statement regarding the UB cheating, and I felt it covered everything. If you don't think a Senator releasing a statement is good enough, I don't know what to tell you."
Me: "But where was this statement released? How many casual players would have likely seen that? I want to know if you directly contacted your base via e-mail."
Rich: "Senator D'Amato released a statement, I already told you. Haley Hintze even wrote about Senator D'Amato's statement. And we did send an e-mail."
If this is considered "destroying" me in a debate, then I guess we have different definitions of what constitutes destruction.
Every time I tried to directly ask him if (and how) it was made clear to all million members to stay away from UB, I got the run-around, as I did with many questions.
I have watched a lot of political debates, and this is exactly what politicians do when they know that answering a question truthfully will make them look bad.
Near the end of the interview, I got him to admit (after asking repeatedly) that the PPA never took a single piece of constructive criticism and integrated it in their policy, during its entire 6-7 year existence. Not once. He tried to say they did, by claiming that they took suggestions from the public (such as creating a social media presence), but these were things they weren't yet doing and hadn't really considered. That's not the same as taking constructive criticism and changing course -- something they've never done.
His explanation for this was simply that you can't change your organization every time an outsider criticizes you. Again, this wasn't the question. I wasn't asking why he didn't change the PPA every time a troll criticized it. I asked why, in 6 1/2 years, not ONE change came from the result of constructive criticism from the community. He answered again that you can't just let people on a forum dictate the way you run your organization -- which is true, but again avoiding the question.
I appreciate that Rich devoted 3 hours of his time to the show (especially as it ran late into the night for him), and I will give him credit for being a great spin-doctor. I'm not kidding when I say that the guy definitely has the skill set for politics, though I would have to see him operate in person (as opposed to the phone) to be sure.
However, I was hoping that more people here would have seen through his frequent obvious avoidance of questions and points I was trying to make, instead choosing to respond with feelgood soundbytes or rambling speeches.
He also frequently responded to the straw man argument of, "I know people like to say that we're flying around on private jets and eating caviar, but that's so far from the truth."
This is despite the fact that I mentioned, from the very beginning, that I did NOT feel the PPA was spending its funds on needless frills for its officers. So why repeatedly respond to this "private plane" argument when I'm trying to ask him about completely unrelated matters?
Again, it was done because it's a standard debate tactic for question avoidance. You need to have some sort of response, so creating a straw man and responding to it sounds a lot better than giving a bad-sounding answer to a tough question.
This is actually why it is tilting for me to watch political debates. I see politicians on BOTH sides using these sorts of tactics, and I never really get the answer to some of the very good and specific questions asked by the moderators.
By the way, in case anyone is curious, I prepared a list of questions for him beforehand.
Some thought I asked less-important questions (such as the ones about specific forum posts he made) because I decided on the spot that I was frustrated with him and wanted to be an asshole.
Not true. I actually asked everything in the exact order I had written out prior to the interview. I did omit a few questions at the very end because I felt 3 hours was enough, and the remaining ones were somewhat redundant at that point.
Haven't listened yet, but due to the replies + Druff's response here it appears he lost.
Druff you asking about the PPA vs UB/AP is the exact same as us asking you about jasep. Pot, meet kettle.
I'd imagine in both instances it was a similar situation....And I'm not trying to re-open that whole topic....I am fully responsible for losing my money and receiving any info earlier would not have helped...but it could have avoid some of the people buying more shares, etc.
Similar to if the PPA released UB/AP info it could have avoided people losing more money.
I don't want to hijack this thread with Jasep discussion, but feel free to bring this matter up again in the Jasep thread itself. I have nothing to hide as far as this is concerned. I felt I already answered this both on radio and in forum posts, but maybe you feel I haven't. Feel free to ask all of the direct questions you want, and I will answer them all.
Just not in this thread.
Potential Payroll Tax Problem with PPA & Rich Muny
At @ 27:00 minutes into last nights show Muny describes his compensation. While he has said he is an officer of the PPA (Vice-President), he describes his pay in a way that leads me to believe he is tax reporting it as though he is an independent contractor/consultant: He says he pays his own social security - which is what an independent contractor filing a schedule C would do. In my home state, California, any officer an organization is by definition an employee. The law may be different in the state Muny works in, and the state law is determinant for federal payroll taxes. Still I would rather expect the law in his state to be the same as that in California, officer as employee should be pretty standard to all states I believe.
Thus, this issue really needs to be looked into by the PPA and resolved.
If the law in his state is the same as in mine, California, then PPA should be paying the social security tax and other payroll taxes for Muny and all other officers of the PPA. And Muny would not be able to claim as a deduction social security and other expenses related to his PPA activities on a schedule C--thus Muny would owe more income tax.
Probably not a big deal EXCEPT it implies the PPA lacks effectively leadership and/or integrity with tax compliance and financial controls. I wouldn't want to put any money into an organization like that. And this issue could be the tip of an iceberg of money shenanigans.
Last edited by GrenadaRoger; 02-20-2013 at 12:56 PM.
You might be correct about this, and perhaps they will end up paying tax penalties in the future, but that really isn't important to me.Potential Payroll Tax Problem with PPA & Rich Muny
At @ 27:00 minutes into last nights show Muny describes his compensation. While he has said he is an officer of the PPA (Vice-President), he describes his pay that leads me to believe he is tax reporting it as though he is an independent contractor/consultant. He says he pays his own social security - which is was an independent contractor filing a schedule C would do. In my home state, California, any officer an organization is by definition an employee. The law may be different in the state Muny work in, and the state law is determinant for federal payroll taxes. Still I would rather expect the law in his state to be the same as that in California, office as employee should be pretty standard to all states I believe.
Thus, this issue really needs to be looked into by the PPA and resolved.
If the law in his state is the same as in mine, California, then PPA should be paying the social security tax and other payroll taxes for Muny and all other officers of the PPA. And Muny would not be able to claim as a deduction social security and other expenses related to his PPA activities on a schedule C--thus Muny would owe more income tax. Probably not a big deal EXCEPT it implies the PPA lacks effectively leadership and/or integrity with tax compliance and financial controls. I wouldn't want to put any money into an organization like that. And this issue could be the tip on an iceberg of money shenanigans.
Many of these tax "gray areas" are never caught, and when they are, often the penalty is minimal.
I also don't have a problem with Muny receiving a salary, and I believe that he is actually a hard worker and isn't just riding the PPA gravy train.
This is why none of the debate centered around financial impropriety (even though he kept seemingly want to answer to such charges, despite me not making any.)
I am just disappointed that most people who have commented thus far have failed to see the question-dodging he was doing, and that long speeches about semi-related matters are not good answers if you completely avoid the main points being raised by the other side.
I didn't listen. I guess I won.
How many times during the interview when Rich successfully defended the PPA's position on one of your accusations did you apologize and say you must have been wrong on that one? 0.0I will agree that he is ready to "make a case the other way" because he is so used to answering these questions in very similar interviews/discussions/posts, so he pretty much has reasonable-sounding answers prepared in his head to fire off. He's also good at thinking on his feet and responding to unforeseen questions, while still sounding genuine.
However, I found the debate often went like this:
1) I would ask him a question or raise an issue.
2) He would give a long, detailed answer to a different but somewhat similar topic, but would not address the main points of my question.
3) In an attempt to not appear to be interrupting my guest too much, I would let him talk for far longer than I did, also hoping he would eventually answer my direct question.
4) Finally I would interrupt and ask the question again, and he would either say "Let me finish, this is important" and still not really answer, or come back again with an answer that really isn't one.
These are great debate tactics if your goal is to "win" in the eyes of those who aren't really paying attention, but is poor form if you want to really play fair and bring out a frank discussion of the issues.
One segment of the interview that was particularly tilting to me was the UB stuff.
Ask anyone who was closely involved in following/researching the AP/UB scandal, and they will tell you that the PPA was virtually silent on the issue, when their support would have really helped keep people off the site. Remember, UB remained fairly active prior to Black Friday, mostly because casual players were not aware of the scandal, or thought everything had gotten better. If the PPA sent out even a single strongly-worded e-mail, warning people to stay away from AP/UB (and giving the reasons why), that would have done a LOT to inform the casual players who otherwise did not have time/interest to read sites like 2+2.
That didn't happen.
So I took Rich to task for this, and the discussion went something like this:
Me: "How come you guys didn't warn your million-player membership base to stay away from UB?"
Rich: "We did. Senator D'Amato released a statement warning people about the ongoing cheating scandal."
Me: "That's not going to be seen by a lot of people. I'm talking about e-mailing all million members with a strongly-worded e-mail, detailing that it's unsafe to play on AP/UB, and that the previous cheaters are still in power there."
Rich: "We did send an e-mail."
Me: "Where? Nobody ever talked about receiving this on 2+2. You're telling me that a million people got it, and not one came onto 2+2 and discussed it"
Rich: "People don't always discuss everything on 2+2. But we sent out an e-mail."
Me: "How come nobody I know received this e-mail? How come nobody has ever talked about receiving it? What did the e-mail say?"
Rich: "As I said, Senator D'Amato released a statement regarding the UB cheating, and I felt it covered everything. If you don't think a Senator releasing a statement is good enough, I don't know what to tell you."
Me: "But where was this statement released? How many casual players would have likely seen that? I want to know if you directly contacted your base via e-mail."
Rich: "Senator D'Amato released a statement, I already told you. Haley Hintze even wrote about Senator D'Amato's statement. And we did send an e-mail."
If this is considered "destroying" me in a debate, then I guess we have different definitions of what constitutes destruction.
Every time I tried to directly ask him if (and how) it was made clear to all million members to stay away from UB, I got the run-around, as I did with many questions.
I have watched a lot of political debates, and this is exactly what politicians do when they know that answering a question truthfully will make them look bad.
Near the end of the interview, I got him to admit (after asking repeatedly) that the PPA never took a single piece of constructive criticism and integrated it in their policy, during its entire 6-7 year existence. Not once. He tried to say they did, by claiming that they took suggestions from the public (such as creating a social media presence), but these were things they weren't yet doing and hadn't really considered. That's not the same as taking constructive criticism and changing course -- something they've never done.
His explanation for this was simply that you can't change your organization every time an outsider criticizes you. Again, this wasn't the question. I wasn't asking why he didn't change the PPA every time a troll criticized it. I asked why, in 6 1/2 years, not ONE change came from the result of constructive criticism from the community. He answered again that you can't just let people on a forum dictate the way you run your organization -- which is true, but again avoiding the question.
I appreciate that Rich devoted 3 hours of his time to the show (especially as it ran late into the night for him), and I will give him credit for being a great spin-doctor. I'm not kidding when I say that the guy definitely has the skill set for politics, though I would have to see him operate in person (as opposed to the phone) to be sure.
However, I was hoping that more people here would have seen through his frequent obvious avoidance of questions and points I was trying to make, instead choosing to respond with feelgood soundbytes or rambling speeches.
Everybody connected with the PPA and with forums etc did know about the UB/AP scandals, they just didn't all get on board with your boycott. People in chat on the sites themselves would post links etc. and that did nothing to lower the player pool. You just don't get that not everyone took your position. You yourself don't boycott live casino's even though there are people out there telling you that you should because of various issues, not the least is that they are controlled by the mafia. You still frequent them yet can't understand why people played on UB. You are smart yet stubborn to a fault.
Rich didn't dodge questions, he did come up with a couple instances where advice given on forums directly changed their course of action. One was with the adoption of social media and the other was with using the financials for advocating for online poker as the main argument instead of using the moral argument. You didn't seem to even listen to his responses and instead just reasserted your accusation then moved on to the next topic.
You had the point that the PPA didn't use the emotional 911 money laundering risk for terrorist argument. Rich agreed that it was a great argument to use and then went on to show how they used that argument successfully. What was your rebuttal? Just to accuse them of not using it properly again.
You were not debating a debating professional, you were debating a subject matter expert that knew way more about the organization than you did.
That's why I hesitated even mentioning it, and do not want to re-open the discussion. Everything has been gone over and I don't hold you at fault.I don't want to hijack this thread with Jasep discussion, but feel free to bring this matter up again in the Jasep thread itself. I have nothing to hide as far as this is concerned. I felt I already answered this both on radio and in forum posts, but maybe you feel I haven't. Feel free to ask all of the direct questions you want, and I will answer them all.
Just not in this thread.
But I'm saying you bringing up UB/AP is very similar...ie I don't agree with your stance on it.
Rich said that the PPA has a million members.How many times during the interview when Rich successfully defended the PPA's position on one of your accusations did you apologize and say you must have been wrong on that one? 0.0
I will agree that he is ready to "make a case the other way" because he is so used to answering these questions in very similar interviews/discussions/posts, so he pretty much has reasonable-sounding answers prepared in his head to fire off. He's also good at thinking on his feet and responding to unforeseen questions, while still sounding genuine.
However, I found the debate often went like this:
1) I would ask him a question or raise an issue.
2) He would give a long, detailed answer to a different but somewhat similar topic, but would not address the main points of my question.
3) In an attempt to not appear to be interrupting my guest too much, I would let him talk for far longer than I did, also hoping he would eventually answer my direct question.
4) Finally I would interrupt and ask the question again, and he would either say "Let me finish, this is important" and still not really answer, or come back again with an answer that really isn't one.
These are great debate tactics if your goal is to "win" in the eyes of those who aren't really paying attention, but is poor form if you want to really play fair and bring out a frank discussion of the issues.
One segment of the interview that was particularly tilting to me was the UB stuff.
Ask anyone who was closely involved in following/researching the AP/UB scandal, and they will tell you that the PPA was virtually silent on the issue, when their support would have really helped keep people off the site. Remember, UB remained fairly active prior to Black Friday, mostly because casual players were not aware of the scandal, or thought everything had gotten better. If the PPA sent out even a single strongly-worded e-mail, warning people to stay away from AP/UB (and giving the reasons why), that would have done a LOT to inform the casual players who otherwise did not have time/interest to read sites like 2+2.
That didn't happen.
So I took Rich to task for this, and the discussion went something like this:
Me: "How come you guys didn't warn your million-player membership base to stay away from UB?"
Rich: "We did. Senator D'Amato released a statement warning people about the ongoing cheating scandal."
Me: "That's not going to be seen by a lot of people. I'm talking about e-mailing all million members with a strongly-worded e-mail, detailing that it's unsafe to play on AP/UB, and that the previous cheaters are still in power there."
Rich: "We did send an e-mail."
Me: "Where? Nobody ever talked about receiving this on 2+2. You're telling me that a million people got it, and not one came onto 2+2 and discussed it"
Rich: "People don't always discuss everything on 2+2. But we sent out an e-mail."
Me: "How come nobody I know received this e-mail? How come nobody has ever talked about receiving it? What did the e-mail say?"
Rich: "As I said, Senator D'Amato released a statement regarding the UB cheating, and I felt it covered everything. If you don't think a Senator releasing a statement is good enough, I don't know what to tell you."
Me: "But where was this statement released? How many casual players would have likely seen that? I want to know if you directly contacted your base via e-mail."
Rich: "Senator D'Amato released a statement, I already told you. Haley Hintze even wrote about Senator D'Amato's statement. And we did send an e-mail."
If this is considered "destroying" me in a debate, then I guess we have different definitions of what constitutes destruction.
Every time I tried to directly ask him if (and how) it was made clear to all million members to stay away from UB, I got the run-around, as I did with many questions.
I have watched a lot of political debates, and this is exactly what politicians do when they know that answering a question truthfully will make them look bad.
Near the end of the interview, I got him to admit (after asking repeatedly) that the PPA never took a single piece of constructive criticism and integrated it in their policy, during its entire 6-7 year existence. Not once. He tried to say they did, by claiming that they took suggestions from the public (such as creating a social media presence), but these were things they weren't yet doing and hadn't really considered. That's not the same as taking constructive criticism and changing course -- something they've never done.
His explanation for this was simply that you can't change your organization every time an outsider criticizes you. Again, this wasn't the question. I wasn't asking why he didn't change the PPA every time a troll criticized it. I asked why, in 6 1/2 years, not ONE change came from the result of constructive criticism from the community. He answered again that you can't just let people on a forum dictate the way you run your organization -- which is true, but again avoiding the question.
I appreciate that Rich devoted 3 hours of his time to the show (especially as it ran late into the night for him), and I will give him credit for being a great spin-doctor. I'm not kidding when I say that the guy definitely has the skill set for politics, though I would have to see him operate in person (as opposed to the phone) to be sure.
However, I was hoping that more people here would have seen through his frequent obvious avoidance of questions and points I was trying to make, instead choosing to respond with feelgood soundbytes or rambling speeches.
Everybody connected with the PPA and with forums etc did know about the UB/AP scandals, they just didn't all get on board with your boycott. People in chat on the sites themselves would post links etc. and that did nothing to lower the player pool. You just don't get that not everyone took your position. You yourself don't boycott live casino's even though there are people out there telling you that you should because of various issues, not the least is that they are controlled by the mafia. You still frequent them yet can't understand why people played on UB. You are smart yet stubborn to a fault.
Rich didn't dodge questions, he did come up with a couple instances where advice given on forums directly changed their course of action. One was with the adoption of social media and the other was with using the financials for advocating for online poker as the main argument instead of using the moral argument. You didn't seem to even listen to his responses and instead just reasserted your accusation then moved on to the next topic.
You had the point that the PPA didn't use the emotional 911 money laundering risk for terrorist argument. Rich agreed that it was a great argument to use and then went on to show how they used that argument successfully. What was your rebuttal? Just to accuse them of not using it properly again.
You were not debating a debating professional, you were debating a subject matter expert that knew way more about the organization than you did.
No chance that all million people read 2+2 about the UB scandal. Others that did read it were confused that everything had been "made right" because of the refunds and the supposed change in ownership.
I know this because of conversations that repeatedly took place with me at live poker rooms.
Live player: "Hey, you were on 60 Minutes about UB, right?"
Me: "Yes, I was."
Live player: "Yeah, great to hear that they paid everyone back and sold it to new owners now. Glad to see it all ended up working out."
Me: "It didn't work out. We were never paid what was really stolen, and the owners are the same ones."
Live player: "What? Wow, I never heard that stuff. But to be honest, I haven't really kept up on it since it all first came out..."
The PPA had a freaking ONE MILLION STRONG member base, many of whom were casual players that don't read forums regularly (or at all). I guarantee that a strongly-worded e-mail, advising everyone to STAY AWAY from AP/UB would have had a significant impact. Would it have made UB into a ghost town? No. There would still have been the greedy grinders, non-PPA members, and those that chose to ignore the warnings. But it would have helped a lot. They had the loudest voice and chose to stay mostly silent. That isn't staying true to their mission statement, which was (in part) to ensure poker players safe and secure places to play.
If the PPA did their best to inform everyone of the dangers of AP/UB, and some people still ignored it, I would have no beef with the PPA regarding this situation. But they didn't do that. Don't just ask me. Ask anyone closely involved with the AP/UB activism, and none will praise the PPA's involvement. Muny insisted last night that they did all they could. It's simply not true.
Regarding taking suggestions from the community, as I already stated, Rich answered a different question while ignoring what I was trying to ask him.
I clearly asked if, in its 6-7 year existence, the PPA ever received constructive criticism and changed course as a result.
He responded by telling me that they took suggestions for social media and also lowered their dues at one point.
That's not answering the question. Taking a suggestion for social media is not changing course due to criticism -- it's adding to your media presence when someone suggests a way you hadn't previously considered. It's not like the PPA was anti-social-media and changed course after someone took them to task for it. It was more of a realization of, "Oh yeah, we SHOULD have an active Facebook page! Thanks for the suggestion!" And lowering the dues was a business decision, to hopefully get more paying members, rather than a response to criticism.
To compare this to PFA, if someone says, "Hey, Druff, can you add support for scribd documents in the messages here?", and then I add it, I'm not responding to constructive criticism. I am adding something by request. That's what the PPA did regarding their social media presence. However, if someone says, "Hey, Druff, your color scheme here is horrendous. Here's what you should change it to...", and then I change it, THAT is responding to constructive criticism.
Two very different things.
I asked if the PPA every changed course after constructive criticism. First he gave me that social media answer (which wasn't a valid response), and then later simply said that he didn't recall one good suggestion in all of the years of criticism on 2+2. What?!
BTW, Deal, speaking of not admitting when you're wrong....
Remember this thread, that YOU created:
http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...to-be-relevant
This was about Muny's extremely loaded poll question on 2+2.
I brought this up last night (as I'm sure you heard), and he wouldn't even admit it was a loaded question. He wouldn't even go as far to admit he could have phrased it better. He insisted that the poll was completely straightforward and clear to all that answered.
I was hoping to at least get an answer like, "Yeah, I probably could have worded that poll a little better", but even on that he stuck to his guns.
There was someone on the show last night who would absolutely never admit to being wrong, but it wasn't me.
It's not similar at all. With Jasep, I did not have enough concrete information at the time to publicly accuse a highly respected member of being a filthy scammer.That's why I hesitated even mentioning it, and do not want to re-open the discussion. Everything has been gone over and I don't hold you at fault.
But I'm saying you bringing up UB/AP is very similar...ie I don't agree with your stance on it.
With the AP/UB situation and the PPA, Muny and others knew with certainty that AP/UB were dirty cheaters. They chose to remain mostly silent on the issue for unknown reasons, possibly because they were afraid it would paint the entire industry in a bad light and thereby interfere with lobbying efforts. In any case, they really dropped the ball. They had access to a million e-mail addresses and the respect of the online poker community, and their strong words against UB would have meant a lot. They instead chose to shy away from the whole thing.
Rich blew that one for sure. One way you know he's a true engineer is the fact he won't admit when he's wrong. The fact remains that he did defend the PPA's actions really well under the lights.
I haven't listened to it yet, but I have always found your arguments against the PPA a bit strange. Not wrong necessarily, just that I disagreed with them. From what I've seen, their decisions are usually pragmatic. They haven't been effective, because it's such an uphill battle, but I could usually understand their reasoning in how they approached their decisions. They haven't always been forthcoming as to their agenda and matters of financing, but I could understand why, as their mission has changed as the climate has changed.
I am really surprised that most think you lost the debate decisively, as I don't find him very good on his radio show, and I don't find him great at spin at all. I find you a very good communicator and effective debater, so I'm anxious to hear if I agree with most here. He must have really improved, or it's an overreaction that someone simply held their own against you and most are viewing that as a win. The lawyer that posts on 2+2(can't recall his screenname right now) seems very quick, and I thought he would give you trouble, but not Rich. I always found Rich lacking real effective communication skills, and that his biggest strength was simply his dogged persistence, even before he was being paid.
I'll listen tonight and form my own opinion.
edit-now that I look closer, most think you lost probably isn't accurate. A few think you have lost is more appropriate as only a few have weighed in.
Last edited by BCR; 02-20-2013 at 02:08 PM.
He did do a good job defending the PPA, but unfortunately some of that involved some pretty obvious sidestepping of questions and making unrelated, feelgood speeches in order to distract people from what I was really asking.Rich blew that one for sure. One way you know he's a true engineer is the fact he won't admit when he's wrong. The fact remains that he did defend the PPA's actions really well under the lights.
These are great tactics if you're trying to win an election and fool rubes into voting for you, but unfortunately not very good if you want to engage in an honest discussion with an opposing party on a radio show.
As you probably saw, I stated in a thread (either this one or the other one about the interview) that Rich is a bright guy, and was not going to let himself get run over. I said that he would likely try to repeatedly sidestep questions, and repeatedly do so until I gave up, and that's pretty much what happened.
As in any debate, I had some positions that were stronger than others, but it disappointed me that I didn't at least get any partial concessions on points like the UB thing. For example, if his UB answer was, "While it's true we could have done more to help in the fight against UB, at the time we were focusing our resources primarily upon getting online poker legalized", I would have accepted that, despite still disagreeing with the PPA's actions. Instead, he just denied that I was correct about UB, and insisted that they did all that could ever be expected of them. I admit that I actually got agitated at that point, because I knew it was completely false. The AP/UB issue has been one very close to my heart for the past 5 1/2 years, and it bothered me to hear Rich giving the PPA credit for action when their actual line was inaction.
There are currently 2 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 2 guests)
Reply With Quote
