A 5 response that gets it all wrong

Moving on in that twoplustwo thread on Gary Carson we get to a response that pretty much gets every detail wrong.

His online persona is somewhat nasty. Whether or not that is reflective of his real life character, I don't know. He certainly considers himself an iconoclast. Since 2+2 are the icons, he sees himself in opposition to all things 2+2.

Part of the reason he isn't visible here is that he insisted all of his old posts be removed after some nastiness with Mason. So being an outsider is at least partly his choice. However, he seems to be up to date on the goings-on on 2+2, so his consciousness lingers here.

If and when he contributes something notable and new, I'm sure there will be discussion here. If it's in book form, it will appear on this forum. [Calling random internet forum posters names and rehashing old arguments don't count.]

Do I have a nasty online persona? I don't think so. Somewhat intolerant of some things, but I think nasty is a stretch. At least one person disagrees with me about that, maybe more than I think do, but I don't think it's accurate to think many people think I have a nasty online persona.

I know the next part is wrong. I don't think of myself as an iconoclast at all. Hell, I don't even know what that means, but I just looked it up.

A person who attacks settled beliefs. I don't think that's entirely accurate, although many have called me that. I have more respect for widely held beleifs than might be apparent to some. I just tend to think that many widely held ideas don't have the wide application that it's often assumed they do.

There are some widely held beliefs that I do attack. But not just because they're widely held, but because they are based on really stupid premises. An example of that is the idea that JT is a better hand than KT or AK is a better hand to have than AA because they are "easy" to get away from.

That's just stupid. It's stupid when Mason says it and it's stupid when Doyle says it.

Easy is not better. Good situations are often difficult to exploit while bad situations are easy to get away from. That does not mean you're better off to just avoid all good situations.

Does that make me an iconoclast? Is so, then I guess I am one.

Now, 2+2 are the icons? What the hell? Somebody's insane. 2+2 has never been an icon. It's always been a niche publisher who published specialty books that mainstream publishers didn't want to bother with. That's not an icon. Hell, back when I used to post on 2+2 it wasn't even that, it was a vanity press for self-publishing work that mainstream publishers didn't want to fool with.

The poker boom hit 2+2 hard, and they've done very well as a result. We've all done well, them more than most of us. But icon? That just trivializes the concept of icon.

At one time I think David Sklansky might have been considered an icon in the poker world. But I think that time has passed. 2+2? Never.

Then the claim that I insisted all my old posts be deleted after some nastiness with Mason.

Not at all. Mason had deleted post I made that answered some criticisms of ideas of mine and so I simply quit posting on 2+2. No nastiness. I wasn't 86'd, I just stopped posting. I didn't make an issue out of no longer posting, I'm not sure most people even knew I wasn't posting any longer. In that time Mason emailed me offereing to make it worth my while financially to post on 2+2 if I'd promise to "be nice to him". By then I'd decided he was nuts and I declined the offer, one which I understood to be an open offer until ....

Steve Badger had some kind of pissing match with Mason. I don't know what it was about, I never cared much one way or another. But Badger was yelling that he wanted his posts removed from the archive because he owned the copyright.

I wasn't sure if Badger had a legit claim to the archival rights. But, I knew I had a special circumstance that gave me an ironclad claim to the archival rights to my own posts, so I decided to intervene on the side of Steve Badger. Mostly I was just being a troll.

The orginal webmaster at 2+2 was Jessica Vecchione. At one point she made a post about the possibiity of publishing a "best of 2+2" column in Poker Digest.

I emailed her and told her she did not have print rights to any of my posts. And that I would only agree to archival rights to my posts if they made all archives of al my posts available to me. She agreed to that.

Later, when Mason deleted some of my posts that agreement was violated. Which technically meant that as soon as Mason deleted one of my posts he lost the archival rights to all the others.

So I pointed that out, and threatened to sue for copyright violation if Mason continued to archive my work without permission. It was my thought at the time that all Mason had to do was ask for permission and I'd give it to him under the same conditions Jessica and I had previously agreed to. But Mason didn't want to do that, so he had Chuck Weinstock remove my posts. He didn't delete them, he just removed them from the database and kept them. I asked him if he'd send me the posts and Chuck refused. Another violation of the agreement I'd made with 2+2 originally.

Pretty much anybody who associates with Mason becomes a weasel eventually, even Chuck.

But, uDevil is right that my being an outsider at 2+2 is my choice. I just decided not to fool with them and stopped posting.

I never demanded that Mason remove my posts from the archives, just that he not do so in violation of copyright. He needed to ask for permission, something Mason just couldn't make himself do.

As for the end of the comment "If and when he contributes something notable and new, I'm sure there will be discussion here. If it's in book form, it will appear on this forum. ".

Since my hold'em book was notable and new when it was published, and there was very little discussion about it on 2+2, I'd kind of doubt that there will be a lot of discussion about any future book length works of mine.

Once you're on Mason's enemies list you stay there.