You dont have to give him anything back but I would personally give him the chance. As he had 63% equity in the pot the second time it shouldve been run (sorry grosvenor but its our cash we are playing for and if we want to run it twice/insurance or whatever then it should be none of your business- the dealer is beingpaid for to run our game) I would see if he would agree to a coin flip or a colour shout on the next flop to at least give him a shot. If you agreed to run it twice I would at least give him this offer. You chose red he choses black and if the flop has 2 or more red cards you keep the pot, if there are 2 or more black cards you give him his half the pot. This would allow you to live with yourself over the thought you had somebody over for a relatively small ammount of cash.

I am sure anyone playing dealers choice has had this situatin arise. On the river you have the nuts in omaha high and bet the pot. A player calls and announcs chop showing the nut low (nut low only no high of any kind). When he is politely told the game is high only and he has clearly made a mistake how many players give him his last be back? If its  regular game and the guy is a regular would you rather make him pay for his mistake by keeping the last bet and have bad feeling at the table or give him his last bet back and seem to be the good guy? I have always given the player his last bet back if it was clear he made a mistake.

blondepoker wont be the same without the real mr blonde.

good luck with whatever you do from here

this means that evil mr raabs plan for world domination is a step closer as he now runs the only tour (apart from apat which he also has his eyes on).  

how long before he has his little finger in his mouth and is offering a prize of " one million dollars" for an event in London.

[hate to say this but I am sure a lot of the readers on here will agree. Without live updates you will go the way of poker trillion. They are the number one reason people come here.]

hate to say this but I am sure a lot of the readers on here will agree. Without live updates you will go the way of poker trillion. They are the number one reason people come here. Ok they may not generate revenue directly but without them you will never get any new players onto your card room and unique user hits to your site will drop massively which will effect the banner advertising revenue (be it pay per click/affiliate or direct sponsorship).

letting snoops and no flops go imo will prove to be the biggest mistake blonde have ever made as you have rightly said they both ARE blonde. God help you if awop or any other firm snap them up as they are both updating gods and huge assets.

I am not trying to inflame things here as I am sure this really hurts you to do but by letting these two go I feel its only a matter of time before the last one to leave should please turn the lights out. Its a shame to see but if AWOP/pokernews/cardplayer etc all run better business models then you then you should be looking at the people who run the business/generate revenue for the site before getting rid of the real assets- snoops and floppy always did their jobs very well and its obviously other peoples fault that blonde is in the state it is currently.

without live updates you are just another poker forum (of which there are many). Your updates were unique because of the ones who are now being punished due to other peoples failed business acumen.

I for one totally agree, fantastic post Russ.

Hi Steve,

You might agree, but the Post was made on a false premise. Most people do NOT come here for the Live Updates - only 25% do. See here......

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=39867.0

In reality, it was just a thinly veiled attack on Tighty, later admitted by the Poster, who was nursing a grievance following the ban-stick some years ago.

We will NEVER do a "Poker Trillion", because we are honest.  And that's exactly why we did what we did.

Hope you are well, & in good heart.

my later attack was on tighty and you asked me to leave it at that so i did and havent posted since- please stop assuming every post I make is an attack as i made it quite clear which post i was having a pop. if ever I am having a go at anyone I make it quite clear I am doing so and would only do it when I know they are there so they get a chance to see it, i wouldnt dream of doing it behind his back or when he wasnt online meaning everyone would see my point only. There is no way he would have to get phonecalls etc saying have you seen what russ is saying about you etc.

I do stand by the points i made in this post and they were not a personal attack on anyone.

[Ariston, do you really think, for one minute, that the decision makers at blonde canned the updates lightly?]

Now we just need another 498 members to also agree, to come anywhere near the costs of yearly updating.

Ariston, do you really think, for one minute, that the decision makers at blonde canned the updates lightly?

At last, sanity.......

In case Ariston misses this, too, because I've said it again & again.......

Ariston, do you really think, for one minute, that the decision makers at blonde canned the updates lightly?

no need to shout. I dont think you have taken the decision lightly. I also dont think there will be anywhere to shout about it in a few months unless the decision makers start treating this like a business instead of a hobby/burden. driving your community/potential customers to a competitor is one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make in business and in you head (not your heart) you know I am correct in saying this.

You have lost your best assets in snoops and floppsy and I know they will be snapped up very quickly by someone else. I know you regret it already as blonde is your baby tony but you will regret it even more when you are left with a few faithfull blondites and nobody else as they have all gone elsewhere.

If the updaters can come back I'm sure and hope they will, who wouldn't want to update on Blonde and be part of the banter? Ariston - this is hopefully short term - in the meantime sponsor some players on blonde if you want the site to keep going!!

sorry i dont sponsor players anymore. I did try and open a dialogue about maybe bringing a staking site onto blonde with kickbacks etc which would have more than covered the costs of the updates but was turned down. I no longer run a staking site of my own and now work full time for a living but a link with one of the staking sites would certainly be a huge revenue stream for blonde given the ammount of decent players that are on here. if tony wants to do a deal like this he knows the people involved in the biggest one personally and i know he could easly do a deal of some kind.

if snoopy is such an asset how can he be allowed to leave? surely another roll could be found if you realised what an asset he was.

points very well put as always tony, sorry for allowing my personal feelings to come into this debate- wont happen again.

opinions do tend to be one sided and i will admit mine is cloudy after being attacked personally previously. tighty knows where i am coming from though

tighty will tonight be the bigger man, Matthew.

We will always disagree on the issue and thats that

fair enough. this makes us square on the kicking a man front

opinions do tend to be one sided and i will admit mine is cloudy after being attacked personally previously. tighty knows where i am coming from though

different people keep throwing in the fact you wont go down the route of trillion.

sorry but this stinks of the old government trick of throwing in bad news when there is a big disaster going on. Just because you didnt want to screw people over and practise bad business shouldnt mean we applaud you.

the fact that tighty is the one who is suffering more than anyone is perhaps the fact that a bad business model is being run. If tighty is the one running the business then its only right he should be the one who suffers??? Im sorry if this seems harsh but in the current economic climate if more ceo's or mds suffered down to their bad business sense then maybe things would be better run all round.

before anyone assumes i am attacking tighty here i say it as i see it. I warned plenty of people about trillion and they didnt listen. When other things have seemed strange i have never minded saying what a lot of people though but didnt dare say. i was once banned from here over something and nothing but allowed back on. almost a year later i was attacked personally by a couple of well known blonde members and even the "boss" attacked me himself and made some very personal claims against me. After I asked by pm wtf was going on the thread was quickly removed and swept under the carpet. Even back then I thought what sort of man is this to be running a site. I will probably be banned again for saying this but where so many of you think tighty is the glue that holds the site together I think you have been sniffing it. I am allowed my opinion on this even though it will be probably be removed quite quickly.  

no no lets keep your views up for all to see.

sure you will get a lot of support and hate for me. not many people saw what was said about me on the night in question though

different people keep throwing in the fact you wont go down the route of trillion.

sorry but this stinks of the old government trick of throwing in bad news when there is a big disaster going on. Just because you didnt want to screw people over and practise bad business shouldnt mean we applaud you.

the fact that tighty is the one who is suffering more than anyone is perhaps the fact that a bad business model is being run. If tighty is the one running the business then its only right he should be the one who suffers??? Im sorry if this seems harsh but in the current economic climate if more ceo's or mds suffered down to their bad business sense then maybe things would be better run all round.

before anyone assumes i am attacking tighty here i say it as i see it. I warned plenty of people about trillion and they didnt listen. When other things have seemed strange i have never minded saying what a lot of people though but didnt dare say. i was once banned from here over something and nothing but allowed back on. almost a year later i was attacked personally by a couple of well known blonde members and even the "boss" attacked me himself and made some very personal claims against me. After I asked by pm wtf was going on the thread was quickly removed and swept under the carpet. Even back then I thought what sort of man is this to be running a site. I will probably be banned again for saying this but where so many of you think tighty is the glue that holds the site together I think you have been sniffing it. I am allowed my opinion on this even though it will be probably be removed quite quickly.  

chilli is a 50/50 on his own though

[Ariston, do you really think, for one minute, that the decision makers at blonde canned the updates lightly?]

Now we just need another 498 members to also agree, to come anywhere near the costs of yearly updating.

Ariston, do you really think, for one minute, that the decision makers at blonde canned the updates lightly?

At last, sanity.......

In case Ariston misses this, too, because I've said it again & again.......

Ariston, do you really think, for one minute, that the decision makers at blonde canned the updates lightly?

no need to shout. I dont think you have taken the decision lightly. I also dont think there will be anywhere to shout about it in a few months unless the decision makers start treating this like a business instead of a hobby/burden. driving your community/potential customers to a competitor is one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make in business and in you head (not your heart) you know I am correct in saying this.

You have lost your best assets in snoops and floppsy and I know they will be snapped up very quickly by someone else. I know you regret it already as blonde is your baby tony but you will regret it even more when you are left with a few faithfull blondites and nobody else as they have all gone elsewhere.

Surely it is bad practice to force (and they will be forced if they cant see updates here) loyal customers to a competitor?

They are not customers....they are community members, i can't see the members not posting on here any more, what is more likely is someone sets up a mini sweat thread on here and then we get people posting how the regular blonde players are doing in Walsall.

and as long as a business sees people as a community and not potential customers then its deamed to fail. maybe awop succeeds because it treats its members as both a community but also customers? Ive not even seen the awop updates yet but as so many of you are watching them i will give them a try.

People just won't pay for updates, everyone here is saying 'i would chip in' etc but it just won't happen, in all honesty why would someone pay when they can get better content elsewhere for free?

"better content"?

Where exactly?

I was referring to the live AWOP feed, almost every other site also does faster updates on top of little gimmicks to present this information to the reader.

Blonde's updaters are the best, of that i have no doubt.

The simple truth of the matter is those in charge got complacent when blonde owned the update stage, if you look at an update now to one 3 years ago there has been just 1 single innovation (the tournament clock) this has allowed other sites to come and take nearly all of blondes market share, there is no point dwelling on the past though, it can't be fixed, however if they are going to make a return they have to be done a lot better.

fair enough i see what you're saying mate. Aren't blonde concerned they may lose a hellova lot of traffic to the likes of awop as they will now be the only updators at walsall in a few weeks? I wont be in the country but surely many who would normally tune in on here will now watch the live feed and their updates instead. If this means loyal blonde followers now get used to using another source for their updates (and even tikay and tighty have admitted awop is a better business model who know how to get the most from their traffic). Surely it is bad practice to force (and they will be forced if they cant see updates here) loyal customers to a competitor?

tbh, i would happily pay a £5 a month for Gukpt updates & DTD updates, I think it makes it far more interesting following the blondites in these comps.

agreed