The thread title is all true, but doesn't come close to telling the whole story.
Robbie Davies passed away on April 1, 2018. He was either 38 or 39. While his death was sudden, it wasn't completely unexpected. He had been battling brain tumors since 2011, and was told in 2016 that he didn't have long to live. Here's a Pokernews article about Robbie and his unfortunate passing: https://www.pokernews.com/news/2013/...more-16878.htm
I started out intensely disliking Robbie Davies. In fact, I once did a rogue radio show on Neverwinpoker in 2008, doing nothing but bashing him.
He was best known around this community for sending a scathing e-mail to me, Micon, and Dustin (neverwin), basically telling us that we were doing a horrible job running NWP. He accidentally CC'd Jewdonk, who then reposted it for everyone to see. This was about a year after Pokernews bought NWP, and Robbie Davies didn't like what he saw when he took over as CEO.
Yet Robbie was also the one responsible for commissioning this article basically advertising PokerFraudAlert for free.
He also listened to PFA Radio on and off.
So how did Robbie go from a near-enemy of mine to a supporter of PFA?
Well, I should start at the very beginning.
NWP B.R. (Before Robbie)
In 2004, Micon started neverwinpoker.com as a lame fan site for Dustin "neverwin" Woolf, who had suddenly become a limit holdem heads up sensation.
However, nobody was too keen on a website and forum entirely dedicated to a Johnny-come-lately online poker player, and the thing was a ghost town.
I showed up initially just to troll the place, but ended up sticking around, and single-handedly made the place active (look it up in archive.org).
Many of the people you see here today were once part of the original NWP community, which lasted from 2004-2009, and then continued on various spinoff sites, including this one.
Anyway, despite my heavy role in NWP from 2004-2007, and despite the fact that I was the biggest reason it blew up in the first place, I had zero point zero ownership in the place. In 2007, with both Micon and neverwin broke, they agreed to sell it to Pokernews for well over $100k EACH. I was to be cut out of the deal entirely, because I didn't technically own any of it.
However, realizing the site would likely fall apart without me, Dustin and Micon came over to my apartment and tried to explain that they were broke and needed the money, and hoped I wasn't offended that I was cut out of the financial part of the deal. I was offended, though, and I told them initially to eat shit, and that I was quitting the site.
They went back to Pokernews, and Tony G offered to give me $5,000, plus a token amount of NWP revenue (2.5%, if I remember correctly). This still sucked, but I rationalized that Micon and Neverwin were my friends, and they really did need the money far more than me. That's why I stayed on.
However, I made it clear to them that I was NOT an employee, and that this token sum of money was going to me for what I already did, rather than anything going forward. I told them that I would stay and be active on the site, but that nobody had any kind of authority over me, nor were there any kind of expectations. Everyone understood and agreed.
Pokernews also agreed that NWP would stay NWP, and they would not attempt to interfere with its content. Creative control was to remain with us.
In the meantime, Micon started playing fast and loose with Pokernews' money. He was quickly blowing the monthly check he was getting, and started taking loans against his future payments. Pokernews surprisingly agreed to this.
Neverwin was simply absent from the site bearing his name.
Enter Robbie Davies
Robbie Davies abruptly became CEO of Pokernews in 2008, at the young age of 29.
Not having been present at Pokernews for the NWP deal the prior year, he had no understanding yet of NWP and what it was.
He was shown the NWP asset, and his jaw dropped.
He saw the black cocks. He saw the obscenity and offensive messages. He saw me openly arguing and fighting with users on the forum. He saw the Pokernews books where Micon seemingly perpetually owed them $5,000-$10,000. He saw the fact that the namesake of the site was nowhere to be found.
He felt this was completely unacceptable in all ways.
He fired off an angry e-mail to the three of us, expressing disgust and anger over all of this. He threatened to "ban Todd if his behavior continues". He stated that Micon's loans were to stop, effective immediately. He cut NWP do-nothing mods Macon Marc and Sole off the $200/month payroll. There may have been other mods getting paid at the time (maybe Vwls and vegas1369?), but if they were, they got their pay stopped, as well. He stated that Dustin needed to become active on the site, as he had agreed when the sale was made.
But then there was one other NWP "employee" who was getting a monthly stipend.
A poster named Jewdonk was amazingly getting $400 to post. He had obnoxiously demanded this when Pokernews took over, wrongly seeing himself as the lifeblood of the site. Amazingly, Micon managed to get it for him, and Jewdonk really was getting $400/month to post on NWP for awhile.
Ah, the poker boom!
That $400 was cut, as well. However, Robbie erroneously believed Jewdonk to be a manager of NWP (due to his pay being higher than all of the mods), so he was CC:'d on the e-mail.
The infamous e-mail was then posted on the NWP forum, and everyone had a good laugh.
The "I Hate Robbie" Radio Show
I didn't find the e-mail quite so funny. I found it insulting, given all the time and effort I put into NWP -- not just prior to Pokernews' purchase of it, but also over that past year.
I immediately called Micon and told him I was about to quit NWP because of Robbie. He told me that he wanted to discuss it over lunch, and I proceeded to go to lunch with him and his girlfriend (soon to be wife), Martha.
Martha, who was always very protective of Micon, laid into me. She told me that I was "ruining it all" for Micon, and that I had better fall in line and kiss Robbie's ass if I cared about Micon as a friend. I kept trying to tell her that I took very little money (as opposed to Micon's large -- and ongoing -- payments), and that I only stayed on as a favor to everyone. I told her that Pokernews needed to treat me with respect, or I was taking my ball and going home.
Martha got furious, and yelled at me. First she yelled in the restaurant, and then she yelled even louder in the car going home. I had never seen this side of her before. She had always seemed like a sweet, softspoken southern girl prior to this.
I walked into my apartment, and my first inclination was just to do what Micon and Martha were asking, send Robbie and apology letter, and offer to do things more his way.
Then I came to my senses. WTF was I doing? Sure, Micon was my friend, but he already got a lot of money for something I mostly built up. I got almost nothing for it, and now they wanted me to put my dignity in my pocket so Micon's precious ongoing paychecks could continue unhindered? (Besides, they weren't going to take anything away from Micon for anything I did, as my behavior was independent of all of that.)
So I decided to say fuck everyone, turned on radio, and did an emergency show.
I then read the e-mail over the air, commented on it, and bashed Robbie Davies really hard. However, as part of my bashing, I also logically explained why I was angry.
I said that I didn't think Robbie was necessarily a bad guy, but rather that he simply misunderstood both my role on the site and NWP itself.
I expected at any moment, the Lithuanian overlords would cut the connection and ban me.
Instead, the show continued. Martha was furious, and was hating me more and more with every word (even though I didn't mention her once), but the show went on.
And it had one interesting listener, who actually was enjoying what he was hearing: Robbie Davies
It was during this ranting emergency program when Robbie learned what NWP was really about. By the time it was over, he realized that he had somewhat erred with his initial approach.
While he held firm on the monetary-related decisions he made regarding Micon's loans and the payments to mods and users (which was reasonable), he sent out another e-mail -- this time much more polite, and much more in tune with the original agreement.
He apologized to all of us for his tone. He rescinded everything he had said about me, and in fact mentioned that he enjoyed my emergency radio show about him (!!) He said that he wanted all of us to get along, and to make NWP grow.
I appreciated that, and suddenly my view of him was different.
We did have one more little run-in about a year later, when a radio prank call to Bodog involving neverheeb (actually a hilarious call) put a sponsorship of theirs in jeopardy. However, feeling some degree of responsibility for the whole thing, I was the one apologetic that time, and in fact told him that I would make the effort to smooth things over with Bodog (which I mostly did).
Breakin' Up is Hard to Do
Later that year (2009), Robbie and Pokernews decided that NWP was more trouble than it was worth, and they decided to basically eject the forum and radio show from the site, leaving it to be just an empty affiliate marketing page.
They did generously offer to hand us the entire forum and radio library for free, to start our own site, and that's when Donkdown was born. Less than two years later, Micon forced me out of Donkdown, our friendship ended, and I started PFA in early 2012.
I had assumed by that point that Robbie was happy to have all of us out of his hair for the past few years.
That's why I was surprised later that year when Robbie commented on the PokerFraudAlert Radio show with Chad Elie (poker payment processor). I had no idea that Robbie was a listener to PFA Radio!
I talked to him a bit, and he revealed to me that he listened to the show on and off, and enjoyed it. He e-mailed me sometimes over the next few years whenever he wanted to comment on an aspect of the show.
In November 2013, he offered for Pokernews to do an article about PokerFraudAlert (linked earlier in this post), which I happily accepted. While you might think it was an advertorial, it wasn't. I didn't pay a penny for it. Robbie was the one who commissioned the whole thing, and Chad Holloway wrote it.
I haven't had any contact with Robbie in a few years. I knew he left Pokernews in 2014. I never knew he had brain tumors.
Nevertheless, I marveled at how we went from a strong initial dislike of one another to a situation of mutual respect. By the time it was all over, I thought very positively of Robbie Davies, even though I never ended up meeting him in person.
That's why I paused and felt some sadness when I learned that he passed away at such a young age.
RIP, Robbie, and since your eventual understanding of NWP is what smoothed things over between us, I have to end this post with....
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Originally Posted by verminaard
