Hi everyone. I figured I would post a few thoughts here.
First is that the article never gets written without the legal threat. I feel I gave them enough time and opportunities to walk it back or demonstrate that my reporting was inaccurate. At some point I must defend myself. I think threatening legal action after I said I was going to submit policy recommendations to Gaming to protect players is vile and compromises the regulation process.
I accept that we can all have different opinions and was going to let Gaming figure it out if the email was simply that we disagreed. However, in hindsight, it is good that all these issues are out in the open for discussion.
I have all the emails in question from WSOP.com and Seth. I am going to turn them into Gaming. I hope to have a face-to-face meeting with them in the near future. I am waiting to hear back.
The article was long enough without going into the overall operational deficiencies I see in WSOP.com's operations. I covered it in my policy recommendation letter to regulators though. I included the items already in that article, in addition to the ones below.
Nevada-based support
Suggestions I made included the requirement that support be based in Nevada. Ultimate Poker did this and its support was excellent. It is a requirement in New Jersey and jobs are one of the talking points for poker lobbyists. When I would ask CS its location, they would tell me they were in Antigua iirc. I have never heard of that changing. Basing those jobs in Nevada would improve our economy and I feel likely improve CS in the process.
Players eating losses due to geolocation failures
I suggested that Nevada poker sites be held responsible for its geolocation failures. If a player gets dropped due to it, the player needs a refund or at least a demonstration that the hand could not be won or that it was the player's fault. Set rules for how this is approached for it to not turn into angle shooting. I'm sure a site knows when it has issues and it is not the player's fault.
Appeals process for bans
I also suggested that for as long as Nevada has a monopoly site, there should be an appeals process for bannings. Players do not have protections if they get banned the way I feel I did.
Let's just say that I'm not very impressed with the operational management of WSOP.com, and I think they need major changes on that front.
I definitely agree with this. I cannot believe this has been allowed to go on for five years. A respected, well-managed, engaged site would be doing triple the business with an interstate monopoly, in my opinion. WSOP.com bounced around 190 average cash game players for a month before a recent uptick to about 225, according to PokerScout. I think that's pitiful.
Searching "wsopcom" on Twitter reveals a reason I feel is why. There are many complaints in there, nearly all of which go unanswered. I can see why a player would think the site does not care and just gives up and moves on.
I wish Ultimate Poker could have figured out the software issues. They would be dominating right now, in my opinion. They had everything else right.