Did Mason Malmuth bar David Sklansky from RGP

[Steve-O]

I mentioned this in the radio chat yesterday, and it seems Druff didn't know about this, so here is a quick rundown of the story:

For those of you who don’t know, David Sklansky used to be a regular poster on the rec.gambling.poker newsgroup (more commonly referred to as RGP). However, as the poker boom was beginning Sklansky was barred from posting on RGP by Mason Malmuth. I guess even Druff didn’t know this.

Here is Mason’s response to the accusation from 2+2 where he totally pulls a Romney and says he never barred him from posting, but it became necessary for him to stop posting elsewhere! http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...16/index9.html (Very last post at the bottom of the page):

Originally Posted by Topset72

Mason made Sklansky stop posting at RGP and wasn't very welcoming of Abdul because his approach wasn't conducive to selling poker books based on an ABC/Mirage Limit game(IMO).

This just isn't very accurate. Even though we started www. twoplustwo.com in 1997, we didn't begin to sell advertising until 2001. And since David was a featured strategist on our site and part of our sales pitch to potential advertisers was that he would be posting here, it became necessary for him to stop posting elsewhere. That's just simple business sense.

As for Abdul, he was always welcome to post his strategy here. I had more than one face-to-face meeting with him where this was communicated directly, and David even was present for one of these where we talked about Mike Caro's Professional Hold 'em Report and tried to convince him that what we said about it was accurate.

MM
So what was the buzz at the time regarding Mason forcing Sklansky to stop posting? It was probably two things (as well as the reason he cited above):

• Sklansky was getting owned hard in strategy and theory discussions by other RGP posters, especially about his recent books.
• Sklansky would tilt because he had a few RGP trolls (think the “Post you’ve been waiting for” thing with Sue but not as creepy) and would troll himself

If you’re really good with the Internets and the Google you can find the discussion in the old RGP threads as well as Sklansky’s posts where other players/theoreticians like Abdul had a field day on. Here is one link that I found around the time he left RGP: http://www.pokerfied.com/poker/An_Ap...ky_510467.html

[bukowski72]

Yes. Mason made or asked (Mason loves the semantics game) David Sklansky to stop posting on RGP. It does make sense from a business standpoint. They wanted to take the serious poker discussion to 2+2. A ton of the big players used to post on 2+2 -- Dan N, Howard L, Mason, Sklansky, and occasionally Doyle. The site was very widely read. I received e-mails from both Annie Duke and Dan N because of RGP. I think I also got one from Doyle.

Mason has also prevented Sklansky from posting on 2+2 at times. During some big recent events people have wondered where David went. Mason blocked Sklansky from posting -- according to Sklansky.

Abdul was involved with the the whole Izmet Fekali, Angelina and Derb crew. Notice the thread on DERB in High Stakes Limit section of 2+2 is still the #10 thread although it was started almost seven years ago ago. I guess Abdul had no lasting ideas.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...limit/derb-24/

[Deal]

David is clearly Mason's lapdog.

[Steve-O]

All of this went on between seven and ten years ago (the in-fighting brgan in like 2001ish and Sklansky left officially in 2005), but if I recall correctly Sklansky was basically getting assaulted on three fronts: by theoreticians like Abdul and by competing authors like Gary Carson. Basically his strategic thinking wasn't holding up under scrutiny and he was attacking any other book written at the time as "inferior". He was starting to look bitter and then simply disappeared for months at a time, and finally forever.

I also recall that after the "business sense" reason stated he was still posting on other forums, just not RGP --the fact that Russ Georgiev thought fairly highly of him wasn't overly helpful either!