Mason Malmuth stupidly posts never-before-seen emails between him and Pokernews involving trying to cover up Sklansky/Hawkbaker story

[Dan Druff]

The Emails

The e-mails were between Mason Malmuth, Tony Guoga ("Tony G"), and John Caldwell, in early March 2008, just after Micon had posted the David e-mails to Brandi, and posted commentary on them.

Mason apparently wrote to Pokernews in attempt to force them to take the story down!

We don't get to see the first e-mail Mason wrote to Tony G, but Mason described it today.

In the first email I have from March 6, 2008 Tony G tells me that "Micon runs the site independent of PokerNews and that the matter should be taken up with him," and that he "would like to sort this thing out." Tony then asked me to detail the true story and send it to him so that he could post it on neverwinpoker.

Mason then responded to Tony G:

It's a hate site, and Micon and Druff are the ones leading the hate charge.

You need to clean it up.

MM

Here's the rest of the e-mails:

From: Mason Malmuth
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 11:49 PM
To: tony guoga

Subject: Re: NeverWinPoker

Hi Tony:

Thanks for getting back to me. I have met John before and he has a good reputation, so I agree that's a good person to consult with. Now let me be a little more specific addressing the problem.

Simply put, Micon knows that the stories about David are not true. He is pretending to expose a wrong that he knows does not exist. It will become obvious that his accusations are nonsense when we release specific information about David and Sue which we plan to do in the near future. But we are not going to dignify Micon and www.neverwinpoker.com by offering explanations to him and dealing with him in any direct way since Mr. Micon is the problem.

As for Two Plus Two, there is nothing "wrong" at our site. I asked David to stop posting for a few days because he was under extreme stress due to your people making fun of those in his family, I was not happy with the accusations that there was something seriously wrong with him -- we have been working together for over 20 years and if there was any sort of problem I would be the first to know, and I was also totally disgusted with thefilth that had entered www.twoplustwo.com via the Never Win Poker people.

Also, for your information the two people I included on the cc list are Mat Sklansky, David's son, who is the general manager of our company and who also is in charge of all moderation on www.twoplustwo.com, and [redacted] who is our marketing director and who also works closely with Mat on many issues inside our company.

Best wishes,

Mason Malmuth
Owner and Publisher
Two Plus Two Publishing LLC
www.twoplustwo.com

From: John Caldwell
To: Mason Malmuth
Date: March 7, 2008

I try to stay out of NWP things, but this is something that needs to be addressed, and addressed now. I will speak to Micon today, and resolve it.

From: Mason Malmith
To: John Caldwell
Date: March 7, 2008

Hi John:

Thanks for getting back to me. If you would like to talk, our office number is, and my cell number is XXX. I'm usually in and out of our office, but am able to answer my cell most of the time. I'm also up very late.

Again, I want to emphasize that www.neverwinpoker.com is simply a hate site (that masquerades under the pretension of no censorship) and that this Micon person is the problem.

For instance, when Micon writes in his latest blurb at the top of the home page: "The guy that started inbredsue.com (please make it more topical) has done this piece on David Sklansky's Sue."

it is nothing but hate, and serves no other purpose. Also, when they state we are doing massive bannings, there's no truth in that. The only people banned related to this issue from www.twoplustwo.com are Micon and Druff, and some gimmick accounts that came on our site just to cause problems.

(There were a couple of people mistakenly banned as associates of neverwin.com who were quickly reinstated.)

Best wishes,
Mason

From: John Caldwell
To: Mason Malmuth
Date: March 14, 2008

I tried to create a solution here, but the solution I desired was not possible.

Ultimately, it came down to this. PokerNews has a financial stake in NWP, but the deal with them specifically states that they have 'complete creative control'. I tried to inject some common sense into said 'control', but Iwas not successful.

You will note that we have removed PN branding from NWP, and removed Tony's face from the site. His name will also be removed.

It's no secret I was not a fan of this deal, and in fact I was never consulted. I'm not sure what else I can do here, except to try to facilitate some type of solution between you and Brian.

You can see these posted at: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...times-1794373/

However, note that they are a bit hard to follow on 2+2 due to how Mason posted them, so I cleaned them up for readabilty (without removing/editing any content).