I’ll just lay it out here . . . OddJack isn’t just a site. Nick Denton getting behind a site makes it, well, something of a mainstream crossover. Denton doesn’t have a skateboarding blog out there. He doesn’t have a roofing blog out there. He picked gambling for a reason and hopefully that reason is that he thought he could sell advertisers on the viablity of targeted mediums. If OddJack fails, it means it’s that much harder for you or I or ?? to do a sponsorship deal. We’re plugging affiliate crap again which we all knows pays nothing. OddJack has/had a lot a potential to make that leap into a more mainstream place. A place were we could actually make a dollar or two from our time and effort in maintaining out blogs.

I’m not bashing them because I don’t want to see them do well. I’m bashing them because they’ve been given the great opportunity to benefit off a large group of people and they seem to be wasting it. You know, I don’t mind reading boobie-hound reports from true boobie-hounds, but OJ’s stuff just seems to be so manufactured that it’s like reading about boobies in the Economist.

I can tell BG’s writing from the norm and if OJ was just BG’s writings I would probably be cool. It’s not though.

That said, with fresh eyes, I found the Arieh Cinnabon reference funny, primarily because it was the first time I’d seen it. I suppose if I’d been reading the site for the past two months, I might think differently.

A few other thoughts from fresh eyes–

I’m not so sure we can lump Oddjack in with the poker blogs, primarily because it is not. It’s a gambling blog. It’s not a place for dedicated discussions on poker. It’s Headline News meets The Daily Show meets some sort of gambling wire.

With that in mind, I’d like to think the folks over there haven’t targetted folks like you and me as their demographic. At the WSOP, you saw as well as I did how base the new generation of poker players can be. Base minds breeds base humor. Does that make it right? I dunno. Do I have to like it? Well, no.

I suppose there is some room for longtime bloggers like us to feel a little irked that BoDog has invested its cash in something that isn’t a poker blog. Still, I think we both realize that that’s business. Business can be an ugly word sometimes.

And with all of that said, I believe BG is doing a bang-up job and should be commended for his work. While I hate that it’s taking time away from his other blog, I guess I’m not one to talk on that sunject…

Now…Bill, why you gotta go pickin’ fights?

Its the only reasonable way to live.

Unmitigated horseshit. Degenerate gamblers don’t want or need that Denton touch. It works for the feeble-minded celebrity worshippers and the politically obsessed. I don’t see what it brings to the table for gamblers and especially poker players.

1) I still think a poker - gambling - online gambling blog associated with Denton is a good thing, since it’ll bring in viewers not necessarily who are already among the fold and help it into mainstream-ity

2) I like remainders/etc a lot (the news clips)– tho I have a feeling that if we all got busy on PokerFilter this feature of oddjack would start to wither (necessarily, b/c thats a lot more eyes for news than just bg’s)

3) I am genuinely amused by the non-poker news on the site — like about betting for the pope and the next s.ct justice, etc. I just think its neat and I’d never see stuff like that anywhere else I turn my radar, so I like that. Corollary: Perhaps people enjoy the poker things they read if they’re not at all familiar with the big guns + more you listed above…?

But I don’t like it b/c…

1) I think its mean. It’s not my thing I guess, I don’t find it funny at all to be cruel towards someone you don’t know and have zero chance of being called on it. I’d be quite hurt if just 1% of the “snarky” (read: unabashedly mean) things that have been said at OJ were directed at me, but I’m like that.

Sometimes I thought OJ was all about Arieh-bashing b/c of some weird bodog “all news is good news” idea, but nah– I think its mean (and weird. cinnabon? perhaps its a mallrat thing but i still think its a bad analogy.)

2) I think its audience shouldn’t be the bong chasing 18 year old who laughs at fat jokes. etcetc. Even the hipster gawker audience isn’t dumb or stoned all the time. Some, but not all!

Now, Oddjack was “brave” enuf to run a poker blogger babes in-fighting piece… will it run a Oddjack vs bloggers in an all oliveoil wrestling clutch, too?

I’m not sure I would agree. I don’t dislike the OddJack site because I wanted it to be some mirror image of the industry. I dislike OddJack because, as Facty points out, it’s wasting its potential.

Here you have a well financed website, run by a group of people who have several previous hits on their hands and we have to read Cinnabon posts every other day? After a certain point OddJack seems like online stalkers begging for Arieh to pay attention to them. When you look at Arieh’s list of sins and compare it to the campaign waged against him, Arieh ends up looking like the lessor of two a-holes.

Sad because in an industry rich with lying, cheating, stealing, killing, jackpots, bust-outs, gangsters, cowboys, losers, moguls, recluses, and champions the best they can come up with is who has had stomach surgery.

Sad because on June 17, Oddjack first referred to Josh Arieh as “Cinnabon” and by June 30 had driven that joke right into the ground.

Sadder still because this was the same time that The Defamer was getting a lot of mainstream media attention with their championing of Owen Wilson as “The Butterscotch Stallion”. (suggestion for Oddjack: think of your own ideas instead of stealing your brother’s)

Sad because so many of the Nick Denton sites are done so well. Gawker, Defamer, Wonkette, and Screenhead are all great every day. No one has better material to work with than Oddjack, they just have the chops to do it justice.

Much like “Tilt” on ESPN.

The show was very good (in my opinion), but to those who wanted it to be a mirror image of professional poker players found it to be offensive.

I picture them with big ole pancake nips too.

Heaven is fifteen minutes with Cyndy and Kathy Liebert in a tub full of yogurt.