I wrote a long comment but I think the durned comment beastie ate it. If it shows up that’s cool; if not, I’ll just post something similar over at my site.

I still like you, I just disagree with you here

Haley :-)

I’m sorry you see this as a personal attack but when you come out and say things like:

Bill, this is out of context and misleadingly negative.

and

So, nice negative spin. Mansion’s $100K was down by four or five percent, too; how’d that get left out?

I can’t see how you expect an overly civil response. :-) I love people who poke you with a stick and then cry abuse when you swat back at them. If you want to use that kind of language when talking to me expect a similar tone in my responses.

The thing is I mentioned these stats as an observation. I didn’t come out and make negative associations with them. Here’s what I said:

Stars’ $1 million guarantee tournament had about 900+ less players than the week before but still managed to make the guarantee. Full Tilt and Bodog weren’t so lucky and had to add a little moola to their guaranteed prize pools.

Stars had 900 less players than the week before. That is a fact. Period. End of discussion. They also still managed to make their guarantee. If I hadn’t mentioned that they still made their guarantee, THAT would have been misleadingly negative. I mentioned it because it clarified and gave the proper context to the statement. There are a million ways I could have spun those numbers in a much more negative way. I didn’t.

Full Tilt and Bodog both missed their guarantees. Again, a fact that is not open to dispute. I said that they had to add “a little moola” which implies that they didn’t miss by massive numbers.

And all of this is about 2 sentences that were offered in passing just to give a glimpse into how the tourney world looked in relation to the main part of the post which was the cash game results.

Your accusatory comment focused on how I used the word managed. And you did try to put the phrase “just managed” into my mouth as indicated below.

which means that they indeed just “managed” to make their guarantee… by about 37%.

In fact, your entire critisism of my post holds no water if this is an issue of how I used the word managed. It’s when you added “just” in front of it that it started to look like I was being misleading.

And, I didn’t mention Mansion because . . . well, their missed guarantees are a promotion. I don’t really take them seriously as a contender in the online gaming market. Their results would hardly be indicative of anything.

Haley, normally I like you but your comments were out of line. You know me, I’m not going to take the time to figure out why and patch things up. I’m going to respond in kind. That’s the way I roll. :-)

For what it’s worth, Card Player ran almost the same story. Problem is, I hold you to a higher standard. :-)

What I said was:

Stars’ $1 million guarantee tournament had about 900+ less players than the week before but still managed to make the guarantee.

The facts are that they did have 900 less players. They still made the guarantee but I never said that they “just managed” to make it. You’re pulling quotes out of your ass.

Haley, if you want to pull punches I can go on here but the fact of the matter is that is that I never said a word that is untrue. FTP ran a bigger than average guarantee and they missed it. Bodog missed their guarantee too.

I can guarantee you if you asked FTP if they thought they would make their guarantee 2 weeks ago they would have laughed at you. Sites like FTP don’t run guarantees they don’t think they can hit.

Let’s assume for a minute that there wasn’t a big decrease in the major online tournaments.
But we do know that in the cash games, there was approx 20% decrease across Poker Stars and Full Tilt.
So, who were those people?
People that may play a SNG or two, maybe some cash games, but don’t play the major ($200+ buyin) tournaments.

I think that equates to the casual online poker player who plays on occasion…has some fun when playing…and (most importantly) loses most of the time.
i.e. the fish.
As Bill has said, as the fish leave, the games will get harder and harder.
You should consider that 20% of them just left.

Bill, this is out of context and misleadingly negative. The Stars Sunday Million was down something like 14%, which means that they indeed just “managed” to make their guarantee… by about 37%. Bodog advertises a frequent overlay and often has one in the Sunday $100K, regardless of other circumstances. Full Tilt was running their monthly $500 buy-in version, and they had upped the guarantee on it from $500K to $750K just before all the other shit hit the fan. That said, the paid entries would have brought the prize pool to almost $700,000 anyway, which would have been an all-time record for a non-FTOPS event.

So, nice negative spin. Mansion’s $100K was down by four or five percent, too; how’d that get left out?