I know many readers of this blog are also PAW members, so this post will make more sense to you guys (and gals) than anyone else. Speaking of readers, I can’t believe how many visitors this blog actually gets now days. When I started the blog, I really just did it for fun. Well, also because I needed to replace my real estate site. I never realized I would have so many readers, nonetheless I will continue posting every day, entertaining people, and occasionally pissing a few people off.

Anyhow, what a wild couple weeks it has been at PAW in terms of posts. It certainly hasn’t been the normal link exchange, seo, poker affiliate program gossip, and general marketing talk. It all started with the Absolute Poker Is Rigged theory. After that, a few more interesting and controversial posts started. Below I will share my thoughts on a few. For the love of God though, I am not even going to discuss Absolute Poker again since they graciously offered me a super user account funded with $1,000,000 to simply be quiet. <———-I’m tearing up .05-.10 limit as we speak.

1. The first interesting topic involved starting a private forum at PAW.

Initially I was indifferent on the subject. If some of the veteran members wanted to be able to have discussions in private off the public forums I was cool with that. However I have ALWAYS wanted the direction of the community and forums to be determined by the members and not me. With that I opened the topic up for discussion. After several posts, it became clear to me that this would not be the best for the overall community. I also realized how PAW substantially differs from the other larger affiliate forums in the industry. The members at PAW are a pretty tight knit group, and everyone is viewed as equal. I also think there are more relationships and business going on at PAW than any other forum.

The established members at PAW are almost a small family, versus just a bunch of random people on a message board. With that said, new members are always welcomed into this group. By opening up a private forum, it would create some separation and take away one of the foundations that has grown the PAW forums to be what they are. The lesson here is that if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.

2. The second controversial topic allegedly involved a webmaster stealing a website from a partner.

This story is quite the drama in itself. Apparently these two guys were partners on rakereport.net. Then the original owner for some crazy reason thought it would be a good idea to transfer the ownership to the other guy. A few months down the road, the website goes up for sale on PAW and all hell breaks loose. I won’t recap the whole story here as you can read it all at PAW. But basically these two went to war in the thread. It really got fucked up when emails were posted with the original owner threatening to rape this dude’s wife. Seriously, who makes these kinds of threats over a website. I don’t know the whole story, nor am I judge, so I am not going to take sides here.

But threatening acts like this are just fucked up and makes a huge statement about ones character. Who knows how this whole thing will shake out. But I would say having all this aired out on a public forum is probably not good for the overall brand. The lesson here is never, ever, under any circumstance, transfer a domains ownership away unless you are willing to part with it 100%. Oh……. also don’t be an e-punk and threaten stupid shit against people’s families.

3. The third controversial topic involved PokerSourceOnline.com and their translation company.

This is the latest and probably most interesting post. You can read the entire thread above. (Pop some popcorn and plan on a long read). The basic story is that Poker Source Online purchased translation of their website in a bunch of various languages including Swedish, German, and Russian. The translation company is in India and apparently they have done translation for several sites in the online gaming industry including PartyGaming. After a couple months submitting translated pages to PSO, all of the sudden PSO did a quick audit and found out that more than a few of the translations were garbage. They had to spend thousands more dollars to hire new people to audit and fix these translations. Several emails apparently went back and forth between the translation company and PSO about fixing the files throughout this whole ordeal. The translation company expressed how much money it would cost to fix and pleaded with PSO to understand their situation. They did however agree to fix the pages.

In the end PSO sent their final invoice payment with $15,000 less. Keep in mind though that PSO has already paid this company over $85,000. (I should have taken more foreign language in college, it seems like a pretty lucrative field). Akhil, the translator made a post at PAW calling out PSO, and of course Mike from PSO responded. Most of the affiliates sided with PSO except for a few, including a huge affiliate and one of PAW’s most respected yet outspoken members, PPP. Akhil gives a lengthy response to EACH affiliates post. At the time of this being published, the thread is on page 7.

Although I agree with some of what PPP is saying at PAW, I also can see PSO’s point of view. If I ordered a Porshe off of Ebay because it was a good deal and it was described as excellent condition…… Well I expect to get a Porshe similar to what was initially described in the auction. If my Porshe arrives and it is beat to hell, I am not paying the full price for it. Sure the seller could fix the damage. But then I am still going to be nervous and have to spend more money to have a mechanic look it over further after it’s fixed. It shouldn’t matter that I payed below market value for it. I still expect to get what was described initially.

I have spoken with Mike from PSO about the whole situation. And for the record, he does feel very bad about what transpired. Their not trying to fuck anyone over , it’s strictly business. From their end, the whole translation process has turned out to be a lot more expensive than was initially projected. They simply are not going to pay 100% of what was agreed upon up front, when they didn’t receive what was agreed upon in the end.

On this topic of translation, I actually wrote an article about Poker Affiliate Translation prior to the PSO issue. This article is also being published in the GPWA magazine that is being released at CAP Euro, so it must be half way decent.

Regardless of your thoughts on who is right or wrong here, it clearly shows that going global and having your websites translated are much more involved than you would initially think. Personally I am quite happy that all of PokerNews’ translators are on the payroll and commissioned. This way if they suck, we can simply fire them. If they are great, they now have the opportunity to build a very nice long term residual income, simply by translating. <————-win/win.

And although not PAW related, I’d like to give a special mention to the NeverwinPoker.com Drama.  This shit gets funnier every day.

I have had a few emails from other poker affiliates and webmasters asking me what plugins I am using in this blog. So instead of replying all the time I will just post them all here as an easy reference.

Wordpress really is a kick ass content management system for blogging. There are hundreds of plugins for Wordpress but below are just the ones I have chosen to use. Obviously I think these are the best wordpress plugins, but that’s just one bloggers opinions. If you use any of these or found this helpful, add me to your blogroll! Enjoy

All in One SEO Pack - This is must SEO plugin for wordpress and let’s you specify your title tag and meta tags.

cforms II - A comprehensive wordpress plugin for your contact forms with great spam protection.

Comment Karma - This plugin allows users to rate your wordpress comments……just like digg comments.

Counterize II - A nice counter plugin made specifically for wordpress. Everything you would expect in a counter. Hits, Uniques, and all the other regular statistics.

Easy Tube - This is a youtube plugin for wordpress that makes embedding youtube videos into your posts very very simple.

Google (XML) Sitemaps - This plugin will generate a compliant google sitemap for your wordpress blog.

Live - This plugin allows you to see real time live stats of who is currently arriving at your blog and who the referrer is.

Nofollow Case by Case - Show your commentors some link love. This plugin allows you to either apply or un-apply the rel= “no follow” tag in your comment links.

Show Top Commentators - This plugin will show your top commentors each month in the sidebar, or wherever you want to place it.

Social Bookmarks - This wordpress social bookmarking plugin allows your readers to bookmark your posts at their bookmarking site of choice.

Spam Karma 2 - This plugin cuts down on the massive spam your comment system gets. It’s a must have.

Wordpress PDA - Iphones and PDA’s are becoming more popular. This plugin allows readers to view your blog with a PDA.

With CAP Euro just a few short weeks away, I have actually started thinking about what I need to do in preparation. Some of my best memories in this industry as well as some of my best friends have been made at events like this.

I am especially excited about CAP Euro for several reasons. Number one, it is a new place that I have never been too. And number two, it looks like this is shaping up to be just as big, if not bigger than CAC Amsterdam. I won’t get into the debate about CAC versus CAP events because they both bring value to the industry in their own way. But the one thing I will say is that the CAP events are definitely starting to stand out. Kudos to Warren, Lou, Greg, Alex, and the rest of the team for putting on such great events.

The one thing that does become difficult for me at all of these is trying to find enough time in the trip to meet with everyone. My inbox is overflowing with emails already from AM’s or affiliates wanting to sit down and meet. Quite frankly, I love meeting all the affiliate managers as well as re-connecting with people in person that I do business with each month. BUT……… it is difficult to promote every new site or add every program to the network. Actually a lot of these deals can be negotiated over the phone or email. The value I get through these events is meeting new people and being able to close the deals once I get back.

Although having a beer or lunch with someone for an hour and closing a deal that involves hundreds of new players and thousands of dollars sounds great………it is highly unlikely. Although I would love to commit to 20 new deals while I’m in Spain, it would be a nightmare when I get home.

Aside from scheduling meetings, PAW is also a media sponsor at CAP Euro and will have a booth there. This reminds me, I have to send the display to Spain…. I suppose I better get on that this week.

Even more important than meeting with affiliate managers or negotiating deals for our network, I really can’t wait to hang out with fellow affiliates from the PAW affiliate forums. There’s always a nice group of PAW members at these events, and it’s great to finally meet people in person. If you are going to be in Barcelona, we will make some posts in the forums as it gets closer.  I’m sure all the PAW members will get together some night though. If you have never partied with the PAW guys, get ready for an experience!  Last trip, Greg Powell brought us all to a live sex show.  (Also, nice blog Greg.)

I am actually rooming with Brandon from ChanPoker while in Barcelona because somebody forgot to book my travel arrangements months ago. And to be honest I don’t feel like staying 2 miles away from the main convention. I have been there, done that, and it sucks. Hopefully Brandon won’t try to take advantage of me or steal my wallet and cash while I am sleeping.

I didn’t have time to qualify for the ASOP either. I am pretty disappointed about that but who knows, maybe I will get Alex drunk the first night and talk him into giving me a seat.

Also if you are there and with me on Sunday night, please remind me that my flight leaves at 6:00 AM on Monday morning. Not being a morning person, this really sucks. On top of that I have never flown out of Spain before. I think the safest bet is to head to the airport Sunday night after being out and just sleep on the flight home.   If not, I will probably oversleep and get stuck there.

In even more exciting news, my custom SweatSedo came today. I am going to order a few more for the winter. Easily the most comfortable thing I have ever worn.

And finally a random Tuesday afternoon picture. This is especially for all the cat lovers and PETA members. (Disclaimer - I own 2 cats)  I don’t know why I thought this was funny but it seemed worthy of posting at the time of this writing.

A friend of mine and fellow poker webmaster Bryan Micon of NeverWinPoker.com got rolled for $12,000 by some dude in Las Vegas.  At first when I saw this story I thought it was fake and was just to drive traffic to NWP.  As the story continues to unfold however, I am certain it is legit.

You can read the entire story in the official thread over at NWP.  I’m pretty sure this Justin Smith dude had no idea what was about to happen stealing Micon’s money. It’s a long ass thread over there, but it is quite entertaining. Likewise the phone conversations are pretty good to0.  I imagine Mr. Smith is shitting himself right now.  Enjoy

Hopefully Micon is able to get his $12K back.  Regardless Micon was probably the wrong dude to fuck with.  Having all the NWP’rs harassing you would be a bitch.

Good Luck Micon.