if that's the case
I'm working for what, $2 an hour? I don't think so.
I'm working for what, $2 an hour? I don't think so.
Are you denying you are comped to green/black chip? Are you denying you didn't threaten to quit this site a few years ago and Wong didn't lure you back with the freebies? Wong has always known where his bread was buttered.
I'm working for what, $2 an hour?
As any advantage player knows, we take comps whenever they're available. Do the math, you're saving 600+ a year to answer a few questions about Kelly. Tough job but somebody's got to do it.
come now DD', you're a nice guy but you're insulting our intelligence.
I think there are people who are comped to Green Chip and some even to Black Chip, but fewer than you might suspect. Wong tends to be pretty tight about comps. There are posters who aren't on this site, and some members have criticized SW for not comping them.
Now to keep thins in perspective, Wong does have a POM competition. The winner of that is essentially getting enough money to cover 2 years of Green Chip. SO you can think of that as a kind of a comp for the better posters, which is the reason for it. But that is decided by the membership. I do not think this is what you are talking about here.
If DD' says he isn't being comped, I see no reason not believe him. What possible motivation could he have for lying about it?
Also, I have been on this site for a number of years. I do not recall the incident that you described. "Are you denying you didn't threaten to quit this site a few years ago and Wong didn't lure you back with the freebies?" There have been players who have quite the site, and others who have threatened to. Perhaps you are confusing DD' with other players.
BTW, let me say that I think DD' is the most valuable poster here. I have learned more from his posts than from any other. In addition to understanding the basic mathematical principles of the game as well as anyone, he also has first-hand knowledge of actually making money from the game. When DD' speaks, we listen.
I was not comped. That was simply his interpretation. I said that I did not participate on the free pages to earn comps. I've been active on this site for over 4 years. I've been comped for about a year. I'm uncertain where he got the information since it is not something I post about. Perhaps it was just his assumption. But I see no reason to deny it.
Wong also asked me to be a post buster some time ago, which I declined. I want to be able to argue and speak my mind without having to worry about using favoritism or bias in judging the worthiness of other posts.
The main reason people come to this site is because it is where most of the action is. Some other sites I've logged into occasionally were so dead that I quickly lost interest and stopped going there. Wong just got a good jump on everyone else. It is hard to put your finger on why one place becomes the favorite meeting place. I made an effort to be active on bjmath but there were simply too few participants to keep interesting threads going. I got bumped from the workshop for not having enough posts.
that I misunderstood your post.
And I am sorry about your backoff from the workshop. Remind me to talk to you about that time
"You seem to believe that it takes a pay site to eliminate the b*l%s@i%. There are free forums out there that are moderated and are clean of b%6ls%^& ."
Those websites are much fewer than the paying, restricted sites that are bullshit-free. Whatever I or you may believe about money, the fact is that when people pay up (even a small amount of money) for something, they do take better care of it than if they'd have paid nothing for it. Whatever that is. And in every walk of life.
"Information on green chip is no more safe than the free pages."
Correct.
And Wong is careful to point that out, when the opportunity arises. He has even invited the members' opinion about allowing known members of the casino community onboard.
"There are over a thousand green chip members. Do you REALLY think people have been weeded out?"
By "weeded out", I presume that the trollers and the troublemakers are denoted. We're not talking about casino insiders or "informers" (see above). These casino people will never and can never be "weeded out".
The evidence about a troll-free area is very clear on this: I have been a GCer for some years now and the number of trolls/flames/idiocies on GC is not even 5% of the similar stuff going down at the free pages. Another piece of evidence is that it takes two dozen postbusters to keep the peace of the free pages, while on GC only Wong does any busting (rarely). We can debate the reasons why, and I've stated my take on top, but the numbers don't lie: you get almost no noise at GC.
"I guess the only reason to join green chip is for a moderator."
Again check the numbers. Those 1000+ GCers can't all be stupid or money simple! There must be something there that keeps them subscribing. (Let me come clean and tell you right now that Green Chip stuff is not of any earth-shattering importance. But it most definitely is very good value for the money charged.)
And candidate subscribers have always the opportunity to get a virtually free trial period, without access restrictions anywhere.
(Lucky you!)
Do you know how much people like Don Schlesinger, MathProf, DD' et al, would charge for private lessons? Those questions that get answered left and right, and all that free guidance around the many and serious dangers ineherent in the game, amount to some serious school time. Irrespective of what they do & earn in their main professions, those "tutors" could be charging something like the price of a yearly Green Chip subscription per hour! Check out what Arnold Snyder charges for private Blackjack lessons, in any recent BJF issue.
God knows how he's pulling it off but Stanford Wong has managed to have available a multitude of brains offering advice for free here - in the free pages but mostly on GC (the reason for GC being simply the absence of noise and trolls there). We are being comped, here, is what it is, for the price of 50 bucks per annum. I don't know how he does it and I don't care how he does it. You don't ask your casino host how on earth he manages to offer you a free dinner "which would be so expensive otherwise", do you??
There is a " snoot " appeal in joining all clubs puzzled--and indeed some people pay thousands of dollars annually just to rub elbows with their own " kind." What do these people get fom their enjoinments to these clubbed societies? They get validations, consecrations, celebrations and sometimes even enebriations of their special statuses as " members only. "
You're points of joining GC for a few months and plumbing their archival depths, therefore, are well taken--but while you're bending so low into those depths puzzled, please make sure you wear a virgin's shield upon your innocent arse and have a wad of kiwi shoe polish stuck between your cheek and tongue, for I have it on good word that a certain amount of boot-polishing ( or should I say " proper " decorum ) is part of the unspoken, and yet much more costly, price of admission.
that they are seeking something other than just plain old information, which BTW, I have no qualms with.
I was merely flipping the moldy side of the stone over--something which people often neglect to do, in order to protect the eyes of the innocent...(even when those eyes are attached to their own heads.)
But if I have upset any sguiggly larvea's day, or any ( other ) innocent onlooker, who is disturbed by the invisible " unrest " under moldy stones, then I most humbly beg their pardon.
. . . more than I spit on me shoes to polish 'em. Who gave you the idea that one needs to bend over backwards in GC in deference to the Blackjack gods? You disagree with 'em, let 'em know it. And if you can't stand their attitude and their responses, you're too soft. ("You" is used metaphorically for anyone.)
Only, it would help dampen those gods' fire, if the doubting-Thomas posts were solidly rehearsed and backed up. They seldom are. The audience loves a good fight - but also prefers substance over camp.
"Make sure you have a wad of kiwi shoe polish stuck between your cheek and tongue, for I have it on good word that a certain amount of boot-polishing ( or should I say " proper " decorum ) is part of the unspoken, and yet much more costly, price of admission."
Although I don't belong to Green Chip, I know many who do
Yo bjdavid, did you really quit GC? With all the nice things about GC you'd mentioned, why did you drop out of GC?
When I'm through posting here ( and that could be soon bloke ) I'll relate a true story which might cause you to step back a bit from your own claims.
" Substance ", it turns out, is in the eye of the bigger beholder, tsk tsk, and censorship is the blackened ring which, all too often, surrounds that eye. )-:
People disagree often on GC. It's just that they are usually more civil about it. It is true that fools are not taken gladly on GC.
"I'm neither anti-capitalist ..."
Too bad! It's always a healthy point of departure.
...nor have a grudge against Stanford Wong."
Good to hear.
"Green chip is different. SW isn't supplying information. We are. Essentially, we are paying for a forum/mesage board and nothing more. My quarrel is that counters don't need to pay for a forum to exchange ideas. There are other forums to accomplish the same goals as green chip."
Where have you been, Puzzled? You come on as a web veteran, yet you seem to ignore such runaway hits of the web as e-Bay. At e-Bay, the owners don't supply the products and they don't supply the money - the customers do everything. So why should the e-Bay owners profit by the advertisements they put up? For the same reason, Wong charges a price: because they provide the forum for what's going down.
And, in this here so-called "information age", a forum is as valuable as the info itself. Sometimes more so. (If Wong's customer base was so large that he could afford to offer access to his whole website for free, while charging for advertisements a lot more than what I assume he does now, then I'm sure he might consider offering GC for free. But the vision of the horde of cheapskate trollers invading the site wholesale, would bring him back to his senses!..)
One last, very capitalist point: competition. If there was another website around where you could find the same amount & quality of information (whetever they are) that you get on Green Chip and it was free, Wong would reconsider. The message ? Start your own free, quality, Blackjack website and give Wong a run for his money!.
One last, very capitalist point: competition. If there was another website around where you could find the same amount & quality of information (whetever they are) that you get on Green Chip and it was free, Wong would reconsider. The message ? Start your own free, quality, Blackjack website and give Wong a run for his money!.
That can't happen because bj21 got a jump-start on every other bj site monopolizing search engine keywords very early. bj21 is the microsoft of the blackjack forum world.
It would cost about a quarter of a million dollars in advertising to create a site this large now-money very unlikely to be returned in the foreseeable future or even at all.
My quarrel is that counters don't need to pay for a forum to exchange ideas.
Why quarrel about it at all? No one is forced to become a member of Green Chip. They are all there of their own free will and they have decided that what is on Green Chip is worth their money or they wouldn't stay. There are free forums out there, including the free pages here, on Snyder's page, on Dalton's page, the Cardcounter's Cafe and others. Not one thing is preventing counters from using those forums. What's the big deal? I really don't understand why you have spent so much time and energy here on this issue.
Most card counters are pretty smart folks. I can certainly attest to the fact that Green Chippers are a smart group of people. They have decided GC is worth the money. 'Nuff said.
. . . that would make Stanford Wong the Bill Gates of Blackjack! I hear chuckling already.
[One could not possibly start one's own free, quality, Blackjack website and give Wong a run for his money because] it would cost about a quarter of a million dollars in advertising to create a site this large now-money very unlikely to be returned in the foreseeable future or even at all.""bj21 got a jump-start on every other bj site monopolizing search engine keywords very early. bj21 is the Microsoft of the blackjack forum world.
There are other websites around, which cater to Blackjack players, which have offered historically the same "product". I would compare the achievement of Wong with the VHS/Beta story in VCRs; how one format (though, by the way, better in quality!) got totally wiped out because it overlooked the mosrt important objective in a rapidly expanding market - which is to achieve as fast as possible critical mass in market share.
But I concede that by now it has become very difficult to elbow Wong out of his dominant position. Should we call in the Anti-Monopoly Commisssion?! Methinks not. Although highly suspicious of invisible hands and Voodoo economics in general, I believe that if Wong overplays his hand and abuses that Web supremacy, he will be duly punished by the customers. And an opportunity will be thus presented to anyone willing to take up the mantle. (Setting up a forum is extremely easy.)
D,
I have never been a GC member, but I know people who are, and it is very worthwhile to them. I was a member of another " Green" board for a couple of years, but my membership lapsed due to inattention. That board also has high quality content and is much more valuable than the public boards. I go into periods of inactivity blackjack-wise from time to time, and sometimes go months without looking at any of the bj sites. Take care. bjdavid
I belong to get that extra info that people may post there, on Midwest,
but the activity is slight and often the same can be found on free. Of course the "Royalty" would like me to leave and that is reason enough for me to stay!
Nice to read your posts "King" Pete. I bow Before thee O exalted "Chipper', "Chipper".
Joe
