Why there should be a rule against sharing ANY passwords.
Ok, I know this is not going to be a popular idea but I am asking you to bear with me on this.
PO is a great site. I have been here for a couple weeks now and have played a few tourneys and gotten to meet some awesome people. In general people here are kind, helpful, and understanding.
I hear people complain all the time about beggars who are looking for money/points/passwords yet we all participate in behavior that encourages it. How many times has any of us given a password on the chat board? I know personally, I have given a BRM pass before and, though it is INCREDIBLY easy to get, I am still not proud of it.
I know we have talked on here numerous times about how frustrating it is that there are so many leaks into our tournaments. Understand that there are members of other sites that are probably having the same conversation about their tournaments. How many of those tournaments have you been to that you didn't "opt in" to? Complaining about our leaks is a little too much like a pot calling a kettle black for my taste. We have an opportunity to be a better site, a high quality site by simply discouraging the sharing of other passwords here.
Apart from giving passwords on here encouraging begging and being hypocritical, there is a monetary consequence here as well. Web domains and site code cost money. I don't have to run a website to know that, though it is a relatively small investment of cash, the time spent creating and running a profitable site is not insignificant. Zab would be the one to ask, but I am sure that the time he spends on his site is quite astounding. As a result, we have a nice site but he has to get paid.
Last I checked, there aren't any members who are simply writing Zab out checks each month to run his site. Zab, like other site admins, get paid by the surveys we take, tasks we complete, and videos we watch. This money allows him to put on free-roll tourneys, encourage site growth, and keep the site looking amazing. When his password is leaked, no matter how insignificant the leak may seem, that takes money directly out of Zab's pocket. It is exponentially worse when a thief wins the tourney because chances are, their winnings aren't going to end up like JB's or Btngu's where they won a larger tourney and gave back. More likely, they will give back to their home site.
Finally, I saw something today that I think is just plain disgusting. The rewards4cash admin was on our site monitoring the boards. She had been there for a while and several people know by now that she is leasing code from Zab for her site (explaining why they look so similar). Just before her tourney is about to start, people leak her password directly on to the chat-box.
Again, I will be the first to admit, I used the password. I played in the tourney (got bounced out with AK suited vs QQ but that is another discussion...) like several others. It wouldn't have been so bad if not for the fact that there were several members repeating and repeating the password. Even despite the admin's insistence that it stop. To draw a parallel, imagine you own a store. A robber walks in the store and casually takes some of your merchandise. Then the robber tells their friends who immediately do the same thing. Now there are robbers filing in and out of your store, silently grabbing hundreds of thousands of dollars of your investment while you are powerless to stop it. All you can do is yell at them hoping they just go away.
This is what I imagine it was like for the rewards4cash admin today. Maybe this is hyperbole (over-dramatizing for effect) but even if it isn't a lot of money, it must still be incredibly frustrating.
My only request is that we all remember that we are human beings. It is very easy to hid behind an internet avatar and say hurtful things that we would otherwise never say to somebody's face but I would hope that we could all be members of a site who is above that. Let's try to participate in encouraging respect and kindness.
Who knows, maybe some of the other admins of the other poker sites will start doing the same and maybe we can finally start having less leaks. Maybe.
OK. I'll get down from my soapbox now.
