Changes At Noted Poker Authority

Ed,

Two things…
1) Not for nothing, but who are the Bozos “pressuring” you. Without more detail – it sounds rediculous. Maybe switching web hosting companies is a recourse? What the $@#$ do I know.

2)The articles you write and the comments by the regulars are very worth while, certainly worth a little scratch for the good ones, so please don’t shut the site down.

One of the great things about your articles is I find them well thought out & fairly easy to implement. As an example your series on how to conquer wild games has given me great tools to clobber rediculous home games and low NLHE games on line.

Thanks,
Small Stakes Idiot

This is just speculation but I will stab a guess at this. I have noticed that Ed writes a regular column for Card Player magazine. And that generally the articles end up on this site after they have been published in the magazine. I would be willing to guess that Ed might be under some contractual agreements regarding the content written for his column. Which far be it for me to criticize he needs to get paid somehow. But Ed please understand that we all really appreciate you efforts and the content you generate on this site.

Ed,
All I can say is thanks much for all the free content while it lasted. As “mad” as some people might be, you have a right to get paid for your work. You have every right to charge for your work. All i can say is thanks for keeping it free for THIS long. Some people probably don’t even realize how valuable YOU were to their poker game.

For the record, It was Ed Miller’s books and articles that helped make me a winning player (and about 2 years of losing practice!)……not some trashy phil hellmuth book or any other “name” player’s book with a bunch of anecdotes, stories, and general advice which pretty much are nothing more than entertainment. Any people who are serious about the game and learning it, i tell them to get the book “getting started in hold em”, and to read it 10 times……..as a primer for limit AND no limit.

There has to be a reason you can call yourself the noted poker authority and get away with it. = ). You have a right to get paid for your work.

Thanks again for all your articles.
-jdk050507

Ed, i knew about this site just a few weeks ago :´(… and i can say that this is probably one of the more interesting web pages anyone can find for learning and getting poker theory and practice to the next level.

Too bad that is not going to be free charge anymore, but i know everybody would understand your reasons, you really deserves to get paid for your job.

Thanks a lot,

I think we’re all curious about the source of this pressure. I would have recommended Poker Made Simple to anyone starting to learn poker, but I won’t be able to do that now.

Well, that really sucks.

Thanks for keeping things free for so long, and I assume there was a good reason for having to change that.

This really really sucks. I can’t imagine what pressure and threats there could be. Maybe you can integrate the site with StoxPoker somehow or at least make your old articles available there to paying members.

This is the end of this website as we know it. I am a member of stoxpoker and i see why it makes sense to pay money for it. But, frankly, I don’t see any reason to pay for reading a blog about poker, even though I like your articles very much.

People pay for poker software, tutorial sites, poker books and now: blogs???

I don’t think so.

Is the URL anonymouspokerauthority.com available.

make the blog pay only, and u lose readers/customers.

LOL paying for blogs

and that from a rich guy like you

wtf???

this is your own personal blog, how can anyone pressure you to do anything???????????

please explain

By the way, not being judgemental or anything, but paying for individual articles, or even access to archives, are models that have been pushed ever since the commercialization of the Internet, but have failed pretty much completely. And it has nothing to do with technology or barriers to it, but everything to do with human psychology.

In strange a contradiction, your articles are priceless in their content, but very few, if anyone, are going to start paying for that alone.

OMG….selling out?

please give more details about the ‘pressure boys’..now it just looks like a lame excuse to make a quick buck.

I knew the site would go down eventually (payment-wise) the moment you signed with stox.

That all sounds rather intriguing, Ed! Well, no matter what happens, I think that this site has been one of the real gems out there, and I feel fortunate to have found it when I did. It’s always been full of useful, thoughtful and well-written advice that has been spot on. Obviously, it’ll be different not to have everything available, however I feel like I’ve got so much more from this site than just about anywhere else over the last little while precisely because it is so much more than a blog.

This needs more explanation imo.

If anyone knows how to download/archive the current articles let me know. I got bunch of them in email format but it sucks to copy/paste every single one. (deinebestimmung@web.de)

And how is selling articles gonna work? Weird.

Jesus man, why not just tell them to go f*@k themselves?

Have you been receiving death threats? If so, go to the police, otherwise – and seriously – tell them to go f&*k themselves. Is it someone else you work for who doesn’t want you moon-lighting for free? If someone did that to me, I’d tell them to stuff their stinking money.

Isn’t the beauty of being a professional poker player that you call no man ‘mister’? That you’re nobody’s bitch? Surely you must have had that ideal at one time.

Who has the right to ask this of you? Or put another way – who do you *give* the right to demand this from you?

Why the hell would you stand for this? I just can’t see why you would have anything to do with anyone who threatened you. They deserve to have their threats rebuffed, or at the very least exposed, so we can all steer well clear of their filthy rotten enterprise – whatever that might be.

Whoever is threatening you is not your friend, or at least if they are they’re bad at being a friend, and that to me sounds like motivation to cut them off. At least tell us who they are; we deserve to know.

I’ve always enjoyed reading your articles; I’ve been lurking here for some time. However, when someone starts charging for their opinion, I have to start to wonder whether they are being heart-felt, or financially-driven, and I simply don’t have the time to be wondering that.

A great shame.

Putting a range on villans here:
(1) 2+2 Publishing (MM)
(2) Card Player magazine
(3) StoxPoker
(4) Unknown

Seems to me (1) has the most leverage right now
because of the upcoming book publication.

I would expect a pay for old articles scheme
to be an unsucessful business model at any but the most trivial price.

Well, shucks, it was good while it lasted. Thanks for your efforts, Ed. What follows is *not* personally directed at you, but at those who would milk you and through you, your readers, for all they’re worth.

A significant fraction of the value of a blog is in reader’s comments — so those who participate in the discussion are giving value to your blog FOR FREE. Now, though, if I stay on and participate (not that I’ve participated much) the value of my comments amounts to providing charity to commercial enterprise. Except to the (egregious) extent that my tax dollars do so, I do not willingly give charity to commercial enterprise. When someone expects me to do so, I disengage immediately. This means that PNLHE volume two will never land on the shelf next to my copy of volume one.

It’s your blog to do with as you please, Ed, but this reader is walking away. If I somehow become aware of the identity of the entity who’s forcing this turn of events, I’ll make it a point to never send a dime their way.

Be well, Ed. I wish you the greatest of success but if you’re going to get my money it’s going to be at a poker table, not a damned blog.

Stoxpoker made him do it. For real
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=4189919&postcount=60

its always a mistake to let Elaine speak for you.

“its always a mistake to let Elaine speak for you.”

Has she written about this?

Really bizarre that StoxPoker could and/or would force Ed to do this. What’s their leverage? Does Ed have content on this site that is their intellectual property? (And did he nine months ago when the threats started?)

Could Mason be lying about this? Hard to believe that he would make such a bald-faced lie that Ed could easily refute. But I don’t know what to put past that guy any more…

The 2nd asdfasdf is some idiot who stole my user name. I never said anyting about Elaine. Obv she has nothing to do with this. Around the time Ed first joined Stox he started talking about having pay content on NPA.

I have nothing to do with this.

And I never speak for Ed. I always only speak for myself.

who is elaine?

also if stox is behind this I will support Ed and quit my subscription for stoxpoker

Ed,
I’m sorry to hear that the content will no longer be free. I have enjoyed your books and articles immensely and am anxiously awaiting PNLHE Vol2. I (like many) believe that Stoxpoker is the culprit behind the “pressure” and “threats” (Cardplayer articles are already free on their site). I think Stoxpoker will find the backlash from the poker community will hurt them tremendously. NPA was free advertising for their training site. Because of your involvement I had considering joining Stoxpoker, but not anymore.

One last request. I loved your Poker Made Simple series especially your construction of a NLHE starting hand chart. You never compiled the completed chart. How about sending your loyal readers off with that completed chart, for old times sake

Also, when will PNLHE Vol2 be released?

Take it easy, Ed.

Nevermind. I just realized Elaine is Ed’s wife.

Why hasn’t anyone started a thread about this on Stoxpoker to see how long it takes them to delete it?

If anyone doubted that Stoxpoker was responsible for the demise of NPA, check out the quote on stoxpoker.com

[Im my opinion, the Ed Miller "Poker Made Simple" series will pay for the site many times over.
Member Name: "nosmith"
Joined 05/07 ]*

*Excerpt taken from stoxpoker.com without their permission
No rights reserved ;)

Ed,

I, too, want to know from whence the pressure is coming.

I donated $25.00 voluntarily after I realized how good your site was. I still think it is worth my donation, but frankly, I am now feeling quite foolish for having ponied up the money and finding that I am being asked to pay to see the stuff I could see before.

Jerry NATCHEZTOO Krouse

Well, it’s always about the money anyway, isn’t it?

Thanks Ed, for you have been one of my favorite author out there and I’ve learned a lot with your articles. May the blog rest in peace. And may the bastards that ‘forced’ Ed to do this burn in hell!

Hmm, I am currently a member of stox poker but maybe I need to cancel my subscription. If threats and pressuring the people they work with is the way they run their business not sure I want to support that. I’m surprised as they seemed like a good group of people.

Oh well, I only play limit and the amount of limit content on their site has gone down a fair bit lately, so maybe it’s best that I start exploring other options.

Love your books Ed and best of luck in the future, so to hear you’ve had to deal with this kind of stuff.

Please be so polite to unregister all your subscribers after you asked them to pay for your content…
Then at least you will have some dignity left…

I am with Nick on this one.

I too have a sub at Stoxpoker, mostly because of Ed being part of that. His instruction on the site is wonderful. The instruction I found there was better than any I have paid for before, including CR.
It also seemed to me that it was a nice group of guys running the site. Appearances are deceiving I guess.

I will have to rethink my subscription if what Mason at 2+2 said was true.

I hope Ed comes back soon with a statement for all of us.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with you charging for your work, my issue is that someone threatened you, and you let them. Threatening someone is such an utterly vile thing to do. Whether it’s done with a contract, or a knife, it’s the same.

But something else springs to mind. You publish your next strategy article. I get it delivered to my inbox, and read it. I then go to the site, and leave a comment. A conversation is ignited, and we get some where. We do some interesting analysis and a conclusion is reached. Then 30-days latter my words get locked, and even I – the author – am not allowed to read them without paying a fee. Moreover, I don’t get one cent of those fees which collect from others. Worse still – say in 3 years I decide to write a book, anything I mentioned in your comments is out of bounds because that’s now your intellectual property.

The solution to this is going to be obvious to everyone – make sure you don’t leave any high quality comments at Ed Miller’s place. Is that really the kind of thing you want to be encouraging? That is going to turn this place into a “flod pre, ldo” fest, and no one is going to pay for that.

You can register at stox for free and let them know how you feel here
http://www.stoxpoker.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13129

Reading all these comments reminds me of a Shakespeare play – “Much Ado About Nothing”.

I think part of the problem is that the word “threat” can be interpreted in different ways. I’m sure no one threatened to burn Ed’s house down or chop his head off.

Now that Ed is affiliated with Stox, he writes material for them which they assume will attract more paying customers to their site. Presumably Ed receives some sort of compensation from Stox for that.

If Ed then goes and posts that same material here for free, I can see how that might upset Stox. Potential customers might decide to not subscribe if they can get the same material here. Also because they compensated Ed, they feel that they have some kind of partial ownership of it. So Ed tells them “OK, it will only be up for 30 days” and that makes everyone happy.

Doesn’t 2+2 already use this format in their magazine? They feature articles for some amount of time, then they come down and you can’t access them at all any more. At least under Ed’s scheme, you can still get the old articles if you want.

Seriously I really don’t see this as a big deal. This site is more than an ordinary blog because Ed’s articles are meant to be tutorial, and so are more than just “opinions” which is what you see on a lot of other blogs.

Digi hit it on the head I believe. I can’t speak for anyone else but me, but my thought was Ed was getting harassed, bullied, and/or strong armed to do this. When he uses phrases such as…

“For about the last nine months, behind the scenes, I’ve been receiving pressure and threats aimed at forcing me either to shut down Noted Poker Authority or to make the vast majority of its content available for pay only (sounds ridiculous, I know).”

This makes me think the worst. If this is not what is happening then I believe much better words could have been used.
A threat gets my blood boiling faster than anything.

I am now guessing it isn’t as dramatic as it was made out to be…or is it?

F them Ed! They’re fascist pigs!

I also am questioning whether I will continue my subscription on Stox. This sounds like a lot of greedy nonsense, and I don’t want to be any part of it. I have enjoyed Ed Millers training on Stox and it was part of the reason I joined, but if the Stox people are so greedy they are threatning him to stop posting free content on his NPA site, I find this ridiculous for many reasons. For one thing his posts on his website could convince people to join Stox Poker and that will only help them. It was one of the things that steered me towards them recently. Its just funny how people act when it comes to money, greed can destroy relationships, and it can also destroy businesses sometimes. I hope this doesnt seriously affect Stox Pokers business.

Ed, would that be the speculation and innuendo that you started by by making vague references to threats and pressure without saying anything about it.

Surely someone with your IQ would know this would stir up some traffic on 2+2?

Digi,
Just speculation here… I’m guessing the comments will move to the forum instead, where they will stay in perpetuity for all to read without having to by subscriptions. That’s how a lot of these kinds of websites work so I’m guessing that’s what NPA will do, too.

Ed,
I’m not sure what you’re saying in your last comment. Were you threatened, just not by Stox, or did you miss-use the word in the first place?

I don’t really follow “internet poker gossip”, and I barely even know what Stox do, so I was never jumping to that conclusion. I’ve seen you mention once or twice that you have other literary enterprises, so if anything I was vaguely assuming it was some publisher getting twitchy somewhere, but I’m not clued up enough to know who that would be.

As for the comments thing Nuggat, how would that work? A bunch of forum post disjointed from the original article? How would anyone know what they meant, or weight their value?

“Ed, would that be the speculation and innuendo that you started by by making vague references to threats and pressure without saying anything about it.

Surely someone with your IQ would know this would stir up some traffic on 2+2?”

Exactly my reasoning. I love your blog, but the first post was pretty much a self-inflicted PR-desaster. You gave everybody with sinister fantasies a lot to speculate about.

I think it would be about time to make clear the exact reasons behind your decision to stop the free archive.

By the way: I have no problem whatsoever that you try to make money out of precious content of your own making. That is perfectly fine. As I said, I really love your blog.

I just think that many people, including myself, think that one thing does not make sense: Usually, you seem really frank and outspoken, sharing all your thoughts and even some of your feelings with the readers.

What on earth happened that you do not do exactly that now? Why so secretive?

Hey Ed,
Sorry for your troubles. Your vocabulary set off quite a tempest. Hey, for my $.02, you know from my past statements that I have always thought highly of you as an instructor and as a human being. Nothing’s changed. =).
Your private dealings really have nothing to do with anyone here. For whatever reasons, now if someone wants to read an archived article, they pay, if they don’t think it’s worth it, they don’t pay. I face these decisions everyday, at the poker table and at the uhhh, store. Free enterprise or some shit like that.

You have provided a lot of free info for a long time, and put el mucho work into your site, not to mention your own $. It doesn’t really matter where the pressure came from, things change, and you do this or close the site. I’m just glad you chose to keep the site open.

One last thing I didn’t really catch, how the hell did poor Elaine get dragged into this. Sad as that is it actually made me laugh, as in, what the hell? I guess someone is trying to infer you are not a moneygrubber, just henpecked? Hee hee =)

Hang in there Ed. You still have plenty of old-time loyal supporters around. Keep up the good work.

JC

Wow, very disapointed to hear . You are without a doubt one of the best poker author and coaches and I have enjoyed this site very much . I followed you to Stox poker and have enjoyed your video’s . Sorry to hear you are shutting down the site, good luck in your ventures.

Hey BetMax, I think you missed the beginning, the site is staying up. =)

So who’s behind all of this now? I just want to make sure I hate the right ppl (and possibly boycott their products).

BTW Ed, I’ve gotten a lot out of your articles, great site!! THANKS FOR YOUR EFFORT!!

Stoxpoker are nazis who steal candy from babies and beat up old women!!!

This speculations quite amusing. I just worry all this bad PR for stoxpoker may reduce the likelihood of seeing more Ed videos.

Presumably Ed cannot say where the threats are coming from either because he has been threatened not to or because part of his agreement to stop the threats was to keep the source anonymous.

But this has Mason’s fingerprints all over it, IMO:

1) Mason has a history of zealous overreactions in protection of 2+2: see Dan Druff, Gary Wise, Andrew Brokos incidents etc.
2) These overreactions include threats; e.g., according to Gary Wise, Mason delivered this message to him: “If he in any way does anything to harm me or my company, he will feel the full wrath of 2+2.”
3) Mason has a history of prevaricating about these overreactions.
4) Mason locked the 2+2 thread and posted misleading information that seemed to implicate stoxpoker.
5) It’s possible that stoxpoker requested that Mason lock the 2+2 thread, as Mason claims, but it seems unlikely – notice that they haven’t locked the thread on their own site (http://www.stoxpoker.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13129).