QUALIFIER
It’s not the greatest sin in the world to be a moron—we all are or have been in some area—after all, we’re human. But the saying “a little knowledge can be dangerous” holds very true; this saying we believe arose due to a “plethora of arrogant imbeciles / sacco di cretini imbecili”. Someone who fancies his/herself and expert AND thus won’t improve can be very, very dangerous—whether in Nascar, politics, bj tourney, etc…besides annoying, of course.
Please keep in mind that we have a genteel disposition, kind nature and secure psyche: we go out of our way to help others , make them feel comfortable around us, respect their privacy & space, etc.; as well we optimistically assume the best from others. We are among the least predisposed to for instance—argue with someone on the street who crosses our path, or take something someone says the wrong way. We believe in serving others—both thru volunteer and paid work: we help charities out and for years worked in the hospitality industry: the customer(& by extension all strangers we run into) is always right… or at the very least deserves the benefit of the doubt.
So, the rare times when we cross swords with someone, it’s usually over the straw the broke the camel’s back—someone is either purposefully bullying someone or incoveniencing others thru unchecked, irresponsible behavior.
1. BLACKJACK DONKS—especially in tournament play….they should be banned. You know the kind—they base their hand decisions by what card ‘they feel is coming and/or due’.
They’ll usually stand a 13 vs dealer 7-ace showing while doubling down 15 vs a 5 showing. The advanced ones will take it further and split 6-6, 8-8 vs ace or ten showing, double down their bj w/ a ten showing, stand with a sub-10 total vs a high card, hit their 19 or 20 vs a soft card, etc.
Yes, there are special situations where strategy dictates unorthodox moves…but not from the start, on every hand…and with a full or half bankroll bet; to boot during an initial round when half the table(or more) advances anyway.
You might think this sounds harsh, but such an animal not only loses, but takes others down with him / her—either by taking the bust card of the dealer or of a rival player with a big bet / bankroll.
Somebody who bets money on blackjack while utilizing poor strategy is the worst kind of jerk loser one can run into. Think about it:
A. Basic strategy is not rocket science…as its basic moniker implies, it only requires a fairly elemental level of math knowledge and reasoning skill. Not possessing this eliminates one from most professions, certifications, skilled jobs and positions. It likely means that one didn’t do squat in high school or went to college.
B. However, #1 by itself does not necessarily brand “every such person” a loser: maybe a congenital deficiency or accident is the reason, maybe such a person is a genius overly skilled in one area(artistically for example) to the detriment of others…to some degree this is probably true for the rest of us—we are all very inept / stupid at something in particular.
BBBUUUTTTT……one usually can still acquire / improve the data / skills one lacks…w/o even having to spend any money to boot!!! In the case of blackjack, for instance--- practically everything one needs is readily available on the internet…and for free!!!!!!!!
All one needs to do is Google for it!!!
C. So, someone who still remains a blackjack donk is the worst kind of inept, unmotivated loser…especially with money involved. It’s one thing to suck at say poker—now that requires a doctorate-type level of expertise; and unlike blackjack, the worst damage that bad hold em poker(the most predominant type) play can inflict on others is the occasional missed pot—but the cards and hands dealt are not altered in any way.
It’s also ok to suck for instance, at Monopoly, while still liking to play it frequently—one can excuse that away due to having a life / no spare time to devote to acquiring expertise at it…and most importantly, the money lost is only “play” money. But whoever loses money at 21 with incorrect play really, really deserves to not only be separated from their money, but also to be banned.
D. We may appear cruel in calling for the banning of such donks, but let’s use Nascar racing as an analogy: why not allow any / all to sign up and race—you, me, our grandparents, etc. regardless of skill level? Because we would cause all manner of accidents—and a resultant race winner might not be the most skilled driver, but rather the luckiest one who avoided the pileups…maybe even someone who caused some of them.
Same in a 21 tournament: say you’re playing at a table during a round where 2 or 3 advance…you’re utilizing correct strategy, but unfortunately find yourself facing a handful of morons who double down busting hands vs a small dealer upcard—usually @ max bets— yes, some will bust, but those that don’t will usually win and eliminate you.
Oftentimes that type of play can’t even be countered by sticking to minimum-sized bets because often, several at a table employ a strategy of minimum bets on every hand, then an all-in prayer @ the elimination hand(or just before it). So at best, the tourney becomes a coin flip.
2. EASTSIDE BOXING FORUMS--qualify as the most annoying, incompetent & arrogant entity we’ve encountered on the internet over the years. We stumbled upon a thread analyzing the upcoming Jones-Calzaghe fight, so we decided to register and post our analysis… that process took over 3 hours, after which we were unceremoniously & w/o any warning deleted from the forums.
They seem to be full of themselves--- like it’s a privilege to join them, and as well they’re paranoid.
The signup process demands way more information than that of other forums—birthdate, full name, location, email address, etc… and there’s a triple-guard security process in place: one has to answer a boxing question, fill in a captcha dialog prompt, and after passing all that—must wait for a moderator to approve the account.
All that wouldn’t be so bad if:
A. the forum software wasn’t buggy
B. there was a mod around to approve the account on the spot, and not hours later.
C. the folks running the place weren’t incompetent as well:
1. To start the negative ball rolling, they’ve attempted to look hip by picking a dark background w/ a font combination that makes the dialog inputs easy to miss / not see and the fonts hard to read / easy to misspell.
2. Then we got prompted to answer who won the so and so fight—except, they picked a pair that had fought more than once, each winning at least once… causing a predictable error to bounce the registration.
3. The same occurred with the captcha dialog—nowadays those are hard to answer correctly on the first try.
4. As well we missed a dialog box situated outside the main column / in an easy to miss location.
Now is where the process reaches Three Stooges levels:
5. As expected, the registration is bounced & one is forced to correct errors—but the software for this process behaves very badly:
6. Some of the fields—like desired PW, comfirm PW, etc.—get cleared…forcing a lot of unnecessary re-filling.
7. Even worse, the process ONLY prompts to correct one error at at time…resulting for us in 4-5 times having to bounce back & refill cleared fields & each of: missed form field, non-matching pw & email fields, “wrong” answer to question, wrong captcha dialog, etc.
Finally the registration was accepted and we were fed a message to monitor our inbox, as a mod would soon look over and approve our registration and send us a link to complete the validation process. The minutes stretched into hours as we constantly checked our Trash, Spam, & Inbox folders. In the intervening time we troubleshooted to ensure our mail server & their server were not having problems:
we logged into another email account and sent a successful test message… then we used the lost password link at their site—which is another convoluted, inept, and confusing multi-step process:
8. wait for a link to change pw to arrive in Inbox(it’s not immediate)
9. click link, arrive at site, be told to wait for a link with new PW to arrive in Inbox…again not immediately
10. sign in with new pw, go to settings, change pw to one of your choice.
11. receive erroneous message that PW is incorrect(even though the process actually accepted the new PW and succesfully logged you in)…this causes panic and prompts one to:
12. re-start process of new PW….which takes so long to respond, that one:
13. re-starts process again for new pw…fearing one either didn’t perform it correctly last time or whatever..
14. new pw for previous process arrives…one goes to forums and arrives just as new pw for last process request arrives--- which should we use?
15. during this whole time the date changed—we requested PW before midnite, but now it’s morning of new day…and guess what?
16. the pw is rejected for having expired “at least one day ago”
17. repeat pw process until successfully accepted.
So now, we’ve established that both servers can & have communicated with each other…& likely we now have to wait for a mod to deign to approve our app…which confers on us forum posting privileges.
3 hours after we initially commenced the registration process, we finally receive a validation message.
Before posting our analysis, we penned an initial satyrical, humoristic complaint—we began it and ended it with a courteous greeting, and labeled it Joe Pesci.
18. We then proceeded to post our thoughts on all the fights that day—a long and detailed posting….and as we click the Send button, the message is bounced back…and guess what—all the text had disappeared.
19. Now we have to recompose everything from memory….subsequent to that we get a prompt to log in….gee did we err when changing PW?
20. This triggers a whole new round of trying all the pw’s—the ones the forum sent, the ones we created ourselves… none work.
21. Finally we resign ourselves to request a new pw sent(along with the expected interminable wait)…whereupon we receive the message that our address is not in their database……
THE SATANIC MOD HAD, W/O ANY WARNING WHATSOEVER, DELETED EVERYTHING POSTED ALONG WITH OUR ENTIRE ACCOUNT!!!
Should we complain or request an explanation? We had tried to do already in order to hurry along the initial validation process…bbbuutttt the website will not accept correspondence until one registers and gets account validated!!!!!!!
They must think half the world is clamoring to join them—and will jump thru any hoops + wait as long as it takes—just for the privilege of posting in their community.
It takes a lot to get our goat up….if we EVER physically run into anybody involved in ownership or management of EAST SIDE BOXING FORUMS-- they will wish they weren’t born.
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