I know it may sound a bit strange but I learned my lesson a long time ago about posting in poker forums. Reading poker forums is an entirely different thing though. I belong to all of the most popular poker forums and I must admit there is quite a bit of relevant information in them. However, the flame wars can be extremely harsh, hateful, and downright childish. So, these days I simply search and read and get the information I need and no longer participate in the gang-like conversations.

Just last week I happened to be catching up on the latest news on a very popular forum and a member posted a dissertation on why a particular web site would or would not be likely to be rigged. Some of the post was interesting although I personally believed that the individual was trying to impress readers with his knowledge of “whatever.” After reading the post I was no more convinced that sites are rigged anymore than before I read the post.

Here is where it got interesting though. Each reply underneath his post pretty much was a “You are paranoid and we have no idea what the point of your article was” type of response. The posters reply to them was “Idiot1, Idiot2, Idiot3, etc. etc.” I stopped reading the responses after he reached idiot5.

Whether the owners of poker forums realize it or not the name calling and flame wars coupled with the wolf pack mentality turn off many would be posters like myself. The idea of a forum is to share ideas and information, not to attack posters simply because you disagree with there thinking. I don’t suspect things will change any and there are actually some very well run poker forums that do not tolerate this kind of foolishness. It’s just sad that the most popular ones do.