When you jump into any medium on the Internet, you can hide behind the shield of disguising yourself and never let anyone know who you really are.  Unless, of course you’re running some really hardcore child porn — or playing online poker — or something that grabs the feds by the nose hairs and starts yanking them in your direction.

Several discussions with Mr. Riot over the years is part of this picture since he’s a WOW player and always interacting in chat where I’ve tried to teach him that a player who says they are 12 and like the same things he does could actually be a 50-year old perv that wants to get their dailies off in the game.

Did you know that you can get lap dances and all sorts of hoopla on WOW?  Players marry players in the game and all kinds of craziness.  I stress to him to never tell anyone where he lives or give out a phone number or anything that could lead to finding him in the real world; it is all a game, much bigger than the one he thinks he is playing on the Internet.

I hope that stressing is paying off but I got a ‘snot’ text from Momparental the other day about Internet stalkers and how I was one to her and she knew how scary it could be.  Do Tell!  I have to LMAO over that.  That one is a long story and I don’t have the energy to write it all right now, but at some point I plan on it. It’s such a parody of idiocy that it has to be told…and putting the blame on someone else…and feeling righteous about running a site for girls for hire…and a few other things.

But moving on.  When I first started my blog, it wasn’t really a blog, it was articles about events that happened at the table that were published to PokerWorks.com.  Yes, I know I’ve stated that before, but just in case anyone wasn’t paying attention, I feel the need to restate it now.

Back then I was terrified that someone I wrote about would find out and punish me every time I dealt poker to them. Eventually when I moved my info/posts into Blogger and still was independently running PokerWorks, I thought that I was safe.  That no one who ever frequented The Mirage or Bellagio ever read what I wrote.  Still…I didn’t use names most of the time, but as I became more convinced I felt I was writing from a cloak of shadows and I was safe.

BOOM!

Then I started dealing to people who said they read me.  Then a big stinko started on the 2+2 Forums where I had linked to the site and Mason Malmuth read some of my stuff.  He put out a public opinion poll on the 2+2 thread under the ‘Gossip’ section and asked if he should dump a link or keep it.

I didn’t even know it was there for some time but a friend of mine that read me and the forum sent me the link to let me know I was under fire. The whole thing was stupid.  Did he need a poll to decide?  Hell no!  He could’ve just dumped the link.  Did I care if he gave me one?  Hell no!

Somewhere on an external drive or in a folder I have that thread saved.  I posted and told him he could dump the link to me whenever he felt like it, without asking anyone, but I was going to keep one up to him because I felt information was a key to ‘good game, well played’ in the poker world. (Naw…I didn’t use those exact words, just giving the general drift of it).

Malmuth and I have never gotten along.  But that is neither here nor there. What this is all about is that no matter how you write something, someone somewhere is going to be offended by it.  Momparental, Mason Malmuth, Joe Blow, it really doesn’t matter how you phrase it or what your intention was because by the time one of the readers gets wind of it, it’s usually twisted to suit their interpretation of it.

Writing as an anonymous writer is a huge advantage IMHO.  There are times I wish my name had never been tagged to Table Tango but it’s way too late to change it now.

So…I know I’m supposed to be doing a Winery post.  I will, I will, I swear I will.

But what brings up the subject matter for today is that when David “Devil Fish” Ulliott passed,  I went back to search posts I had with him in it.  I plan on putting some things together soon and writing about my experiences with him.  Mostly, he was a turd bucket from my POV when I first started dealing to him.  We wore each other down over a period of time though and managed to get along.

The one thing I really believed about him was that he was a very lonely man.  His shell was hard as obsidian and he hid beneath it, keeping everything he was inside…buried in anonymity.

So…check back