So I Got Banned From FB's "Let's Talk About Pool."

Jeff G. Martin said:

I, too, was banned from "Let's Talk About Pool". Why? I wasn't sure at first, but it was eventually explained to me why I didn’t belong there.

The Saturday evening when The US Open 9-Ball was winding down, I was watching my paid stream and browsing Facebook. To my surprise, someone was rebroadcasting the stream via Facebook Live in Let's Talk About Pool. I thought that was garbage, and it had been streaming for almost an hour. Sorry to be "that guy", but that’s BS to me that AccuStats goes through all of this work to produce the event and then someone redistributes it for such a large audience. I reported the thread and messaged the group creator.

I went back to the group awhile later to see if it had been removed. I couldn't even find the group. I actually thought that maybe reporting the thread got the group shut down for copyright violations. Nope… I was banned. At that point, I had no idea why. It even said in the rules on the pinned post that posting links to paid streams was against the rules.

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A couple months passed. A friend of mine sent me a screenshot where the group creator shared how many people were banned from the page. Given the trivial and asinine reasons I've seen when people are banned, I wasn’t even be surprised that this number was well over 3,000. Since he was so open to second (even third!) chances, I thought I'd message the group creator again and find out just why exactly I was banned.


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Very pretentious. Very elementary. I’m even more annoyed by this now that I think about it again.

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BasementDweller said:

Felt pretty good too.

There was a discussion about whether or not the calcutta winner should tip the winning player and it was a decent discussion as far as I could tell. Well until one of the Administrator's decided to chime in with his opinion. Once his opinion was questioned, he apparently got "personally offended" and banned that poster and later he explained that this was his test for who should be allowed to stick around.

I had the audacity to question this and they managed to ban me before I could leave the group. So they did win that battle.

Anyway, AZ is a WAY better place to actually exchange ideas about pool than is FB. So I come here not looking for pity but for penance for posting over there to begin with.

There's something more important at work too under the surface but I won't get into that here. Maybe more appropriate for NPR.

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BasementDweller said:

Well I guess since I was publicly scolded and then banned before I could defend myself, I might as well let everyone know they should never expect to have an open conversation whenever William Hurst is around.

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ChrisinNC said:

This is actually an excellent topic for discussion. My viewpoint pertains to smaller calcuttas in weekly tournaments, which is what I see here. Usually when a player doesn't buy half themselves back in the calcutta, after the winning bid goes to someone else, it's usually because they either don't have enough $$ to do so, they don't think it's a wise investment, or they think they ended up selling at a considerably higher $$ than they should have and are a little ticked off at the bidders that bid them up that high.

People that buy someone in the calcutta have very likely bought other players numerous times before and either won or lost money on those investments, so generally I'd say we rarely see it in here that the winner of the tourney gets tipped from the person that purchased him/her in the calcutta, regardless of whether they purchased back half of themselves or not. In fact, I'd guess usually the buyer is often even a little disappointed the player hasn't eased their investment by purchasing back half themselves, unless of course when they win it all, in which case they are glad they didn't.

Obviously the player still has an incentive to finish as high as possible in the tournament to collect their share of entry fee purse, regardless of whether they've bought in to the calcutta purse. Regardless of that, sometimes the buyer has some concern about whether the player who doesn't purchase back half themselves may "dump" on the buyer, to get back at them for bidding them up so high. I've seen that happen as well.

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BasementDweller said:

I believe Jaared Arosemena is too.

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BasementDweller said:

I had the audacity to question this and they managed to ban me before I could leave the group. So they did win that battle.

Anyway, AZ is a WAY better place to actually exchange ideas about pool than is FB. So I come here not looking for pity but for penance for posting over there to begin with.

There's something more important at work too under the surface but I won't get into that here. Maybe more appropriate for NPR.

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Echelon said:

Yep, I got bid up VERY high in a large out of town tourney and had no idea why at the time. The guy was all pissed off that i wouldn't buy half. I'm thinking WTF does this guy know about me, I'm way out of my league in this tourney. I find out on the ride home that my buddy, who fancies him self a gamble and stake horse convinced several guys I was some top road player so one of them would blow all their cash on me making it easier for my buddy to get some top players for less. Despite his horrible stroke I guess my buddy was a hustler after all.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

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watchez said:

This guy looks like a complete tool

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Type79 said:

Even though I am an admin of two Facebook billiards groups, I consider the platform inferior to a forum structure such as AZ or a well done website. It's popular because it is better-suited to mobile devices but Facebook is not a searchable database and there are probably more than a thousand pages for every interest category. For that reason alone, Facebook is a scammer's playground.

Regarding the admin activity, I find the conduct of some of the admins at times embarrassing and some admins and moderators have elevated their activity/responsibility to a sport all by itself. It's unfortunate, because in some cases, they are banning some good people.

This is a filtered version of what I really think. If I spoke my mind I would probably get banned as well.

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Tooler said:

I just can't stop laughing at this.

Well, I myself can't wait to get tossed. But first a little fun is in order.

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