A word from SlyCin

I'm making this statement, but beyond this I won't be discussing any more.

For the past several months, and intensifying the last few weeks, several former members have been trying to destroy GPWA. Many of them claim they're only trying to destroy me, but the truth of the matter is they've been hurting everyone at GPWA, including the people some of them still call friends.

The problem is, no matter what you do to GPWA you won't destroy me, so your efforts are in vain. I have never been financially dependent on GPWA; in fact, until this year, never made a penny from it despite paying its expenses. Video Poker Junkie alone has always produced more than enough income to allow me the time to put into GPWA that's been required. How some of you claim that I use the members to my benefit is beyond comprehension since GPWA members have never been charged dues, nor have they signed up under me as subaffiliates. Rather, we set up a system where all the members sign up under each other so that all the members will benefit.

Most of the people who are working so hard to destroy us have been expelled from GPWA for cause. In November of 2001, GPWA members created and voted on rules and standards of behavoir which are enforced when necessary. Contrary to what some of the former members claim, GPWA has *never* publicly published the details of their wrongdoings. If we did, they wouldn't be getting away with the outrageous stories they publish around the net; however it's never been GPWA's goal to ruin these people's reputations, only to protect GPWA and its members.

For the record, in case anyone's interested, I'm not the one who called for DT's expulsion - many members did, and had been for a long time. I'm not the one who called for Dean's expulsion, Croupier was; and Croupier was the one who did the final lockout of Dean and Ellen. He's finally stated that publicly now, so I can say that; up until he posted that at WOL this weekend, I had been protecting him knowing he didn't want to get involved in the controversy.

I'm not the one who called for Dom's expulsion, in fact, I tried to keep her here and she knows that. But Dom was not well-liked at GPWA and it was a senior member who called for her expulsion after she admitted the truth to us; she knows that also because he told her privately he was doing it before he took it to the members. In every expulsion (except Marc Lesnick's), there has been member discussion and the subject has been given adequate time to explain to the members, then a vote's been taken to determine what happens.

Neither I, or the members, have ever believed in publishing the proof of their wrongdoings, but rest assured we have it; nothing is ever deleted from GPWA. Several of the former members have taken advantage of this to create some very outrageous stories and claims, and it seems to be a favorite of theirs to blame me personally and solely, even though they know it's not true. And contrary to Dean's claims that the votes are "fixed" at GPWA, the members know this is not true. Many times the vote has gone against what I wanted - if I were "fixing" them, that would never happen.

While legally speaking I'm the sole owner of GPWA, it was created as, has always operated as, and will continue to operate as a democracy. What the members want and decide, is what happens. As far as the Confidentiality Agreement that was sent out to our members last night, and was posted everywhere by the GPWA-haters, this was actually a member's idea a few weeks ago and done on the advice of an attorney. The legitimate members of GPWA are quite happy we've done this.

Some people claim GPWA's never done anything for its members or anyone else, but that's far from the truth. We've accomplished many positive things for the casino affiliate industry that have benefitted every portal owner, whether they were a member or not. Some of these things include;
- Banishing non-overwriteable cookies;
- Eliminating negative carryovers at numerous programs;
- Lowering minimums for monthly income payments.
- In multi-casino affiliate programs, we've convinced several of them to not combine the results (deducting losses from earnings) from all the casinos, which has resulted in higher income for members of those aff programs;
- The standardization of commission schedules at different affiliate programs, where previously commissions were individually negotiated, many times leaving new webmasters at a huge disadvantage;
- We made a huge difference in the scumware usage by casino programs, although it wasn't 100% successful. Many of us continue to boycott the casinos that still use scumware, with no loss of income from doing it. Our "GPWA Certified Scumware Free" button can be found on many affiliate program sites now, and that continues to increase.
- We do random tests of casino tracking, and when it's found deficient, in most cases we've worked with the aff program to get it fixed.
- We've worked with new casino launches in their player bonus programs to get T&C's straight and acceptable.

Despite what the former members are claiming, GPWA is still going quite strong, and will continue to grow. I have stepped back from daily management now, and with Bill as the Manager, and Amateur as the Assistant Manager, we will remain strong.

Contrary to what former members' intentions have been, because of the negative publicity on many boards, our applications have tripled in the last 2 weeks (we have a backlog of 30 applications in process), we have 2 new casino programs coming on board, and we're talking to a couple of others.

Do what you will, but you're not going to stop us.