[benfranklin]

This web site is a big advertisement for 2+2 books and for Conjelco, which runs the site and which sells the book that you can order here. The more people who come here, the more 2+2 books that are sold, the more books that Conjelco sells, and the more advertising revenue that comes in from poker sites and affiliates. It costs money to advertise, and the cost here is basically bandwidth and administration.

Obviously, no one would pay to subscribe to the poker strategy forums as they now exist, because of the very low signal to noise ratio. The noise level would have to be close to zero before I would even think of paying for a forum, and that is highly unlikely. Bringing them up to that value level would be prohibitively expensive. I would think that it would require full-time editors with good-to-expert poker knowledge. Even valuable contributors would balk at being charged for something that is now free, and would likely migrate en mass to a new home. I think that the new system of moderators is beginning to have a positive impact, and is the correct compromise between chaos and subscription.

I think that the present, improving product is the optimal use of a discussion forum. The way to obtain added value is to provide added benefits, beyond this free service, and to charge for those services (advance access to the magazine articles, private newsletter, etc.).