Can anything be done?

No poker today. I'm gonna be watching my New England Patriots as they go to 18-0 en route to the Superbowl. My pick is GB vs NE in Arizona.

What I want to bring up is the extreme lack of manners, even basic decency, seen from some of the players online. Case in point: I am a member of a couple forums that have freeroll and low buy-in tournaments sponsored on a few online poker sites. Playing in one just the other day, I get A-10 on the button. I call and the BB makes a standard raise. It's folded back to me. Now, A-10 isn't the kind of hand you would normally call with, but I was getting better than 3:1 on my money to call and I had position.

I hit my 10 on the flop and I "walk the dog" to the river and double up against the pkt 9's in the BB. Of course, he has to start right in with what a "Donkey" I was for calling the raise with A-10 (see above for explanation). I decide to have fun with this kid and we start trading shots. Nothing out of the ordinary. His taunts start to descend into the realm of a 5th grade shouting match on the playground and a lady player (correctly, I think) comments that's time to let it go. Bad beats happen.

That's when this punk goes WAAAY out of line and tells this woman to "get on your knees where you belong".???????? WTF is this sht? I guarantee, if this had been live, there would've been a line waiting to kick this guy's ass. As it was, he was safe behind the keyboard. He not only refused to apologize for his remarks, he (after first trying to justify his crudity) repeated them and added to them. All because a female player dared to ask for some semblance of courtesy at the table.

Of course, both the female player and myself (and others) contacted the administrators of the poker forum we belong to about getting this kid censured. We were both told that, since the conduct took place outside the forum (on another poker website) there was nothing they could do. (!?!) It happened during a forum sponsored event. The forum was for members only, so it wasn't like this was some outsider causing trouble. We both made the case that the forum needed to address this issue, and I made the case that this player be removed from the forum membership and banned. We were told that the matter would have to be addressed by the support staff at the poker site itself.

I don't get it. Can't the players who run this forum (all very good, skilled players and decent people) see what this is going to do to the reputation of their site? Their membership has exploded during the course of this past year, going from less than 10,000 to well over 40,000. Although most of these additions are not very active beyond the minimum to qualify for invitations for the daily sponsored freerolls. It is my belief that they'd be better served by coming down harder on those who are misbehaving and by limiting access to their freerolls to those members showing true interest in the well-being of the site and it's other members. In that way, the reputation of the site as a "family" of true poker players/enthusiasts who are known for their respect of the game and other players, as well as being a community that produces skilled players would grow and be a source of pride to both the members and founders.

As it is, we are losing our best and brightest. Those who could (and, indeed, want to) teach what they know are leaving because they don't want to deal with all the bs, and beginners looking for a place to learn and grow are greatly disillusioned when they run into these kinds of situations.

I want to make clear that I'm not singling out this one forum I belong to. I see it across the board. On almost every site, if you are in the freeroll satellites, or the lower cost buy-in tournaments, you are going to find a large percentage of players who feel the need to compensate for the success of another player over them by being personally offensive. Making racial, sexual, and ethnic comments that have absolutely no place at the poker table, much less in civil conversation.

Please, if you recognize yourself in this post (even if you would never admit it), THINK about what you are saying and doing at the table. RESPECT the other players in the game. It's ok to pick back and forth, and needling is a part of the psychology of the game (to an extent), but you and I both know that you would never act the same way, or say the same things, if you were live in a casino and had to answer for your conduct.