Closing a Chapter of My Life

So, there are other things I want to speak about this week. Arguably far more significant things than I'll discuss here. But today represents an artifact. An ending. A terminus. And it would be deeply remiss of me not to acknowledge it.

Today, a site I founded and invested over a decade of my passion and life into, a site that was the genesis of the BetBlocker project, has finally been decommissioned. ThePOGG.com has transmitted its last byte and is no more.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I’m exceptionally proud of ThePOGG. Over the course of running the site, ThePOGG became singular in its voice and position in the sector. We pulled no punches and called out malpractice routinely. We exposed some of the worst of the worst operators and fought to provide players with information that would help them make informed decisions about where they played.

We were no doubt polarizing, there are many people in the sector who have very strong feelings about both me personally and ThePOGG brand. That is a legacy that BetBlocker is still having to live with. We've been told by some groups, that I won't name, that they're not interested in working with us because the decision makers have a strong personal dislike of me, which is sad. But I hope that we pushed the industry to be better. If that meant that we hurt a few feelings along the way, I can live with that.

We returned over $8 million dollars to players. As an affiliate based complaint management service, we were singular. We were the ONLY affiliate ever to be approved to function as an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service. And we were approved to function for both the UKGC and the MGA licenses at various stages. We engaged with regulation to provide oversight and critical feedback on our practices, but also to fight for change from the inside.

And we founded a service to help minimize gambling harm. ThePOGG funded the establishment of BetBlocker, which now helps tens of thousands of people every single day. More than any other achievement in my life, I’m proud of BetBlocker.

So ThePOGG was important to me. I hope it helped affect change for the better.

But the last few years of running ThePOGG were not a positive. The truth is, and with the clarity of hindsight, the writing was on the wall 5 years ago. The corporatization and consolidation of the sector meant that we were trying to compete with other sites that had teams of hundreds of people and budgets running in the six to seven figure a month range. Our legacy and reputation could only carry us so far. But my ego didn’t allow me to confront that reality when I should have.

And the end of ThePOGG was not quick. It spluttered and staggered and limped through the last two year, including a horrible half-redesign that leached all of the personality and soul out of the brand.

In my failure to let go, I brought a lot of negativity into my own life and the lives of those that I am closest to. I carry a lot of guilt for those decisions, having had to watch how my choices spread chaos through lives far more precious to me than my own.

So today is a strange day for me. A juxtaposition. Am I sad to see the end of the brand that came to represent so much of who I am? Yes. But I’m also not at all sad to see a totem so steeped in the most negative period of my life, and one that was a living representation of the hurts I have caused others, fall.

My hope for the future is that the best aspects of ThePOGG may live on through CasinoReviews.com. That the new owners can take the ethos of the brand I built and create something that will continue to strive to improve the industry. Only time will tell.

For now, let me simply say a melancholic goodbye to a period of my life that brought some of my proudest successes, and most crushing failures.