[DinkinFlicka]

I'm not saying that people will come here because of the look, I am saying they will come here because they will quickly find what they are interested in (specific sports betting content).

There is a core of people here that will always use the sports betting forum no matter what kind of organization it has and they are comfortable with that. However there are lots of users who come here for the poker forums, stop into the sports betting forum and quickly realize that it is not nearly as organized or as useful as the poker forums. This includes a lot of users who aren't represented in your poll.

I know a little bit about websites as well and it is extremely important that the first visit that a user makes to a site be a smooth and productive visit, or else there is a high probability that they will never come back. There are plenty of poker player/sports bettors who come here for poker and go somewhere else for sports, but that doesn't have to remain the case if things are improved.

You are a regular poster on this board, you need to see it from an outsiders point of view. Of course everything is simple to you, it's easy for you to say well just adjust this and there are only 5 pages of posts to read through no big deal.

If you want suggestions on how to improve this forum, the answer is simple. Break it down so users can find what they want quicker. Don't worry about the traffic so much right away, there is plenty of traffic on 2+2 and if you actually make things easier for handicappers to find specific information/discussion in regards to specific sports bets the board will grow. That's the key, the way the board is now it's not going to grow like it could. A lot of people here play poker as well and only have so much time to cruise the boards. The fact is that it's much more productive to use the poker forums. That doesn't mean that is the way that it always has to be. Give it a legit shot, if it doesn't work it doesn't work. It's not going to kill the forum, you already have a core in place that works through the rubble as it is and the traffic of the other forums already here make it certain that gamblers will have exposure to the new segmented forums.

I don't know the specifics of how hard it's going to be from a coding standpont, but I think it will be well worth it to the community as a whole. I understand that you are a volunteer, but you have to pride yourself somewhat on improving the forums when you can. The variety of sports bets is similar to that of poker and they are similar in that a PLO player has little interest in LHE discussion just like an NFL capper doesn't care about UFC and baseball. That's not to say that 1 person can't be interested in everything, it's just that to be a successful sports bettor you have to specialize even moreso than in poker. Accomodate these people and things will fall into place. Do you think the current system in place is ideally how a professional sports bettor wants information organized on a message board system? Is it more important to just keep the masses using this type of system for the sake of real pros?

The distinctions between the many aspects of sports betting will become much more clear, which will promote growth and eduction on the subject as a whole.

As you stated, I hope that you do propose the creation of subforums. I'm interested to see how well received it really is. I don't think it's much of a fundamental change from the way the rest of the site is run. In fact, I think lumping all of sports betting into 1 forum is fundamentally different from the rest of the site. Sports betting has so much variety just like poker.

Of course it's going to create forums that have very little traffic, but you have that in a lot of the poker forums already. It's not a bad thing. That is just the nature of certain games.