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I can't defend all of AP's actions throughout this situation for a lot of reasons. I am not telling anyone to give them another chance.

However, I do think there is a significant possibility that one day they will run a completely secure site (from all angles) that will offer a 100% fair gaming experience. There is ALSO a significant possibility that they will never truly clean house and no one can really deny that as a possibility. That's all yet-to-be-determined and obviously lots of people here will never play there again no matter what and it's their right to do that.

In my mind, the jury is still out on the AP that we will see going forward.

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OK, I can see all that. But why do you care? It sounds like you're putting yourself out a bit by going down there to check them out. You don't need the money they're offering, you'll lose a bit by being away from other business, there's whatever small risk of actual danger, etc. Why bother?

If there was little or no chance of AP being hurt as a result of this whole scandal, then I can see some value in verifying they've cleaned up, seeing exactly what went wrong, etc. But if instead AP can be shoved to the bottom of the pile or put out of business, why wouldn't you spend your efforts to that end?

If I wasn't invested at all in seeing AP succeed as an online poker room, and I had a choice between exerting X effort to fly down to CR, "audit" them, etc, and spending X effort simply releasing all the info I have, talking to authorities, getting the principles prosecuted, etc... well, it's a pretty clear choice in my mind. Given a reasonable chance of completely sinking AP, I think the poker community would be better off over all without them than with a "clean" them.

If you think there's no reasonable chance of this scandal hurting them significantly, or if you're personally invested in seeing them succeed, then it changes the variables, obviously.

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You make a number of good points.

First, I am no longer going down there on the original mission as described in the other thread. I have posted a number of times in that thread about why.

Second, I do not believe there is anything that can be done to put AP out of business in the immediate. They still have plenty of traffic and they will make enough money regardless of what I do from here on out.

Third, I believe that if AP is going to be a part of the online poker landscape, everyone is best off if they are an open and honest site. I do not side with the "burn them no matter what crowd" and nor do I side with the "I'll play there now because there's value in their games crowd". I side with the people who say "I'm not going to play there for now, but I might down the line if they can convince me they're running a fair game and being open and honest with the poker community". They have a lot to prove to everyone. There are a lot of people in the middle category right now and my trip, if it had happened as described, might have been the first step in opening a communication line with AP. It would have also, in theory, told people a fair amount about whether AP is actually serious about running a poker site the "right" way (that is, how I would perceive the right way, who knows what others think) going forward.

For all those who think I'm on AP's side because I'm willing to hear them out and give them a chance to prove themselves trustworthy, I don't care. You don't have to play on AP ever again and I will never criticize anyone for making that decision.