[Gildwulf]

There are major differences between bbv and bbv4l (although it may not appear like it). I take it you were referring to 4l? They have developed basically separate communities now with the really big morons who don't play poker and who don't have anything to add to the strategy forums moving towards bbv4l. BBV still gets a high volume of strategy posters, though.

BBV has done a lot of good work for the poker community (the barry greenstein 40k for charity, breaking the absolute story) and also provides a solid place for strategy posters to vent in a bigger setting. Also, we started mspaint wars which has provided a lot of entertainment to the masses.

NVG I think is also useful in that it provides people with hand histories of big headsup matches that people might have missed, and some major stories have broken there as well (plus David Sklansky is using it as his personal playground so he must see some use in it).

I am trying to crack down on first/second stuff that I see that is ruining threads. I am doing 1-2 day bans now.

BBV4l is a black hole, but relatively harmless. It provides a service in that people with a looser sense of humour can go there and draw silly pictures and talk to people with similar interests. I would say it provides about as much utility as OOT on the forums, given the existence of EDF, which is..."some".