As Paul Gardner stated, only 400 members-- (approximately 13%) agree with our stance on slabbing.

Okay… I’ve seen this type of propaganda once too often. Not from you, Paul, but if you’re going to quote Mr. Gardner, you’re culpable as well.

The fallacy in the math is that it presumes that the readers and posters on The Chip Board are not representative of the chip collecting community at large, but rather implies that we are but a fringe group that thinks differently than everyone else.

WRONG!!!!

I contend that if 98% of the respondents during the famous slabbing debates professed to be anti-slabbing, then this same percentage should be applied to the chipping community as a whole. The readers of The Chip Board are ABSOLUTELY and IRREFUTABLY representative of the chipping community at large and I defy anyone else to prove otherwise. To attribute Jim Reilly’s election loss to his being against slabbing is ludicrous. I suspect that he was merely a little too extreme and vocal for many voters’ tastes, and that maybe his name recognition was not high enough among those non-readers and particularly Easterners.

Assuming, generously, that there are maybe 4000 active members of our hobby at the current time, a sampling of 400, or 10% of our population is more than enough to gauge the hobby’s sentiments and I’ll relate a comparable situation existing in the motion picture business to illustrate how huge this percentage is…

All of the major film companies use a company called the National Research Group to take polls for them twice weekly. These are generally conducted in several regional malls around the country and are used to gauge things such as awareness, degree of interest, etc. among current and upcoming movies. Based on the results of this twice-weekly polling, $20-$40 million is directed or redirected among media outlets and audience targeting is constantly redefined. This survey is the marketing people’s bible. Want to know how many are in this survey twice a week --- 400. That’s about 1/6,000th of 1 percent of the population of the country determining how the film companies’ millions are spent.

With the Neilsen Ratings… a slightly larger percentage is determining how billions of dollars of advertising money is spent on television.

To imply that the opinions of 400 readers of The Chip Board are inconsequential is beyond absurd, and the truth of the matter is that The Chip Board is THE sounding board, THE conscience, and THE bible of our hobby. There is no better instrument and there might never be. (Thank you, Greg). As a case in point here, the Anti-Slabbing movement itself is an offspring of The Chip Board. The organization of like minded thinkers (aka: the MOB) have had a major impact on the slabbing of casino chips and I suspect that most controversies affecting our hobby will be discussed HERE and the Club’s position will be forged HERE.

To state that only 400 members agree with our stance on slabbing, then, is not based in any kind of reality. You might as well say that only about 5 members are in favor of slabbing and the other 2495 are against… this is probably a more accurate reading.