a bit confusing. I don't have all of the answers and I only speak for myself, so I am hoping someone more official will answer your post.

In the meantime, the Chip Board, The Strike Point and the Slotcard BBS are privately owned and not related in any way to any club. I do not know if they are run as profit or not for profit entities, but I'm reasonably sure they don't make money. They were all created by Greg Susong and were all going to disappear when David Spragg stepped up and acquired them. I say acquire because I don't have any specifics about how this happened, but I'm sure glad it did.

The CCA is a non profit. It owns the MOGH, which is a separate non-profit, which has a separate Board of Directors. There is some autonomy for the MOGH, but I have never been clear exactly how much.

The Chip Guide was created by Greg Susong for the purpose of displaying his extensive collection. It only included a few areas in which he collected (Nevada and riverboats, I believe). Sadly, Greg passed away. His widow gave permission for the Guide to be maintained and expanded by Charles Kaplan. Charles had already been given permission to create a parallel and visually identical site for Caribbean chips. Kaplan expanded the guide to be global and include a vast array of casino collectibles, poker chips and other related areas. Somehow, I believe, and I'm not sure exactly when, the Guide was donated to the MOGH. What the exact setup is, I don't know. I don't know what that means about Kaplan's connection or ownership rights, but, at this point, I believe he owns the intellectual property rights to the software he wrote.

If I'm mistaken about any of this, I hope someone corrects me. If anyone knows any more, I hope they speak up.

As for what I said about Charles, it was not sticking up for my friend. It was statements of facts which make it difficult to simply remove Kaplan from the project. He is involved with the Chip Guide in many ways. He knows things about it no one else does. He made it what it is today, with countless hours of volunteer help from admins and contributors. I don't know who could even step in and take over for him, but, in any case, volunteers, as always, are scarce. If you get rid of him, you have to have someone who has proven they have all of the requisite skills. Someone who has proven that they have the Guide's best interest at heart. Someone who has proven that they are willing to spend crazy numbers of hours to keep it going. There aren't a lot of people stepping up in this hobby to take on the big projects. Really, it's always the same small number that step up time and again. It's not that there's a clique or inner circle, it's that no one else is offering to do it. Yes, chippers are great and will volunteer at the convention, but I'm talking the big time commitments. With all of these factors present, I was trying to say it's really not so simple as voting Kaplan out of his positions. That's not sticking up for a friend. That's being realistic. If you took Charles out right now, the Chip Guide would probably go offline. Then there's the ethical issue of whether it's right to take away from him what he has worked so hard for so long to create. All because some people would like a few images taken down, or some think he could be nicer when asking them to give the Chip Guide credit for the images they copied from it, or he has put up hoard alerts which may not have been fully thought out before including them. I'm not saying Charles has to be there forever, but it's not a simple substitution, and it's not even clear it's warranted.

Michael Siskin