Since Cepsi is leaving I have his permission to repost this blog. He will be missed

It is about the origins of the clans/families that many members of Railbirds are now members of.

It was originally written during a time when there was conflict over whether the clans were dividing railbirds from each other.

It settled out with most agreeing that the friendly competition made Railbirds.com stronger. I personally believe it has. Just look at the proliferation of private clan tournaments that are open to ALL Railbirds. Also the more personalized contact between the members of the clans formed closer friendships and has made it easier for newer members to make friends. Some of which are guaranteed to last a lifetime.

Since this was written the clans have grown enormously. Both in the size of the individual clans and in the number of clans. Just look at this list of clans to see ( updated-clan-listing ). From the original two clans to 34 at current count.

I am reposting this so an important part of Railbirds history is not lost. I have corrected a few spelling errors. Other than that it is as originally written by cepsi

Families Together

Originally Posted on Jul 4, 2007 10:58 pm

I thought long and hard about writing this blog, at first i didn't want to get involved with it and let the dust settle and see how the ground lay, but the more and more PMs I get about whether or not the Lizards are gonna still be, and some of the intelligent well thought out blogs i have read (Linda11's especially and the comment from Katchagirl), i think it is my duty to at least write a short (i will probably get carried away and this may not be short! lol) blog on the subject as essentially, together with ssdawg, i am responsible for starting something that has become something many of us have become involved in and part of.

HISTORY

About three weeks ago i started to write a history of the families (i will refer to the clans as families as i understand how some can find the word "clan" unpleasant, and "family" i think is a more suitable word anyway!), unfortunately my computer blew up and i lost quite a lot of my hard drive, including my word document. (and no i didn't back up as i should have!). A lot of new railbirds are initially confused as to what all these families are about and what they mean. Well here is how it started....

Back in March or April (i forget exactly) I, (as many of you guys probably do have of your own), had a friendly rivalry with another Railbird, under the name of "ssdawg". At this time i was a relative newbie and had just started meeting and getting to know people. although i had been a member since December 06', most of my buddies were people i had met in the card rooms. Anyways, we would often send one word insults, jibes or one liners to each other through the PM's or the chat in the card rooms, and generally take the piss out of each other, but in a friendly way!. Then one day i log on to railbirds and see a blog on the front page entitled something along the lines of "Cepsi's new trick" i nervously opened the blog, as this was the first time i had actually seen my name mentioned specifically in a blog, and expected a damning critique of my poker inability from somebody a lot better than me.

It was worse. There on the blog was a picture of a Lizard (my avatar on FTP) with four arms (if thats what they are called) playing two guitars, with about 10 comments from people laughing at my foolishness. A week later, ssdawg was foolish enough to post a picture of himself as a young lad (many moons ago eh dawg?) and he bore an uncanny resemblance to a Yeti. And so it began...

What followed over the next two/four weeks was a cartoonesque dialogue between not just myself and ssdawg, but all the people that had started following this friendly rivalry which had been made "public", and suddenly there appeared two groups the puppy pack, oops! (sorry dawg..lol) Dawg Pack, and the Geckos (soon to incorporate the tag the Lizards cos they are bigger and tougher and technically Godzilla is a Lizard and he's hard! (if you are REALLY interested all these blogs are still on here somewhere, some of them took hours to compose and to find the right pictures)

So, within Railbirds, who's numbers had now swollen from about 6k when i joined, to 20k there were two rival groups, The Dawgs and the Lizards. During tourneys, Freerolls and in general blogs the cartoonesque nature of the rivalry continued, and then came the donkeys, let by head Donk, another friend of mine, Sk_out_on_me (who once infamously, in total seriousness, said that cards ran from 1 to Ace lol - it was a mistake, but he paid dearly for it for about a week!) This group quickly grew in popularity, and i guess from there the rest is common knowledge, we soon went from 3 families to 6, 6 to 8 etc etc.

Neither Dawg nor I ever imagined that it would spiral into this (i would like to give a special mention to lizard chief of staff, Cheekysmom, and Dawg Chief of staff, mrmnko, and the man Cheechdog who all can share some of the responsibility lmao!)

So there it is how it started (albeit in a shortened version!). Many of you that have read this already know all this, but this is for the benefit of those who joined more recently. (i apologize if some of my times and details are a little off, but writing this from the top of my head)

NOW

In the last few weeks, some people have increased the ferocity of the rivalry and the insults thrown on the table and off. Out of 20+ thousand people you are going to get people like this, however after the incident over the weekend, it has thrown the whole issue of whether or not these families should exist within the railbird community at all. This bears a striking resemblance to the whole issue of the Green/Pink/Blue arguments some months ago, that too got nasty, people banned and people leaving as they had been offended and upset. I do not think that we should let this happen to these families!

With this many people on the site, i think it is nice to belong to something that you can take pride in, other than yourself, and the massive community that is now Railbirds.com. One person in lets say 10k members is daunting. When your knocked out of a freeroll, u will of course rail a friend if they are still in or just turn off the site in disgust!. I have seen time and time and time and time again though in the last few months, people get knocked out only to move straight to the tourney table to find members of their family/group and rail them, tell them about their "bad beat" or how they got knocked out and start a conversation, AND in doing so meet more people as part of the friendly rivalry, and when this banter and railing starts (if you choose to listen or answer, there is after all chat-off options!) people become involved and more friends are made.

I personally know of at least 8 people i could name right now, whose closest friends on the site they met as a consequence of this. And most of all, when they are knocked out they rail their friends and are as proud of their achievements as if they were their own. Recent examples for me were when Cheekysmom was second in the real rankings, when HALL1980 took first in a Family rivalry tournament, and just last week when runningcold took down a very railed mtt tourney here on railbirds, In addition, two Lizards BAT357 and TheWall set up a great HU competion to help people with their bankrolls, and then theres Angel Astrogini who puts in alot of work for her Bounty Blog to help all of us. I am proud because i am railing them often and they rail me because the families give me some to rail for, be in Dawg, Lizard or Astronaut (theres a new one!) . If You ask sweets, shaka, dawg or doom i'm sure they will say the same. If i asked BAT, Mom, Hall or Running Cold the same question i have no doubt whatsoever they could name another 3 of their own irrespective of Lizard or not.

If however, a railbird (say a well known Shark for example) was in the WSOP ME Final Table (GOOOOO LOLIPOP!!!!!), will there be any one of you who would not support him/her say over Johnny Chan or Phil Helmuth, or even Daniel Negreanu? My point is the rivalries within Railbirds should stay within Railbirds, its a small part of something much bigger, BUT an essential part of something bigger. The Inner Families help people get up and running within railbirds, help them find friends within Railbirds, and help improve their game within railbirds (ssdawg taught me how to play Razz, i have since won a FTP Razz FR, and several Razz SnG's because of him) and that was when the rivalry was me and him!, and most of all to encourage and support them within Railbirds.

Nobody is forced to join any of these families and the FRIENDLY rivalry that exists between them. Everybody is a free agent or a lone wolf or whatever, but been in a pack never hurt! Railbirds is and always will be the biggest family, but with a family of over 20 thousand people, it helps to have friends within, and be introduced to friends, and to have friends to support, even though u may not yet know them well, or even just know them as a member of your "family", and i for one am not going to let a few idiots destroy something that has helped many people, and most importantly i will not let these idiots take anything from my friends! and what started as a bit of fun, should continue to be so! If you threaten one person, you may just be threatening 50, 100, 150, 1000, 10,000! (remember that! any idiots reading!)

Well all my Railbird buddies, That is my peace... If you got this far thanks for reading!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO LIZARDS!!!!!