It's fair to say that many of us (myself included) missed the main point of the original post - namely, why is the facility there for play money, but not
real money (nothing to do the the rights or wrongs of chat conduct). I don't claim to know the answers, but I'll offer a couple of possibilities.
1) As of 5 minutes ago there were 101,000 active players (according to PS's own figures - I don't know how accurate these are). I had a quick look at the play money tables, and there were approximately 300 of them active - that's a maximum 3,000 players. Obviously, the resourse required to moderate 101,000 is MUCH greater than that required to moderate 3,000
2)
This point is only relevant if users that have NOT opened a real money account are NOT allowed to post in real money table chat. I don't think they are allowed to, but I'm not sure. I can register with
poker stars (or pretty much any other site) with ficticious details. The rights and wrongs of this are debateable (but not relevant to this discussion). I COULD be an 8 year old child that signs up for example - all I need (at most) is a Hotmail account, and most children have them. To get to the real money tables, I need a real money account, and there is therefore some kind of age verification (eg the the use of a credit card to deposit). So, in effect, there
IS moderation where there is no age verification (play money) and there
ISN'T moderation where there is age verification (real money). I could easily make out a case for this being quite reasonable - even responsible practise. The theory being, an adult should have the sense / ability / judgement to know when to switch off chat (and how to handle the offensive stuff) whereas a child may not.
Of course, the entire second arguement is flawed in so much that a child should never be able to get into a gaming site anyway - but that's a completely different arguement, and PS are no different from any other
poker site in that respect.
Just a thought.
Boltneck