As an unaffected party (and DC Moderator), I think it is only fair to point out several things:

1. Italy (Doug) is a very established player who also publishes Diplomacy World (an e-zine about Diplomacy). While it is odd the way things unraveled I can assure you he is both real and typically a strong, passionate player.

2. With a third solo it might be time to realize that Simon has some weird Jedi Mind Trick that enables him to make the best of us make bad Diplomacy decisions.

3. Having played against him, I can't figure out how he does it and I too have been frustrated and on the receiving end of a Simon beat down. I feel your pain Isaac but so far I have seen nothing that would convince me that he is nothing more than annoyingly good.

As a player-run community we try to self-police any shenanigans; typically if they exist they work themselves out because players have no tolerance for such. I encourage you to join another game and give it a whirl.

Garry

From: isaac.zinner(at)gmail.com
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 10:57:59 +0300
Subject: Re: DC450 France EOG
To: cbconnell(at)gmail.com; diplomacyworld(at)yahoo.com; isaac.zinner(at)gmail.com; freeman_ass(at)yahoo.com; kaficek8(at)gmail.com; stevieh(at)taosnet.com; dc450(at)diplomaticcorp.com; cartesian.i(at)googlemail.com; mike(at)fuzzylogicllc.net; kielmarch(at)hotmail.com; dougray3o(at)yahoo.com; dougray30(at)yahoo.com; slangers(at)me.com

Sorry ,forgot to include some.


On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Isaac Zinner <isaac.zinner(at)gmail.com> wrote:


Thanks Justin for GMing, you did a great job.
As for the game, It's hard to understand the reason for Russia's glorifying himself for his Solo.

This was more of a joint Italian / Russian cooperation in order to get the Solo for Russia.
It does appear as if the Italian was playing for one purpose - to get a solo for Russia.
Italy conceded his SC (at least 6 SC in 2 turns ) to Russia and instead of trying to fight Russia had been trying to help him even more.   Go figure.



As it was more of a joint Italian / Russian solo  -  congratulations for both Simon and Doug for achieving it. 
--Isaac

BTW it turned out that there was a fake email address pretending to be that of Italy, with which I had made quite a lot of dipping, till this day I'm not sure if this email address was Russia or Italy after all. 



However this put together with the way Italy was playing made me wonder if there is an Italian player at all.