I know it was only a few gp, but am i remebering this wrong? I'm sure there used to be an NPC in the harbor who you could place a bet o f 1-? (only 10 or so GP) and you stood a chance of at least doubling your money.
If you dont want players to do this, could you be:
1) more direct to the whole community and less hypocritical
2) Less abrupt (especially since although you say its forbidden in your code of conduct - you did do it yourselves- leaky dinghy).
Can you also let the GMs who had to adminster the warnings to players, upsettings some of the quite a bit, apologise or at least explain a but more - on a human to human level.? pls