I am delighted to announce that DTD and blonde have come to an agreement whereby DTD "sponsor" blondepoker.
DTD will be working hard, & investing a great deal of cash, & resource, both into blonde, & it's Members.
There is now a forum link on www.dtdpoker.com to blonde
The deal is for two years, and at a time when some segments of the poker industry are struggling, this is a stunning committment by DTD.
In all the time blonde has been around, we have never had a 2 year deal previously.
Included in the deal, which starts immediately, is......
26 Live Updates from DTD per year, for 2 years, one every 2 weeks on average, all fully funded by DTD. These Updates will include the Grand Prix, the Deepstacks, the Monte Carlo, the 6 Max, & some other yet to be announced plans which DTD are formulating.
DTD have developed new Live Update Software which will greatly enhance the Live Updates, & Live Streams, & blonde will use this.
There will be a huge blondebash at DTD in April, & again in the future, with a Guaranteed Value Tournament, the bash costs fully funded by DTD.
DTD's superb IT resources will revamp the blonde website, including the "Home Page", to make it fresher & better. That page, & the Forum, are already very SEO-friendly, but will be more so, especially with the addition of more & fresher content. Content is key in these things, & DTD will be assisting with this, including regular input from Rob Yong & Simon Trumper.
The thrust of the partnership is to work with DTD Live Poker, & they are paying an absolute fortune for that right.
Not unreasonably, then, other Poker Venues will no longer be permitted to spam or promote their Tours or Events on blondepoker. They have, hitherto, been allowed to do this free of charge, so it's not that they have lost anything, except the right to promote on our Forum, to which they paid no cost. Rich will be contacting all the venue Reps who Post on here in the next few days to communicate this.
The same applies to Representatives of other Venues or Pros for Online Sites (with exemptions, as below), they will no longer be able to promote their wares here. Given the cash DTD are investing in blonde, its an entirely reasonable stance, in my opinion.
Common-sense will apply on this, people can Post & discuss any Poker Tour, Room, or subject, they wish, but not as commercial stakeholders of other Tours, Rooms, or Sites. If anyone wants to abuse that informal arrangement, we will ask them to desist.
Many Cardroom managers & Online Pros are also "regular" Members here. They are encouraged & welcome to continue as regular Members.
The main exemptions are Tours or Rooms with which DTD already have a commercial affiliation by way of hosting Events, such as UKIPT, APAT, Sky Poker, etc. For those, it is "as you were", but the truth is, they all sell out every event, so it's information more than spam, & DTD are absolutely fine with it.
Coverage & Promotion of non-UK Events such as EPT, WPT Europe, WSOP, etc, will all continue as they always have done here.