Rob Yong's Blog V3 "WSOP 2010 & Life After DTD Opened"

[TightEnd]

Ralph..perspective from this end


About 500 DTD accounts were opened 2007-10 through blonde's affiliate link and they are they pool of accounts we had to start with when we got together recently. Since we announced this partnership about 50 other accounts have been "re-tagged" to us from players who contacted me and said - I paraphrase "we don't play on DTD much but we have an account. We didn't open it on blonde but we heard about DTD because of you and would like to support blonde, and play a bit more" and kindly DTD have indeed tagged all of these accounts to us. Of course it wouldn't be in their interests to re-tag a big existing player to us as they would be losing margin, but for where it is re-activating accounts they are happy to help.

If anyone wants to be tagged to blonde, PM me.

Industry experience suggests that when any online room/skin moves networks or, in our case closes and sets up with another arrangement, about 40-50% of gross rake is lost in the transition. In our case its been more than that. Considerably more.

This reflects a couple of factors

a) Our income was skewed towards a minority of sizeable players under our IPoker offer. In all bar one case these players haven't come across. In one case its been a case of "not yet". In a couple of cases the players aren't interested in playing on Boss. Reasons include the software (inevitably) and absence of suitable games (big prize pool fishy MTTs on IPoker are what they play)

b) It's been a tricky time for the forum with some people not around for various reasons to play, and some won't have been inclined to play with us.

So as yet we're not covering even our much reduced costs from rake (myself, server, promotion fund etc) which I find uncomfortable but my head is down trying to increase rake whether that be via promotion ideas, cash nights, speaking to players, promoting at events (over 150 cards were handed out at the Irish Open for example) and re-activating our players from previously

Of course am grateful for all the support to date, and the support of DTD as outlined by Rob above.

[Karabiner]

Thank you for that Rich, I understand the position much better now.

[GreekStein]

Hi Rob,

Great to meet you a few months back at dtd, even if it did cost me a monkey.

As regards DTD poker site, I assume I was one of the bigger grinders in the last few months when DTD was with ipoker, regularly raking over $1k a month. Ok not huge, but significant, especially if others were also raking similar figures.

The software on DTD (i.e Boss) means I just cant imagine myself doing the same thing on there, even though from a personal standpoint I would 100x rather see DTD getting my rake than anywhere else.

Has there ever been any intention to move network?

Also, Tikay and other longstanding members have highlighted the fact many times that they don't like the aggressive nature of the forum, so I can't imagine it becoming like 2+2 which makes this place look a playground.

[Fluence]

Also, Tikay and other longstanding members have highlighted the fact many times that they don't like the aggressive nature of the forum, so I can't imagine it becoming like 2+2 which makes this place look a playground.

Couldn't agree more. I like most new people on here joined as a direct result of the £300 updates but have found the forum to be extremely unwelcoming to new members. That surprised me as "Colchester Kev" who I met 1st of all is such a nice guy. In my experience posts from new members just get a flaming.

So much so that this is probably only about the 3rd/4th post I've ever made in a thread that is not a live update. (I only found this thread as I came through from M McCools blog)

I post on several other forums, all of which are far more friendly and helpful than this one.

[kinboshi]

Also, Tikay and other longstanding members have highlighted the fact many times that they don't like the aggressive nature of the forum, so I can't imagine it becoming like 2+2 which makes this place look a playground.

Couldn't agree more. I like most new people on here joined as a direct result of the £300 updates but have found the forum to be extremely unwelcoming to new members. That surprised me as "Colchester Kev" who I met 1st of all is such a nice guy. In my experience posts from new members just get a flaming.

So much so that this is probably only about the 3rd/4th post I've ever made in a thread that is not a live update. (I only found this thread as I came through from M McCools blog)

I post on several other forums, all of which are far more friendly and helpful than this one.

I wouldn't let a few keyboard warriors turn you off blonde.  There are far more decent and friendly people on here.

In fact, the mood of the forum has been fairly positive and more friendly over the past week or so - so maybe things are looking up.

[byronkincaid]

Also, Tikay and other longstanding members have highlighted the fact many times that they don't like the aggressive nature of the forum, so I can't imagine it becoming like 2+2 which makes this place look a playground.

Couldn't agree more. I like most new people on here joined as a direct result of the £300 updates but have found the forum to be extremely unwelcoming to new members. That surprised me as "Colchester Kev" who I met 1st of all is such a nice guy. In my experience posts from new members just get a flaming.

So much so that this is probably only about the 3rd/4th post I've ever made in a thread that is not a live update. (I only found this thread as I came through from M McCools blog)

I post on several other forums, all of which are far more friendly and helpful than this one.

in your first post you say you work for another poker forum.



 

[Fluence]

Also, Tikay and other longstanding members have highlighted the fact many times that they don't like the aggressive nature of the forum, so I can't imagine it becoming like 2+2 which makes this place look a playground.

Couldn't agree more. I like most new people on here joined as a direct result of the £300 updates but have found the forum to be extremely unwelcoming to new members. That surprised me as "Colchester Kev" who I met 1st of all is such a nice guy. In my experience posts from new members just get a flaming.

So much so that this is probably only about the 3rd/4th post I've ever made in a thread that is not a live update. (I only found this thread as I came through from M McCools blog)

I post on several other forums, all of which are far more friendly and helpful than this one.

in your first post you say you work for another poker forum.


 

Not sure what your point/question is.

If it's a Q, then I would just clarify that I do not now or have I ever worked for another forum.

Yes I did help out on "PokerTourRadio.com" doing interviews/updates at several large poker events including some DTD ones and on the one and only time we covered the £300 deepstack event via "live audio stream" I did help out with the commentary.

The venture has been put into moth balls and has not covered any event for several months and it looks unlikely that it ever will again. So I have no connection with them anymore.

Shame really as I really enjoyed the £300 deepstack weekends at DTD. Though I was not involved in the financial side of the website I can reasonably assume that it was just too expensive to put on without a sponsor as I'm sure the people who run Blonde can appreciate.

The show was starting to get really popular, when we covered the event live we had the bandwidth for 1,000 listeners and it maxed out, so the interest was certainly there.

My love of live poker remains strong and that's why I always follow the updates on blonde (unless I'm actually playing the event) and I, perhaps more than most, can appreciate how incredibly hard the up-daters work.

[kinboshi]

Also, Tikay and other longstanding members have highlighted the fact many times that they don't like the aggressive nature of the forum, so I can't imagine it becoming like 2+2 which makes this place look a playground.

Couldn't agree more. I like most new people on here joined as a direct result of the £300 updates but have found the forum to be extremely unwelcoming to new members. That surprised me as "Colchester Kev" who I met 1st of all is such a nice guy. In my experience posts from new members just get a flaming.

So much so that this is probably only about the 3rd/4th post I've ever made in a thread that is not a live update. (I only found this thread as I came through from M McCools blog)

I post on several other forums, all of which are far more friendly and helpful than this one.

in your first post you say you work for another poker forum.


 

Not sure what your point/question is.

If it's a Q, then I would just clarify that I do not now or have I ever worked for another forum.

Yes I did help out on "PokerTourRadio.com" doing interviews/updates at several large poker events including some DTD ones and on the one and only time we covered the £300 deepstack event via "live audio stream" I did help out with the commentary.

The venture has been put into moth balls and has not covered any event for several months and it looks unlikely that it ever will again. So I have no connection with them anymore.

Shame really as I really enjoyed the £300 deepstack weekends at DTD. Though I was not involved in the financial side of the website I can reasonably assume that it was just too expensive to put on without a sponsor as I'm sure the people who run Blonde can appreciate.

The show was starting to get really popular, when we covered the event live we had the bandwidth for 1,000 listeners and it maxed out, so the interest was certainly there.

My love of live poker remains strong and that's why I always follow the updates on blonde (unless I'm actually playing the event) and I, perhaps more than most, can appreciate how incredibly hard the up-daters work.

THIS!

[The_nun]

Mr Fluence, I do so hope you have put your name down for BB9 at DTD...

Rob, great thread..x

[vegaslover]

Tighty
I may well be assuming wrongly, but I reckon a few of the bigger rakers for the site when on ipoker didn't come over as they got annoyed, and rightfully so, at losing their rakeback when you were having problems with ipoker and chargebacks. IIRC a few had moved to the ipoker site to help out, even though it was a lower rate then they had been getting

[TightEnd]

That might be the case yes, but not a factor that was mentioned to me recently. Of course if we could have avoided our problems firstly, or found a better way to deal with them, we would have done so.

[robyong]

New Blog Entry (5): “Poker Tax…..what the xxxx is that?”


In early May 2009, I received an email from my tax advisor at Deliotte Touché, Darren Hobson, it said, “Hi Rob, I hope you are well, it looks like there are going to be a couple of tweaks in the finance bill this year, mainly for bingo, I’ve attached the draft bill and will get back to you, cheers Darren.” It was a small, polite, none descript and casual email, little did I know, it was the beginning of another mini crisis for DTD.

I had totally forgot about the email from Darren, I get so much information every day from various sources, if it’s not mega urgent, it gets deleted until the subject comes up again! Darren called me a week later sounding very concerned, he confirmed that there was going to be a new ‘poker tax’, I replied, “poker tax, what the xxxx is that?’, he went on to say that there was going to be new gaming duty of up to 50% on all revenues generated from poker, tournament registration fees, cash game rake, cash game session fees, even sit and go’s qualified for the poker tax. I was in a meeting at the club with Nick and Simon at the time, discussing possible overlays from online satellites to our pending £1k event, we were debating how many seats to GTE online, I put the phone down feeling sick and just said, “forget about overlays, we are in very deep shit.”

I can not be 100% certain, but I believe that DTD generates the largest amount of revenue directly from poker in the UK, by some distance, the casino groups may generate more with all their UK venues combined, but this new tax was based on a per venue basis, so we would be the biggest contributors of poker tax in the UK, so I found it quite amazing that we were never even consulted or given any advance warning.  

Poker is hardly mentioned in any government literature, and the question still exists whether poker is a ‘game of chance’, therefore subject to UK gaming law, or is a indeed a ‘game of skill’, in which case poker winnings should be subject to taxation, and losses would be able to be set of against your personal tax bill! The government believe it is a game of chance if it takes place inside a licensed casino, but you only have to look at the 40-50 unregulated card clubs that continue to operate, to see that the government is not exactly sure what to do with poker in the UK.

The new tax on poker was made law in August 2009, it was even backdated to March 2009, it only effected poker which is played in casino licenced premises, it was an attempt by the government to increase the overall taxes on casinos in the UK, and is linked to numerous gaming tax battles between the UK Gaming Companies and Customs and Excise, unfortunately, DTD just got stuck the xxxxing middle!

My first reaction was that we need to find some way of getting round this, like call our poker revenue a ‘service charge’ or something, but my accountants and lawyers were uncomfortable with this approach, DTD is owned by my holding company, so everything needs to be 100% legal. The additional taxes increased DTD costs by £400K, the club was already losing money, so this was a bit of a disaster for us but totally out of our control, a bit like when the price of petrol goes up because OPEC have decided to produce less oil, that is also xxxx all to do with us, but we still have to pay for it when we fill our car up the next day.

I have to admit, I was getting pretty sick of owning a poker club at this point, I thought opening the damn thing was hard enough, the £80,000 worth of overlays in our £1k grand slam tournament did not make me feel any better either, so I decided to have a few days away to think about things, I hate being a quitter but am well aware that there comes a time when you have to walk away when everything possible has been tried. We were faced with three clear options;

1.   Sell the club
2.   Generate more revenue (somehow!)
3.   Install casino table games

We looked at all three options in detail, I was always uncomfortable with plans to install casino and roulette tables, and in reality, quite a few of our poker tables would have to have been sacrificed to do this, therefore reducing our capacity to run larger events. We had no shortage of interest in purchasing the club, from inside and outside of the UK, the amounts of money were not great, but you’re not in a good bargaining position when you are ‘on you knees with your pants around your ankles’, everyone knew we had problems. I spent 2-3 weeks working solidly with Nick, we had plans drawn up to install casino table games and quotes from suppliers, we also met with potential buyers, a decision needed to made quickly, as the rumours were not doing DTD’s reputation any good, players were even withdrawing their money from the online card room and our club members were getting really concerned. There was never any danger of DTD closing or going bust, I would never have let that happen, but it’s hard to stop the rumour mill spiralling.

In the end, we decided on a hybrid solution that would enable us to continue running DTD as a poker club but try to generate more revenue;

1.   Install more electronic gaming in addition to the current 4 machines
2.   Open DTD every weekends
3.   Open 7 days if necessary

I personally felt much happier with this solution, we could keep out 50 poker tables and start being creative with designing different weekend events, although I would prefer not to open 7 days if possible. A lot has happened since the word ‘poker tax’ was first mentioned, we have had to invest a further £350K in gaming reserve and fixtures and fittings, the staff have put a huge effort in to make things happen, from Maria on reception to Danny and Mark in the card room, everyone has pulled together. DTD has paid every single penny of the new duty on poker, we are operating going forward on a breakeven position, okay, the weather screwed us in January, but the crisis caused by this change in taxation has been dealt with….….what’s going to go wrong next, maybe a bolt of lightening will strike the club and hit me directly while I am sitting on the toilet?


Next Blog Entry (6): “DTD & Pokerstars”

[cia260895]

Rob ever thought about putting a machine in the smoking area?

 probably a bit tacky but whilst they smoke out there they aren't spending investing.

[Blatch]

Next Blog Entry (6): “DTD & Pokerstars”

Cant wait for this bit

[ripple11]

  The additional taxes increased DTD costs by £400K, the club was already losing money, so this was a bit of a disaster for us but totally out of our control

   Quite staggering, given all thats gone before, your financial advisors never slapped you around the face and said "for goodness sake just sell the *&%$*&* club!!"

   Thank god you didn't!