A fascinating read ... thanks for that Tikay
The blonde live updates are the only ones I read, and this is purely down to the individual yet blonde collective style of the updaters. I do not go to live tournaments often (something I'm desparate to change) but on the one APAT event I went to I stood the side of the cardroom for four hours observing the comings and going of a big live event. I had no idea what to expect, I had never even been inside a casino but the buzz was incredible (where's this going I hear you ask) ...
I will tell you ....
I discovered blonde through amcgrath (thank you that man
) and was immediately struck at how informative blonde was yet in the most interesting and WELCOMING way .... other sites I have checked out although are also informative they do not hold my interest, it's akin to being bored of a subject, which could have happened to someone like me who only found poker per chance and wouldn't have got so "into" it if it wasn't for blonde. I am not a big player, I have no weight anywhere, yet I feel very loyal to blonde .... if ever my situation changed and I was in a position to help fund in any way I wouldn't hesitate to do so.
All aspects of the forum have contributions from very intelligent and well articulated posters, it's a pleasure to read. I used to love writing and loved expressing myself through prose but here, on the forum, I get more pleasure from reading.
So, I decided to go to an APAT event at Luton and just have a wee look around and try to see if i could match any blonde faces. Two groups of people stood out that day the blonde updaters and a group from Dagenham who were part of The Hendon Mob (oh and Tikay who worked the room beautifully - with the lasses that is
). NoFlops was on the floor with his camera so much that i never actually saw his whole face for about an hour lol, another person in a blonde shirt was whizzing here and there and I never saw him stop - until he went for a cigarette - here was my chance to see the name on the shirt (being short sighted and wearing an old prescription can be a bitch sometimes). It was Junglecat - and what a pleasant friendly chap. He told me he was new to updating and the hardest part was trying to judge the chip count (I agreed wholeheartedly although at stage I had never even HELD a chip let alone tried to gauge someones stack
). It may seem like a little thing to some people but to me every person wearing a branded shirt whether it be in poker or whatever represents that company/business and too many people these days have an aloof manner to others in civvies (so to speak) - it's surely the most off putting and business blunder attitude. You judge a man by the company he keeps - likewise you can often judge a company by the attitudes of the people they employ - and blonde oozes a charisma that you just want to be a part of IMO.
I went home and immediately logged on to read the updates as at the stage I had never read the updates section - and I did this because I wanted to read what JungleCat had written as it clearly came across that he had a terrific sense of humour in the short space of time that we had chatted.
The updates were brilliant, they made me want to go back and read past updates which I did. None of this would have happened if it wasn't for that first initial impression of a blonde representative.
Over the months posters personalities came over and you get a real sense of a family - by that there are the times people band together, there are times when they argue - but ultimately the banter is always there - like a typical family, up and down but never losing that sight of what's really important at the end of the day.
So a Blonde Bash comes around and I just HAVE to go, there are people that I really want to meet as they have made me laugh so much on the forum (step up Kinboshi
) and lol and behold who is the first person to say hello at the reception desk at the hotel but noneother than Kin lol. Everyone I met was so friendly and funny - and Duke your stories were still funny even the third time round
So this brings me to Tikays comment about generating traffic to the blonde cardroom - and it makes me wonder why it's not a large as I would have thought, seeing as the forum side of things has all the ingredients to make blonde hugely successful. Not knowing a great deal about poker, and not being a massive online player I probably don't know what makes other online cardrooms more appealing. So i thought I'd throw a few thoughts into the pot to the more regular players:
Is it the layout of the poker software?
Is it the structure of the tournaments?
Is it the buy-ins?
I'm not criticizing in any way shape or form, I'm am generally perplexed as to why blonde cardroom is not up there - as at the end of the day the updates and everything else entailed clearly cost money. There was a comment the other day about blonde having posters on the forum that never use the cardroom - why is that? What is stopping (or putting people off) using blonde?
What are people's thoughts on this?
For my part, I use blonde on an irregular basis and I have asked myself tonight 'why is that?'. Well, it's really silly things that put me off using it really which are, I think, software bound. I don't like the way you can only have one tournament lobby/info screen open at a time - I'm sure this is software related as this happens on a few other sites I have played on and likewise I only use them rarely.
To a bigger bankrolled player this probably wouldn't be a priority, tourny payout structures might be what you look for??
Really curious now to see what blondes players look for in a cardroom and what aspects make them favour one over another.
Blimey, I orignally was only going to post what a great read Tikays OP was - but that's another great thing about this forum, it gets you thinking
Off to trawl the net to find an electrician now as halfway through this post my ceiling lights ring main has blown a fuse and it's an OLD OLD antiquated jobby with HUGE fuses lol. Have a feeling a complete overhaul is on the cards - gulp (any electricians on blonde?
)
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