blonde poker forum

Well, not so much a Board Meeting, as a Management Meeting, but Flushy, Tighty, Kev & I all met at a London Hotel to discuss blonde stuff.

I don't have the Agenda to hand, no doubt their recall will be better than mine, & they will comment later, but below are a few of the things we discussed.

Some of the stuff is, by it's very nature, off the record, but happy to take questions.

More.....

Starting next Monday, &, depending on popularity, every Monday evening thereafter, (& maybe a few other nights), there is going to be a "Bust Flushy" night.

Kev will think up a sexy title for that, but basically, Flushy will sit on all four blonde Private Tables, (3 x NLH & 1 x Omaha), & chat & play some poker with anyone who fancies it.

I do the same thing on Sky Poker, & it works well - very well - over there, but I have a different profile over there, & it's a different market, so I saw no point in me getting involved in this.

However, the other three thought I had some use (though they never said what - perhaps as a donator?), so I'll be playing, too.

So that's agreed, every Monday evening, on blonde, starting next Monday. Sensible stakes, too.

There you go, by invitation  - Bust Flushy.

Cardroom.

Well I can only say so much - but it's going well, very well - sort of.

Gross Rake & Casino Activity are both improving nicely, month on month, & now generate enough at the Gross Level to run blonde. Neat.

Except......

There are some "fraud issues", & have been for a few months now.

I can't really give too much info away, but the fraud issues have drained away over 90% of our Nett Take for some 3 months now.

Ugh.

We have put the necessary obstacles in place to prevent it re-occurring, but the goalposts keep moving.

The inherent problem is that we in blonde do not control who Deposits - they deposit "direct" to the Cage. Or did. From now on, Kev will personally approve every single Deposit, & that way, we know who we are dealing with.

If a player in, say, Latvia, or Papau New Guinea makes a Deposit on blonde, you'd think the nice peeps at Aqua might suss something is not quite right, but there you go. They took the Deposits, but we carried the  liability.

No more - from here on in, we will vet the Deposits.

If that causes delay in Deposits, we apologise, but I'm sure you understand.

Absolutely and completely understand. That's disgusting to hear. Keep up ze good work, may have to sign up and donate lol!

sigh, was hoping this was another of Byron's inspired video film thingys.

Bust Flushy sounds a comedy idea. I hope he does his net.

Cardroom.

It's no longer a secret that i-Poker have this most extraordinarry policy.

In brief, witrhdrawals must not exceed Deposits, give or take 1% I think, in any given month.

Actually, they can - & often do - but when they do, we get Fined! And that Fine is Network-wide - all Aqua Clients have to share the Fine Burden, pro-rata, even if a specific Room does not exceed the Ratio. So if we exceed the Limit, we get Fined - & so do our "sister" Rooms.

All very bizarre, really.

We are on the case, & trying to find workarounds.

We expect our Withdrawals to exceed our Deposits by a 6 figure sum in October - & we are delighted that is so, of course we are! - but we will, as things stand, face a few Fines.

How wrong is that? But it is what it is, & it's i-Poker wide.

The Terrible Three, plus me, are on the case - there are ways to mitigate it, we think, & we will.

A bloody ballache, though.

LOL, hes already done that on Middy.

That would appear to be so short-sighted that it surely must be a mistake.

Winning players generate the most rake so why would they only want losers who go busto ???

anyone looking to withdraw funds this month PM me and i will swap with them on full tilt they can withdraw from there and save a little of the fine

only looking for a few hundred

Unfortunately not a mistake.

The bigger skins on the network got annoyed with certain smaller rooms not spending anything on a marketing budget in an attempt to get new money onto the network, but their large winning players still reducing the liquidity of the network by the vast amounts they win. It's also seen as a way to cut down on skins undercutting each other through rakeback deals.

A few skins were booted for it but it's deemed to still be necessary to continue with this ridiculous policy.

That's the most ridiculous disgrace i've ever heard. wtf. just wtf.

is someone going to have to put like 6 figures on so money could be brought off for no fines ? ?

If you do no ins or outs are you still liable to fines that the other ipoker skins incur? did I read that bit right?

;grr;

;grr;

You read it right guys - that's how it is.

We've decided to swallow it for now, rather than try to jiggle deposits & withdrawals, as we usually do, we will just take the hit in one go, & move on.

Did you ever hear anything quite so daft?

(http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5549/wantedke.jpg)

hahaha awesome.

We have to stop them.

Hello. I am the only person on blonde who gets upset when one of you has a big win on blonde Poker's card-room.

F M L

Lol, nice one boys, you got there.

It gets a bit murky here, but all that money will be withdrawn this week, good luck to them, & blonde will sort out it's own problems with Aqua.

+1,on form today bh

Not quite. IPoker is a massive network, run via several "cages" operated by companies that run groupings of skins

We are on one such cage, run by Aqua Poker. Our liability is confined to "rule breaking" by skins on this cage only

Ignore him. He's as delighted as we all are. Ish.

Can you imagine a more peculiar & uncomfortable moral dilemma?

"Yay - a blonde won the Sunday Zillion! Ahh - wait a minute......!

I was under the impression that a big tournament win would fall under "mitigating circumstances" under which you can appeal if you get hit with the fines, and most likely get them waived. It's not like you have recruited a big winning cash player by offering him illegal rakeback - one of your players has just won a tournament

I can just about understand/accept their policy if it applied to cash games only.

But to be fined because someone has a score in a tournament is just a fucking joke.

Thanks Karl.

I/we were not aware of that, if true.

We will check out that line. Are you reasonably confident of that?

Fancy that - mitigating circumstances being "he won a Tourney"!

In case anyone thought otherwise, this is not blonde only, or Aqua only - it's i-poker wide, if I understand it correctly.

The fines problem is something I've been grappling with for ages.

There are two potential fines. The deposit/withdrawal issue highlighted previously and a Win/loss fine too.

Frankly, we get stuffed on both from time to time as you good people withdraw more than you deposit and have been known to win more than you lose.

As The Baron intimated about a year ago the likes of Titan Poker (since muddied also by William Hill's purchase of IPoker) pushed for these fine ratios to be introduced because they were losing players to aggressive smaller skins such as NoIQ and Carlos Poker paying a lot of rakeback, cannibalising the player base from the bigger skins and seeing big withdrawal off the network, affecting liquidity so it is said

The new fines regime made it very difficult for the small aggressive skins to continue to operate on IPoker, and indeed they have since left

We however are in a different category

- We don't have a marketing budget as such, never had the £ to do so and frankly much of it is a waste of money anyway (except by direct added value to players on leagues for example). Our budget is in effect promotion via the forum.

- We don't cannibalise from other IPoker skins. We generally bring players in from other networks. This has been most notable since Flushy came on board with his players/friends giving us volume

- Our players win, generally, over time. It could be said that the mere act of joining via a website based news/forum skin indicates a desire to learn and a knowledge of poker over and above that of a player base for a skin based off, say, sportsbook clients from Greece!

- Our recreational players cannot be hoped to counteract the effect of a big win from our bigger players via matching deposits

- We don't pay incentives over that offered elsewhere on the netowrk


and yet still we get fined.

As it happens I make the points above every few weeks to IPoker and manage to hold some of the adverse financial consequences off.

I've also investigated moving, and indeed had a deal done to do so. Until new partner pulled out. However move and we lose access to Ipoker's liquidity and size and almost certainly go somewhere that our bigger players would regard as far less attractive to play.


So in effect we have a tough situation. Any skin wants a base of steadily winning players. Our network wants us to have a base of losing players, depositing a lot. Not such a long term growth strategy for us, that, or particularly viable.

On the positive side, tikay told the bunker story :D

how can it be ipoker wide? network wide withdrawals must be less than deposits otherwise there'd be a negative amount of money in play

Each skin has to have more in deposits than it has withdrawals in a calendar month.... or they get a fine.

I've definitely been told it by someone in all the discussions I've been having over the past couple of months - it might have even been by Aqua but don't quote me on that. I also heard how difficult these people are to deal with, and so I would imagine it will take a bit of fighting, but I'm sure the principle is there somewhere where you get the chance to explain why your ratios are out in a certain month, and this is definitely one of the legitimate reasons to get the fines waived

gl

But I've forgotten it now. ;)

only positive if you share imo

Karl, thanks for that

I've certainly managed to get some fines waived to date on the basis of the points I made in my post above. Going to try the explicit point you make this time round!

why would titan have pushed for a fine that everyone has to pay?

This

IPoker is EXTREMELY complex. Titan is one of the very largest skins, was a loser from the over-aggressive competitive activity and, quite possibly and is strongly rumoured to be owned by IPoker.

Tight just beat me to it. Possibly owned by Ipoker.

Billy Hills could well own a share of the network too. These fines are going into someone's pocket anyway.

really, no. Images conjured that will haunt me. The Green-keeper, too.

Firstly they are owned by the network and secondly they probably don't fall foul of these ratios (if they indeed get subjected to them all...) because they have big marketing budgets and (supposedly) don't offer excessive rakeback. They would therefore have gotten tired of small skins picking off their high rakers by offering them illegal deals

Also, on the topic of the deposits, isn't it possible for your cage to restrict all deposits from certain countries/areas. Even if you just restrict it to UK only and have to approve any others (don't know your geographic breakdown of players but assuming 95% UK) must help from a fraud point of view. Given, I appreciate fraud can still happen in the UK too...

On the subject of deposits and chargebacks it's been like chasing a marble on an ice rink

Originally there was a problem with overseas fraud, so I put a total block on Non UK deposits

Hey presto, a UK fraud ring pops up. I make UK deposit limits far more restrictive.

Our largest ever chargeback follows. Aqua are based in Mauritius, and sadly I can't just pop on a bus and shake them hard and do real due diligence about their detection and recovery systems

It's a question of risk really, you want your genuine players to be able to deposit and restrict fraudsters, so you have to get these deposit limits right

As already said, now we are going to have to tag known players, anyone untagged won't be able to deposit unless approved by us

the fines policy is ludicrous for the small skins like us not tweaking the tail of a Titan by the means Titan object to, but nevertheless with generally winning players

ah, ok. the fine thing makes more sense now then if they were effectively fining themselves

but, how can they fine you for something that wouldn't have been in the contract that was agreed when you joined the network?

Great question. Would cost a forutne to test that one, though I have lain awake at night grappling with 28 pages of legalse and clauses to try and beat it.


In essence, our contract is with Aqua, a provider of services (amongst many) with IPoker. Ipoker impose conditions on their contract with the cages, who then pass it on to their skins.

Anyone who deposits $100k on blonde and leaves it there to gather dust and earn no interest, gets the story :)

The issue predates the involvement of Rick, Kev & I being in direct contact with Aqua. It's only become evident to us in the last year or so.

We became aware after we started being charged for "chargebacks". I don't have the figure to hand, but we've probably incurred $30k+ of Chargebacks. I do know the Recovery Rate. Zero.

i would do but i cant

My secret is safe.

sigh - I don't even have $100 :(

fair play to ipoker. they're basically operating a protection racket and getting away with it

Gatso gets it.

 ;oopsy;

I didnt enjoy the bunker story, i was expecting a golf story and all i got was a ***** *** ****, was fun.


Edited ... I am trying to sell the story to the news of the world Flushy .... cant leak details whilst negotitions are ongoing ;)

the bunker story is def going to be one of those ones that you really want to hear and then once you've heard it you really wish you hadn't

Gatso, you have great intuition tonight

If Tikay is involved its bound to be a WW1 bunker.

Unban my blackjack Kev and blonde won't have that problem!

In seriousness though, good idea for Flushy & Tikay at the tables, really like it.

+1

+2 

Do I get to school Flushy again?

;)

having read that about I-Poker, I'm now glad I've closed all my accounts with any company that opperates through them!

opposite for me, any company tht screws flushy is a worthy cause to plough money into.

Chargebacks are a joke... we used to send lots of stuff all over the world until we got stung.... despite authorising the transaction no problem.. when the shit hit the fan the card issuing company shrugged their shoulders said it was your problem and took all the money back...total liability on the retailer.... nice work if you can get it..

[ ] we sell abroad now

+1 this is one of the shadiest things iv ever heard lol.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee get everyone to start scooping on blonde and hit flushy in the pocket with fines

one way to bankraupt him

To echo Karl, i'm also confident that the win/loss and deposit/withdraw ratios should not be taking MTT wins into account.

Jamie.

Thanks Jamie, & Karl, we really appreciate the nod.

This sort of business is wholly outside my, & I suspect Tighty & Kev's, normal skillset really, it's all sort of new to us, & we are learning - expensively - as we go along.

Property Maintenance, Supermarket Refurbs & the like were a piece of piss compared to this. You can't trust a soul!

Is moving to another network ever an option?

Fraught with problems. Where do you find similar liquidity? We need that liquidity, as we have a few big players.

Tikay, you must have found yourself in this spot millions of times over the centuries.  Either the chargebacks are 'die in the ditch' issues and you find another network that will give you what you want, or you accept that Aqua/Ipoker hold all the aces and bend over and invite them in.  Of course, you don't completely roll over and can begin negotiating your way out into a more reasonable position, but judging by other's views you have an uphill battle.  If you get no respite from them at all, then you still have the same ultimate decision to make.

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I've also investigated moving, and indeed had a deal done to do so. Until new partner pulled out. However move and we lose access to Ipoker's liquidity and size and almost certainly go somewhere that our bigger players would regard as far less attractive to play.

If we have to though, we have to.

In the trenches most days fighting for relief!

Bring back Tribeca...

Yeah lets not forget it was ipoker who bought over tribeca, shut it down and as one of the clauses in the buyout, had all the original code wiped so it cant ever come back.  Magic

Tribeca.......those were the days.

Never heard anything like this. Sounds like a good solicitor is needed.

Bill Gates isn't behind iPoker is he? Sounds like microsoft!

Never realised there was so much to all this, good read...

You are not the only person. Believe me.