blonde poker forum

"Inside Poker Business", far & away the poker industry's best read, published this gem of an article. Nice writing, whoever penned it, & a good read in many senses.

"....At 12am on a weekday night, poker programming is easy to find on terrestrial TV in the UK.

These shows range from high-stakes cash games, to invitation-only sit&gos, but there is one obvious exception.

On Channel 4 you can watch unknown amateur players fighting it out in the £500 buy-in PokerStars UKIPT. Although the event is a fraction of the buy-in of the WSOP main event it somehow attracts a larger TV audience than poker’s grandest stage.

It’s symptomatic of a wider trend in poker that has been embraced by almost all operators. Within the UK a range of £100 to £500 events backed by online sites are now a common sight, and the model is also found throughout Europe as operators look for cost effective ways to establish their brand in an increasingly fickle market.

And these are no longer the poor relation of the live poker world. Low-stakes poker is the backbone of all online poker, with H2 Gambling Capital suggesting as much as 77% of all online play is at the micro-stakes level. But it took the credit crunch to make marketers in the online and live poker sectors look beyond the $10,000 events and million dollar dreams for poker events and tours.

The dream being sold is no longer about life changing wins and million dollar paydays, but modest wins, entertainment and 15 minutes of fame.  It fits in with a global trend.

In the US, we have seen smaller buy-in WPT events attract huge fields and Las Vegas card rooms offering $0.50/$1 tables with even the likes of Bellagio offering $1/$2 tables. Live poker has had to change and make itself more attractive to a poker community that is accustomed to playing for far lower stakes online.  

Poker players, it seems, have become far more risk averse. Or possibly more realistic in their ambitions.

A $5,000 or $10,000 tournament is a once in a lifetime ambition for many poker players, and not something they will spend a lot of time and money attempting to qualify for. But a $500 or €500 event feels more achievable, and can still provide the hit of fame and perceived fortune that keeps players coming back to the game.
 
More than the money

Sometimes it’s not even about the money. Perhaps the lowest stakes tour is one familiar to viewers of the niche Sky Poker channel in the UK. A series of £100 events dotted around the UK, these limited field events quickly sell out despite seats only being available through online satellites. They are hugely popular. The TV highlights packages are not really the main draw for the tour, although the profile boost in the Sky Poker community for winning is arguably more important than the £5,000 first prize.

And it's not just Sky and PokerStars who are in on the act with the likes of online poker stalwart Paradise Poker running a series of events throughout Europe with modest €500 buy-ins. Betfair moved from sponsoring the £10,000 buy-in WSOPE to hosting Betfair Live, a $500 event at the Fox Club in London. And it’s arguable which event brought more value to the brand.

This torrent of low-stakes events is not just limited to the British Isles either. Throughout Europe the long-term market leader for sponsored tours, PokerStars, have set up and are running localised events with much lower buy-ins than the prestige event, the EPT. Alongside the UKIPT there is the recently launched EUREKA Tour, a series of €800 events in Eastern Europe.

The Eureka tour is clearly targeted at growing the brand in a region that can be notoriously difficult to market in. A live poker event gives the local marketing team a chance to work with media in the region and solidify its brand as having a ‘presence’ in each country. Likewise, Unibet have placed great stock in the Eastern European region for growth in poker and backed this up with a live tour and poker TV programming in the region.  

But while Unibet’s tours appear to be mostly aimed at generating a rival to the EPT, the PokerStars regional tours seem far more focused on building an entirely new market.  One senior executive told InsidePoker Business that he was pushing for a greater use of smaller buy-in events to help grow the brand in Europe. And there is little doubt the types of players at these events are vastly different from a typical EPT or WPT event.

In regions such as Eastern Europe where typical average player values are lower than Western Europe it makes sense to aim lower if a tour is seen as an acquisition route. Certainly, online players seem to enjoy the live experience, and the tours can act as both a CRM and an acquisition tool with players pushed to sign up online and a raft of satellites offered at a range of buy-in levels.  

The winning formula

Other poker operators looking east include the Entraction Network with its European Masters of Poker series.

The slightly higher €1,000 buy-in events are mainly aimed at the Spanish and Portuguese regions, but also include a stop in Bulgaria.

And the Ongame network-backed Grand Series of Poker (GSOP), which is slightly outside the recreational bracket at €1,500 buy-ins, has stops in Riga and Bucharest.  

These mid-size events are not new to poker, however, and it’s the smaller events that mark the most interesting trend within online poker marketing. Smaller stakes live events are unlikely to be anything other than break even at best for operators, and require a huge amount of time and resources to pull off. But they offer significant benefits if successful.

Interestingly, the benefits of the tours can be widely different depending on the online site behind them.

For Sky Poker or PKR, whose PKR Live series has been hugely successful, they are a way of building the community together and bringing the brand closer to its player base. For PokerStars who already have the likes of the EPT it is more a local acquisition exercise with huge numbers of players winning seats in online satellites and being able to buy-in directly online.

For other operators such as Paradise it is something in the middle. With event satellites acting as a useful retention and reactivation tool, while the regional marketing teams can use the events as an acquisition tool and a way of generating some publicity in the region. And crucially one thing is universally true, the players love the events.

With poker’s growth tailing off across Europe and consumers increasingly cautious with their money in harsh financial times the lower stakes poker tour is proving a strong marketing tool for operators who get the formula right.

The key is to build that sense of occasion, provide a high quality experience to the players and generate some publicity in the media. As with everything in online poker it is easier said than done. But the rewards are there for those operators who get it right......"

Good article. Have to mention APAT, it led where a lot followed, from 2006 onwards.

Quite pleased to be involved in the small-mid buyin area in a few things, myself

Interesting to see how Full Tilt fit into all this, with their 50 bajillion dollar buy-in tourney series.

they're cretins who are just desperate to get as much rake out before any blackout is imposed as possible.



Multi entries sure are good for the poker economy as a whole.

What's wrong with multientries beanie? Just asking :)

in a nutshell...


normal FO has 200 regs, and 100 fish.

2:1 ratio.

fish sometimes win and think they are good and keep playing.




multi entries = 4x as much rake for FTP in the same time period .

now have a FO with 200 (x4 possibly x6) regs and 100 fish (who most likely wont multi entry).

we now at best have an 8:1 reg to fish ratio.


sure gives the fish a chance to show a return. just lets the regs increase their sample size quicker.


[  ]  good for the long term


[   ] ftp care


[ x ] ftp want rake

Doesn't this all assume that the people who used to play 5 tables now play 20 tables?

If they don't the fish to reg ratio hasn't changed. 

I know if every site did this I wouldn't be able to play a single new table.  I may end up playing 4x $100 7pm, rather than 1 x$100 7pm, 1 x $100 6pm, 1x $30 7.30pm 1 x $50r 8pm etc
 

Oh yeah, and I don't really agree with the original article either. 

The UK and Ireland poker tour appears to work better than the GUKPT simply because the qualifiers are on stars.  If stars ran £1000 tourneys, I'd be surprised if the prize pools were bigger and the audience unchanged, and if Stars and the GUKPT swapped buyins, stars would still win*.

Betfair kept droping the buyins of their tourneys on the old site on the principle that it was better to have 400 people paying $50 than 100 paying $100, the end result was inevitably they got just over 100 players paying $50.

I think it is better to have a range of buyins.

Sidetracking this. 

1. I played the £1000 event in the stars EPT in London.  It had a £100 fee, plus another 3% deducted from the fee effectively making it £970+£130.  I had to pay for my own food and drink on top.  I just played the gukpt in London £1500+£0 if you reg on line and you get free food and drink.  Am I the only one who couldn't see anything wrong with somebody nicking a sandwich in the circumstances.  he should have taken a plateful.

2.  There was an intersting thread on 2 plus 2 not long ago.  Stars had to remove one of the events from the NAPT for legal reasons.  A lot of people were asking for their money back and for stars to pay for their hotel bills simply because the event was no longer on TV.    The buy in remained the same, the strucure remained the same, their qualification was honoured, but no TV, and some people think there is no longer any point in playing. weird





   

These smaller tours Are so much good value as myself and Keith Johnson found out recently. Winning 40k means as much and is just as life changing to the average recreational man playing in his biggest tourney to date as it probably is to roberto winning his 2nd triple crown event.

Who on earth watches these events when they are shown on "tv"- i say tv like that because being on channel 1082 at 3am doesnt really count.

Big buyin tournaments, where the prizemoney is huge are the only thing anyone wants to watch, not a load of spotty kids playing for a monkey. Poker is big in US on tv, over here its just a stop gap instead of Gay Dating adverts in the early hours

It's occurred to me that the real reason the Onyx cup exists is because the owners of Tilt (Dwan, Ivey, Seidel and so on) have met a load of rich asian bazillionaires who they'd like to fleece, and have set the Onyx cup up as a way of doing that. They thought they'd organise it through Tilt. It's not been done as good business for Tilt in itself, it's been done because Phil Ivey wants to get in a poker game with massive whales, and this is a way for him to do it.

Yeah the Onyx cup thing has to be the worst idea in poker history

I agree that you have to now select what to play slightly more because you now have 4 tables opening up for each tourny. But I don't see how you can think that the fish are more likely to multi entry than the regs, therefore the ratio is  definitely being made worse.

To be fair when I first saw this I thought exactly the same as you.  But when I thought about it, I think everyone has a maximum number of tables, so I don't think the fish will play much more, but I don't think the regs will play much more either. 

I expect the ratio of fish to regs won't change much overall and the increase is nothing like 4x.

If stars bought this in for example, I'd expect the 7pm $100 rebuy to get even tougher, but the 6pm $100 may even get easier as the really top regs are saving 4 of their tables for the 100 rebuy.  I would expect the reg to fish ratio in things like the million and SCOOPs to get much worse.   Given I can't do really late nights, then I expect it wouldn't really affect me much.

I don't know if this kind of thing has happened on tilt as I never play there.  I'd be interested in seeing the numbers of entries pre and post the change on the various tourneys on tilt, even if it shows that I am way out here

go through the lobby of every $200 on ftp.


6x xyz sicko
6x opr hero
6x sicko
1x rando from italy
6x neverbluff
6xtimex
6xmoooooooaaaaarman
1x fish

etc etc


I totally agree with your point that everyone has a max of tables etc, and i'm sure people are playing too many tables because of not considering this enough but I am 100% that the ratio of fish to regs has gotten worse because of this.

i got a ban for multi accounting years ago. aint this similar to what i was doing back then?

no not when it's legit ldo

just checked. 

I was assuming they had done this in lots of tournaments and not just a handful of the biggest ones.  I guess that changes the maths a bit!

FWIW I was just checking through Sunday's $2.25m on tilt.  It was rammed full of people with 6 entries.  WP happmon32 and alex_striker, these multientry pros are obviusly rubbish!

when they did 'double/triple' guarantees they basically made everything multi entry so your point was even more valid.

I love the idea of 'double guarantees' when most regs are putting in 4x entries. bastards!!!!

Lol good one

I will be watching channel 4 on Tuesday night.

[ ] I am a spotty kid.

In the UK I think there are essentially three TV poker audiences:

Poker enthusiasts (ie. the sort of people who post here)
People who know nothing at all about poker
People who know a bit about poker and know who doyle/hellmuth/ivey/tony g/negreanu is

A show like UKIPT gives the first two audiences what they want. Poker fans will like it because its close to home, people they know or know of are on it and its something they could feasibly be on themselves. People who know nothing of poker will be captivated enough with the dynamics of the game as they were Late Night Poker and also may enjoy seeing  regular joes playing these finals, it might motivate them to start playing (These guys by far and wide make up the biggest percentage of the viewing figures).

Its only the casual, 'Phil Hellmuth is the Greatest', fans that perhaps don't appreciate them as much. 

So UKIPT type shows are a good fit for me, and perfect for someone like stars to be able to say 'you can qualify for the next one for free while looking at Liv Boeree pictures, you insomniac mug, right now on our website' at the end of the show.

These events are $1,500 not €1,500 which is quite a difference (It's the Unibet Opens which are €1,500). Also, Bucharest was cancelled - only would've taken 1 minute to check these facts. Other than that,it was a good article.

Incidentally Nick Wright and I will be covering the GSOP Grand Final in Sevilla, which features a few blondes (Rupert, Keys etc...) playing from Wednesday, at www.gsoplive.com  /subtlespamends

Surely everyone knows Phil Helmuth is the greatest  rotflmfao