blonde poker forum

http://pokerupdate.com/news/networks-and-rooms/new-ipoker-network-policy-to-see-division-of-network/

Can any site maintain generating 850 new players a month.

Guessing this is pretty awful for Blackbelt which seems a massive shame.  LOL @ them describing their criteria as 'quality standards'

Major problems for loads of popular sites in this country. What about encore/genting also as a lot of uk players have them as their site of choice. It had been in the pipeline for sometime and I just hope Neil, Karl , Paul et al have plans in place. They work far to hard to have their business affected by a decision that they probably had little say in.

will the secondary site have a smaller rig?

Surely this is just a slightly more PR-friendly way of saying that they made a mistake allowing so many skins to join the network.

None of ipokers big rakers are going to want to go anywhere near the 'sub network' so surely the two-tier system can't survive long term and it's instead an interim solution with the end goal being one network where all of the skins can support themselves and pay their way

I do some work for Oneway Poker. Fortunately enough for us we are in bed with BlueSq so looks like we will be ok (famous last words). However, we were told several months ago (non official from an insider) that basically the big guns are fed up of spending all the money on marketing etc for the smaller players to get the rake on their skins!!

Not great news for a lot of ipoker skins at all!

£1.3 million in online poker revenue during 2011 for Rank, so I wouldn't count your chickens.

Given the sheer enormous scale & size of Rank, poker cannot be anything but a distraction & a waste of valuable management resource, £1.3 mill is of no import whatsoever, especially as it has no scope to improve by much, if any. 

From what I know, only 2nd hand info but it's 4 companies moving and genting isn't one of them which amazes me

Yeah blackbelt poker piggyback (I am pretty clueless so might not be the right term) off boyles but it's good to read from a Tikay post that Neil is ahead of the game. I have accounts with many ipoker sites,after blackbelt, paddy power and chilli are my favs but reading various articles only a few will be in the elite bracket. I understand these include Titan, William hills, bet365.

Just readthegenting comment.  There must be massive implications for Brs guys too

Spot on!!

Don't want to derail the thread, but pretty sure there is plenty of scope to improve. They did £12m in the live rooms during the same period...

meh i dunno what to think about it to be honest. For lots of reasons many iPoker skins should be kicked out etc but this won't happen, instead iPoker2 will squeeze them out as their vip players wont have good tables anymore (all fish from sportsbooks on iPoker2)

if this is the case iPoker1 skins could potentially go busto and then the transition of these people who will blame iPoker1 (even if its not warranted) will be stopped as they will lose all brand loyalty.

The "team" of iPoker2 scares me, WH, paddy etc etc I'm not sure if these guys are even interested in improving their poker model. Initially they didn't want to have poker and only allowed it to cater for the big sports betters who were interested and after alot moved over to betfair to bet/play poker on same wallet many of the new skins shit themselves.

iPoker2 with good regulations and rules sounds great but it shouldn't be capped at skins that will have alot of players, skins such as genting/poker encore should definitely be put in as not only do they bring a good mixture of recreational/depositing and winning players but they also are very forward thinking and always trying to improve (something which cannot be said for the skins who are currently in the loop for moving across) this also extends to Blackbelt and neither should be punished or branded similarly to some of the skins whose entire business model is revolved around canabalizing traffic and offering high rakeback deals and good VIP service.

Several months ago I was told Paddy Power, Blue Sq, Titan and another, PP did not want boyles in as they're Irish rivals!

The revenue per sq ft in B & M from poker is significantly less than it is from areas occupied by House Games though Alan. And even £12 million is insignificant in the greater scheme of things to Rank.

"auto-Roulette" machines earn more per sq ft, use less staff resource, & the punters don't kick up the fuss that poker players do.....;)

About a 0% chance bet365 and William Hill aren't included.

Of course, but under that reasoning nobody should ever offer poker.

What I meant was if you're earning ten times as much in your live rooms as you are online, there is definitely some room for growth there. I think a tiny tiny fraction of their live players play online, and they have stated they want to increase this number.

Chances of Boyle making the cut? Or am I going to be homeless when it comes to playing online?  :(

They have not invested much in developing the Online product, no, but why would they? They would need to spend money on something - a network skin - over which they have no management control, & very little influence. So they cannot impose their own USP or "message", & have no muscle with i-Poker, who will do whatever they damn well like.

It only exists so as to provide a "complete solution" platform. 

Now, if they could build & develop an in-house product, that's different, because they can control it completely.

Sorry, I ninja edited my post :)

I don't think you have to own your own tech to succeed, and although it does obviously give you an advantage it also carries with it some significant problems and risks.

Lol yes, I noticed, but I had a head of steam up by then. ;)

Sorry Hills was the other!

What does it all mean then ? You will have to Join a new network to get access to all the games ?

I hear today, Ipoker will be split into 2 tiers, tier 1 will be the old IPOKER, tier 2 will be IPOKER 2 which the non major companies will be on. Unfortunately it seems like all the little skins on the back of the ipoker 2 sites will disappear!

Blue Sq will currently be put on tier 2 (unless small chance they merge with gala since this buy out) and they have enough revenue then to go into Tier1!

This is going to happen in September!

Be interested to hear from someone at Black Belt to see how they are going to fair with Boyles?

Also, anyone who doesn't get on TIER1, will be worthless in 6 months after as all the players will have migrated over to sites on tier1 where all the traffic will be. Tier2 will be dead within no time!

Also heard since my last post, Blue Sq MAY get on tier 1 as they're in negotiations with IPOKER/Playtech on going into Tier1. As it currently stands, they're going into Tier2!

looks like a bit of change, all def happening Sept,

boyle poker, blue sq not involved, neither are Genting/Encore although the first 2 are definitely fighting to get on this 2nd IPOKER network.

Ones I def know are going are Paddy Power, Bet365, Mansion, Will Hills,Corals (one i cant remember name of poker 76....something) and 1 other.

From what i hear its going to be huge!

poker770 will move over.

What are one way n blackbelt going to do about this Quinney?

good chance for some of the other networks to get some of the upper brands from ipoker 1 such as genting/blackbelt imo

Pads what do you think will happen to the smaller networks?

Just curious on what PStrat think of it all

True. But moving networks is a massive ballache and you always lose a chunk of your existing customers. More likely a lot of the skins will just focus less and less marketing money on poker making that network worse and worse.

Hm nan I disagree.

Te networks I mentioned have good brand loyalty. The Paul romains if this world don't care f they are on entraction or ongame.

Skins like purple lounge yes because they have brand loyalty to the network as are finding he best deal. But on these sites (you don't even get rake back through blackbelt directly at least) the loss of players is not a big problem at all.

Thoughts are mine as always. Ipoker2 going to be a very good thing for ps as it stops the illegal under the table deals that we currently struggle to compete with as we always follow the rules very strictly whilst on the new network I assume things will be put in place to police this and it will be a very legit network. And as with other previous legit networks pokerstrategy always he been able to offer a very rewarding and competitive deal.

Yeah sorry I didn't read your comment closely enough. I was thinking of the likes of bluesq, betfred etc.

Moving networks isn't simple though. And you will lose customers. Also where do you move to?

thats the one! (poker 76 something)

not sure about BB, But one way are in discussions with one of the big ones about moving with them, but there will be no skins any longer for the smaller boys but we have a work around. To be fair, we're ok because we work on live events off the back of satellites online which we can still do and have our own identity the way we do them, but likes of the other skins like BB/Encore, not sure, its a nightmare because they've spent a lot of money. No doubt they'll have something in the pipeline!
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It's William Hill, Paddy Power, Titan, Blue square. Think that's it.

It's all about the cash games, the tournaments shouldn't be affected, think most smaller skins will move to the Ongame Network..

It will be more than this I am pretty sure. Mansion/Poker770 almost locks.

There's some alternatives. Depending who buys Ongame there can be great potential there. Microgaming is restructuring and has alot of desirable options such as their great software etc.

For undesirable skins who have previous history giving illegal rakeback and try to get a big network to take them on I think their days are numbered, and deservingly so :)

How long do u think it will take for the guarantees and structures to go back to what they were on Micro Pads?

Supply and demand Dreenie.

I know that MG looked very hard into their MTT structures/prizepools etc and tried to make it as good as possible for the players without costing them too much. They are a great network and I think will grow to be very successful over the next 5 years. Definitely a network who is forward thinking and looking to the future and are setting things in stone for them to be here for a long time etc.

Ongame's future looks so uncertain at the moment though, and Micro might be out of the frying pan.

Agree on positive changes at MG. There is a reason they are the longest running company in online gambling.

Ongame do very well in regulated markets. Unibet use ten for .fr and they have good strategies in that regard. Zynga my potentially take over ongame according to some sources which obviously changes everything

Ongame do well in Italy because they bought out one of the largest players gioco digitale. They do OK in France, but nobody makes any money there. And how well they will do in future regulated markets without the bwin.party machine behind them remains to be seen.

I can't see any sense at all in that Zynga takeover. And it's not like eGR have a great track record in breaking actual stories. Rumour and gossip sure...

But yeah would be really interesting if it were true. Presume would be the start of a real push into online gambling from Zynga.

One thing that's important about this that no-one has mentioned is that its not going to affect cash games $3/$6 and above.

I believe that the skins dont think there is enough liquidity in the bigger games to justify splitting those as well.

above 3/6 or including 3/6? cos on Ipoker lobby 3/6 £ is medium stakes and 5/10$ is high

What will happen if i have money on ipoker?

Sorry meant to say sunpoker

Where did you hear this Dave? Or from whom? I kept meaning to follow up on this, but then the WSOP happened.

Inc 3/6 only effecting 2/4 and below.


Cant say who it was as it was in a private conversation, but it's someone everyone knows and is in a position to be very clued up on the fine details of this.

And GOD-DAM the WSOP

AND SHALLOW WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!?! :(

In my front room kid, sorry. Save them Rhino chips if u still got them, will buy em off you, wanna give them to my mate for wedding

Strange it's only lower stakes. Thought the last think they would want is some sports betting whale shitting it all off to someone on 70%rakebackpoker.com

million he still has them ;)

yeh, pretty sure he knew that was a long shot!

@Alun agree, odd. Think it's because hig stakes liquidity on iPoker is kind of fragile atm, but most of the big punters prolly come from those sites anyways

But it will, because the iPoker1 skins probably will be hugely penalised for havign such 1 sided traffic (winning vs losing players) there will not be enough deposits on the whole for iPoker1 and they will eventually have to leave. The skins cannot make money anymore as they cant take a free ride off the iPoker2 skins who bring in the fish.

yh you're abso right, it's not really any reprise for the smaller ipoker skins, the only relevance of it I guess is that players on smaller skins with RB deals can still play higher without having to move, until the inevitable happens and most of the smaller skins just fade off

but who gives a fuck about rakeback? its about about hourly, if you get 100% rakeback but playing against other legit sickos when you can get 50% through a vip system and play vs the regular fish then theres just no choice. thats why it would be so surprising that ipoker would let them do it like this, because atm verybody will have to convert over.

yh i agree, I thought it was odd but heard from good source that $3/$6+ will be unaffected.

Well they are essentially copying the ongame model and in here the traffic is only rig feced for stakes up to 600nl do it's definitely possible/likely

yeah, I guess we're just going to see what happens... I play majority on ipoker not currently on a skin that would be part of ipoker2, so i imagine like most people like me i'll just how viable not changing is. Will also be interesting to see how overall traffic is affected, if indeed it is at all... What do you think Pads?

Is it confirmed that this won't affect SNGs/MTTs?

I thought it was a bit odd seeing as 365 (one of the largest skins) already has its own ring-fenced low stakes cash tables for example. And surely one of the concerns  is someone dusting off their sports betting winnings on poker and that money disappearing out of the network for good. Poker was like a broken pipe for some of them. Just a way for money to leak out of the system. Because bear in mind when it comes to sports betting or casino they eventually get that money back in the majority of cases.