blonde poker forum

Hi,

As some of you may know, after a year on placement I am now back into my final year of University at Newcastle, where I study Marketing.

Having to carry out a dissertation, I decided where better than to focus on The Poker Industry!

My question for this is currently "How much does social media have an impact on Live tournament Overlays within the UK", but this is work in progress, and may change it so it focus more on the impact that Social Media has on players who decided to opt for late registration.

I've set this thread up as obviously I will need to carry out plenty of research, and would love to get as much help as possible from the Blonde Poker Community since I know you are a friendly, helpful bunch. It will probably involve questionnaires, as well as occasional cries in case anyone knows where I can obtain specific info from which I've been looking for. I may run this as an ongoing blog, not sure yet, possibly not.

My first question however, is does anyone know where I can get a list of the biggest poker tournaments to happen within the UK (prize pool and/or players)? been searching for a good couple of days off and on and just can't seem to get the information anywhere.

Thanks in advance to all, even if you are just dropping by to flutter an eyelid.

Hendon mob > database > festivals > Uk

Sadly it doesn't rank the poker tournaments based on prizepool or players, just lists all the tournaments its reported

I presume there is a way to find it through Hendon as I know you can get all time money lists for venues and such (Rastafish forever telling me he should be higher up on the all time money list at DTD) but unsure how to go about it

I am sure it will be a riveting read :-)

Looking forward to this.

http://www.tptk.com/past-events/

not sure if this helps....copy and paste into a spreadsheet would allow you to delete events and put them in buy in order?

thanks for the look, I don't require buyin's though, purely prizepools and amount of players.
This way I can correlate them to the GTE put on the event, which should be easy enough to find.

Also if anyone has any ideas or ways I could go with this, please shout out.

As I said it's still very much in the works and there are multiple avenues that I could go down, I always find it a lot easier to develop ideas when I speak out loud and discuss them, as supposed to staring at the screen waiting for the ideas to create themselves.

I expect my first batch of primary research will be at GPS Sheff, will try and find out the reasoning behind players choices to late reg as well as how far they have traveled for the event.

fox poker give you a text quite often at the very start of play listing the overlay, and that has once been a reason for me going down there, but it is a trap, most people nowadays are finding it cool to miss the first couple of levels. But yeh, texting is effective, not quite social media, but you get my point.

yeah it definitely ties in with what I will be investigating, thanks

I'd be interested how you are going to determine causation and correlation in this. For example, DTD use social media to promote comps, but they also email, text, promote on their website and on the online cardroom, as well as advertise in the actual building.  Not sure how you'd determine if one particular element caused someone to play, or if it was a combination of a few of them and other things such as the influence of friends (who may or may not have been influenced by social media).  So just because someone saw a tweet or a post on facebook, it might not have been the key factor that influenced their participation. You can ask people, but they might not be that sure themselves.

Also, how do you pigeon-hole blonde?  Is it social media, or an advertising spend for DTD?

On top of all that, you're focusing on overlays in comps.  Does the presence of a guarantee in a comp mean that there will inevitably be more marketing and promotional efforts taken by the casino/cardroom, and therefore could it not be the presence of the guarantee is the thing impacting on the amount of social media effort.

I already think i will make it more focused on the reasons behind late registration, whether social media is the key final communication influencing people to do so, or whether they just prefer to late reg because of the play. As you've said it's very difficult to gauge the strength one set of social media posts, when in effect they are there for reinforcement, keeping the casino in the consumers periphery.

I feel like it will have to focus on tournaments that tend to have an Overlay, as these are the bigger ones with Guarantees. They will be compared among eachother, as supposed to for instance the daily tournaments which of course are marketed in an entirely different way.

Many thanks for the post btw, it definitely helps me get a stronger image in my head of the direction I want this to go as well as what is/isn't feasible

Overlays in and of themselves don't seem a big enough topic for a dissertation?!

If anything I felt like it needed to be narrowed down to analyse

There seems to be so many factors that influence whether there is an Overlay on a tournament or not, I expect the majority to be external (people's holiday plans, busy footballing weekends, traffic, other tournaments on at this time, Big Vegas trips etc.) but some are internal such as marketing, satellites, the week it's on

I will be looking into both, ideally this will help provide an accurate way of predicting GTE's, as supposed to saying it got this many last time, lets hope it hits that many again. There doesn't seem to be a set framework of predicting this, although I imagine all places have their own methods of getting to a set GTE. But as I said in a perfect world thats what I will draw from this, I expect there to be too many different external factors that influence this to do so

it feels like this could be fleshed out in about 20 minutes with Simon Trumper.

obv not trying to rain on your parade but it seems like such a niche thing, can't see how it could be padded out to dissertation length.

most comps don't even have guarantees, if they do and they get an overlay it will be reduced or it will be advertised more next time.


edit in general most places that do set guarantees, set ones they know they will hit, or they have conditional clauses, or they are French and just back out whilst lying.

The only place i've ever even seen 'aggressive' guarantees which favour the player is DTD, and DTD are not normal ldo.

Imo for somewhere like DTD, I wouldn't travel because there was value from an overlay, I would honestly travel because I wouldn't want Rob taking another hit even if they knew they would when they set the guarantee! Places in London constantly message me and I don't go there because I don't want them to do well!

Well I imagine this is another part of it, brand loyalty

I feel like the key part will be the research, which could take a long time to do due to having one major once a month (£500 DS) but obv the amount of time it takes wont dictate the word count and depth of it.

You could well be right, in regards to widening the working title, may have to take a much wider focus on Social Media within poker.

Thanks for the suggestion, will have a think into the chapters and chat it out with my tutor

yeah I instantly thought about SM in Poker in general, can take a look at the effect on guarantees of just 'communication' in general. ie phone a mate tell him to come down etc.

the poker boom has coincided so much with the technology boom that it's hard to have much to compare it to.


also surely your research can be done 'through' social media!


technology itself has had such an effect on poker, be it through hole card cams increasing interest and understanding of the game, applications to help people improve their games etc etc. It just seems that live overlays are a bit narrow.

Stars are moving towards a more social/community based approach, with the new boom player tweets etc.  and they know a hell of alot about running donkaments both live and online and sizing them up for guarantees. am sure they could be of help.

Haha yeah, I expected this would be the main way I could conduct it, although I'd like to take a specific sample from a tourney getting info from players who late reg into a certain tournament, to see what the biggest factor was on a given day.

I really wanted to do it based around Dusk Till Dawn as you may have guessed so tried to stay away from online with Stars having a huge grasp on the market, as well as FT now being back in the game. Saying that this could be a lot more feasible, in fact I'm focusing on Stars in a couple of other modules here, so would help it tie in.

Think I will speak to my tutor about this and see what direction they feel is most feasible. Find it difficult to do this, takes an entire day to explain the poker industry to them. Would definitely like to keep the social marketing aspect of it, since twitter is huge in the Poker Community.

Thanks so much for the discussion as always, the more i talk about it the better idea I get, and it just isn't the same when I'm trying trying to talk to peers outside of the poker industry about it, due to the market being complex and as you said, difficult to compare it to others.

specifically re late reg the reasons are going to vary depending on pro/rec whatever phrases you use to least insult people.


'I only just finished work'

'I just punted another tourny'

'Im shit with 300bb, waited till I have 30'

'I don't know I just woke up this wasn't the plan'


looking at the few who chose to late reg because of communication or social media seems like it would be a hard task.



If you're specifically looking at DTD for guarantees/overlays it'd give a joke skewed impression of the poker industry in general! as there is no one like them.

when the fox first started up it's monthly comp they didn't even put a guarantee on it. the main plan was build it in central london and they will come or will be walking past anyway. so much of DTDs traffic for the weekly/monthly comps is travelling support that a last minute tweet cant make all that much difference to alot of people.

Careful using social media to get obtain feedback. Introducing bias...

well would be hoping to get anonymous responses, through online questionnaires I imagine as supposed to spurring riots. Would obviously need to take into consideration implications of the data collected.

Would quite like to do the majority of research in person, get a better feel of what they think on the day as supposed to trying to remember past events. This also gives me a decent excuse to play more pokerz!

No, I meant asking people via social media is not asking a representative cross section of poker players.

at the same time, for SM to be affecting someones decision they have to have some access to it!? but yeah important to note with your research methodology.

yeah this is true, otherwise I'd just get those influenced by social media, as supposed to regs that don't understand how to work a computer

I've now had a nice chat with my tutor, who I even bought a box of chocolates for, for added brownie points!

I've been given plenty of avenues to go down, And have conducted a survey to see where the most interesting results come from, which I can then delve into.

Since I'm playing the GPS tomorrow I will print a load off, hopefully get a fair few responses, so if you see me please give me a nudge!

Otherwise I would be over the moon if whoever is reading this could take just a couple of minutes to fill in my survey:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGpZc1JWSldJT2JZcHczdFdlcno2b1E6MQ

I look forward to documenting some of the more interesting findings!

Done, although I answered the under 25 by mistake. Feel free to remove the response. :)

No worries, thanks!

tyty, thanks to everyone who has already filled it in

This, massively.

This is effectively screening, to get some ideas.

The detailed research that I will do later on will more than likely have to be done entirely irl, unless I do go down the online poker avenues

survey filled in

gl

In. When's the reveal and what can we win?

Will be a slim reveal in a week

And you can win a meal for 2 at Nando's, presuming you are paying and the other person is me

lol

Question 14 is slightly awkward because I am usually already playing the tournament anyway or I am not gonna play it at all for whatever reason...

Managed to get some good research done at GPS Sheff

Thanks for the feedback on questions, as said before this is a trial questionnaire and it has helped me realise what does and doesn't need to be included in future surveys, as well as more appropriate ways to word some of the questions.

I've spoken to my tutor who has said the more specific the better, it's about narrowing down the topic further and further.

Based on this my current topic, which is always subject to change is how well are people notified about Overlays in the run up to tournaments.

I had many responses saying that they felt they weren't notified often enough abotu possible overlays that were happening in big tournaments, and with the majority of people carrying out this questionnaire online I would expect these would be the people who would have the biggest opportunity to be informed about such occasions, nevermind those who rarely use the internet and tend to stay away from Social Media.

This will keep my studies fairly focussed on Social Media, as well as other mediums of communication. I think it will also be interesting as to whether people's opinions of casinos change based on whether they know Overlays happen every now and then, putting them in either a negative or positive light.

IMO people are very desensitised to the constant social media bombardment these days.  I get stuff from places in Surrey, Blackpool, Scotland etc that I ain't ever been to.  Guys like Edler n Wighlesworth keeping my finger on their pulse in there lives as well as all the Dtd, genting & Gukpt stuff but I never block any of em.

 It must be quite hard to measure its effectiveness but nothing attracts flies to a shit fight as effectively as Barry Neville on his phone. I have been to a load of places where the initial runners for a gtd comp  is abysmal and within a short space of time Barry has got everyone from Sheffeild there :)

Sounds like a more suitable subject.  Be interesting to see the results. I'm guessing the impact of overlays and attracting players to tournaments is beyond the scope of the study?

Hi,

apologies I havent posted/updated this thread for a while.
It's been coming and going, thinking about peeling off in different directions.

I've been looking for theory regarding the field, which is obv very difficult to find. However I've now decided to change my direction to brand loyalty within the poker industry. This will analyse whether people are literally just searching for the biggest and best tournaments in regards to value, or have an emotional attachment with certain brands and poker tours.

I now have a finalised questionnairre online. I would greatly appreciate it if you could fill it in providing you tend to play live tournaments/on live tours. I need a sample size of 200, which will obviously be difficult for me to achieve due to being unable to ask anybody and everybody:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16muZpTzzCOX20Pt63-PtHZVzLigTDq4KYXSgdfSu04Q/viewform

Thanks again :)

Done.

tyty :)

Done, blurb mentions leaving name and email but no option to do so on response.  PM for details if you like.

thanks for letting me know. Copied and pasted the description from previous one, no longer need names/emails, will amend this.

Also tyty for filling in :)

Done

In again

tyty ruud and herbie :)

done for you.

out of interest, why include LCI Poker Tour with the other 4? Isn't stuff like APAT, SPT etc more indicative of a choice a low stakes player might put in?

And both are arguably the two tours with the most brand loyalty, as they both are community based.

true. I chose those with a higher buyin as I felt consumers weren't necesarrily going to feel the need to travel to all stops on a tour if it's typically at a lower buyin due accomodation/travel costs

Understood

Especially for APAT but also for other "community" tours such as the SPT many many players will go to every leg, a social occasion first and in some cases poker second, with exes many times the tournament buy in


No biggie though, just wondered. 

makes sense, maybe I should have included such tours if people are willing to travel to all legs.

Definitely up for discussion in my limitations/conclusions, thanks for the feedback