blonde poker forum

Saw this in uk.pokernews.com.....

http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2014/09/mansion-poker-announces-exit-from-the-uk-14976.htm

Not sure if anyone remembers, but back in about 2007, when Mansion were moving into the UK Market, they had a daily $100,000 Guaranteed Tourney, quite a big deal back in those days.

blonde were given, I seem to recall, four Free Entries for blondes every day, and they ran the same deal on AWOP & THM I think.

Even so, it often made little more than $50,000 some days, & rarely more than $70,000. Yikes, that was some overlay - DAILY.

Their Site Pro was Mark "Mr Cool" Goodwin, who had, if the rumours were true, the best deal any poker pro ever had, private jets & all sorts. Times have changed, on both sides of the table.


 (http://edge1.pokerlistings.com/assets/photos/_resampled/CroppedImage180320-marc-goodwin-5368.jpg)

The article included this footnote, too, though I've no idea if it has substance. Certainly, the new GC Licensing thing, & the upcoming change in the tax arrangemernts, will cause a few furrowed brows amongst some sites.

Many online gaming operators, especially the ones without a huge amount of player liquidity in the UK, may find the new gaming tax regime to be too restrictive and follow Mansion's lead. This might especially be the case for online poker operators with licenses in France that currently offering online gaming to players in the UK including Winamax and PokerStars.fr, which otherwise would risk to be subject to a costly double taxation.

Yeah, got an email the other day about that.

It's been that long since I used my account, I couldn't even remember my login, nevermind the password!

Used to do a fair bit of work with them for Badbeat, but I think their interest in poker took a very similar line to Ladbrokes as time went by.

Yes.

When they first arrived, their software was really sharp & responsive, with novel features (for the time) such as "choose your seat". You pressed a button & the seats all sort of rotated. It was like a new toy then, but it's old hat now I suppose. I loved their software, it was really neat, but I gather they eventually became part of the ubiquitous I-poker network.

Were you based in BadBeat's Office, in London?

I visited it a few times, to meet Chris Smith. Chris was so helpful, & offered to assist blonde in any way he could if I ever asked. What is he doing these days?

I went up a few times when I played for them, but they had moved out of No1 Knightsbridge when I started working for them in 2009.

Chris is a great bloke, and would always go out of his way to help. John told me he was focusing on Manro Haydan nowadays,  and he has been in Monaco for a few years now, I think.

When Mansion first kicked off they gave away 10 WSOP main event seats every night for about a month.

I still didn't get one.  :'(

Whilst these offers were clearly mad, they did bring a lot of newbies to the market. Now obv they were unsustainable but nowadays most sites offer sod all. Sky probs have the best offers for micro/low stakes newbies, not harming their YoY figures

they used to have that tourney that overlayed a fortune every night, was sick

I went to the BadBeat office christmas party once. It was in Goole, which had essentially one train in and one train out every day.

Are people from Goole, goolies ?  :D

LOL

John's other company had a block of offices in Snaith, so when they moved out of Knightsbridge, they moved the operation there. I drove up last time I was there, but I think the train station that I travelled to previously was Selby iirc

I remember staying at a pub in Goole, when I was up there for a week working out of the office. The pub had little chalets built out the back of the place, and I think the boozer itself was a converted house.

Pretty quiet place anyway, and definitely don't think they'd ever had guests in doing Jaegerbombs until 2am on a Wednesday night before!

Even if they are they're still better off than people from Scunthorpe.

Anyone remember the free bet up to 1k on the Steelers in the first game of the NFL season. Maybe 2006?

Pittsburgh Steelers 2006 Superbowl Champs Promotion

 Simply visit the MANSION Sportsbook and place a minimum Point Spread (Handicap) bet of USD 1,100 to win USD 1,000 (or currency equivalent) on the Pittsburgh Steelers for their game on Thursday 7 Sep 2006. (00:30 GMT 8 Sep 2006)

 If your bet is not a winner, MANSION will refund your losses of USD 1,100 (or currency equivalent).

Took $5.5 million in bets. They sure had deep pockets, and that daily tourney was a gold mine.

Yuuup. I hedged for the guaranteed ~$500(?) profit but those that let it ride must have loved life!

Talk about right place, right time!

I remember playing a little GUKPT side event and 'Mr Cool' went potty at James Browning because James limped AK utg. Marc: "You'll never trap anyone playing like that!". James: "But I just trapped you!"   haha

I took a fair few shots at the $100 BI but mainly used to just play 6-max cash back then. I seemed to remember thinking it was once a week, good job I never knew it was every night! It ran for a long time...

That was a fantastic offer, once you'd called them and established that yes, it was really too good to be true!!

Must've read the small print 50 times trying to find the catch.  Turns out there wasn't one!!

That actually moved the global line for that game that promo.  Quite incredible and people think the game wasn't easy in this era.  Gl finding a promo like that now.

gtfo

Was the best site ever for overlays when it first started, and it let me have my own account and one with bad beat as well :) Mark Goodwin was involved with bad beat as some sort of mentor for a bit. Him strummer and action Jack all finaled the hi roller in Monte Carlo backed by Chris.Was the hand vs Ivey and aj. Think the next year Mark won the gukpt Manchester in fact he walked it knocked me out near bubble

It literally was too good to be true but it wasn't.  I remember a £100 risk free no rollover sign up bonus to ladbrokes casino in the same era.  No 50 times roll over requirements and 5000 times if you played blackjack,  You had to bet £100 on blackjack to get £100 cash (totally withdrawable) bonus.  Glory days.  Now you would have to play £25k on blackjack to get the same withdrawable bonus.  It was such easy money football hooligans were talking about it on their own forums to fund their next trip in 2004.

Anyone else rinse Pacific Poker for $150 a pop (instantly withdrawable) just for signing up people who deposited $25? MMmmmm

I hit every bonus in both mine and the wife's name on every site, they really were good days. Now as arboy says rollover a 1000 times before you can withdraw

Who owned them? They sponsored spurs for a while! How did they have so much money to punt off?

Owned by an Indonesian billionaire Putera Sampoerna who owns Sampoerna cigarettes.  Pretty sure he didnt punt it off though.  Be pretty amazed if it isnt a very profitable company now.  His personal punting, however, is the rock Betvictor was built on.

Didn't his son get well into poker?

Seem to remember reading somewhere that he flitted about in the big cash games a for a while.

Yes - I believe he runs the whole thing now.....

Sick life.

Pokerstars.fr pulling out Oct 1st

Ah the glorious overlay days of Mansion (and bluesq/vc/ladbrokes).
With .fr & winamax finishing Nov 1st, is there any value around at all online now?

The early days of Mansion were really remarkable. The two bets (Pittsburgh/later they had a Tottenham one), the Keno bonus, the daily overlays in their tournies, the fucking pokerdome. Awesome stuff. Their software was good too, like better than a lot of sites that are still about - shame they moved to a network.

I think it's fun to think of the glory days, but there's going to be some opportunity that's dumb for the company to pop up at some point.

Pretty sure that offer on Pittsburgh in the NFL actually moved the line globally because so many people wanted to back the other side elsewhere for no reason other than the offer to 'arb the offer for a risk free bet'.  Would love to know how much mansion laid that offer to lose.  It was one of the few 'offers' that was so good it couldn't possibly be true but it was.

Pittsburgh Steelers 2006 Superbowl Champs Promotion

 Simply visit the MANSION Sportsbook and place a minimum Point Spread (Handicap) bet of USD 1,100 to win USD 1,000 (or currency equivalent) on the Pittsburgh Steelers for their game on Thursday 7 Sep 2006. (00:30 GMT 8 Sep 2006)

 If your bet is not a winner, MANSION will refund your losses of USD 1,100 (or currency equivalent).

Took $5.5 million in bets. They sure had deep pockets, and that daily tourney was a gold mine.

Anyone remember the Mansion trip to England v Paraguay in Germany 2006? :)

(http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/800x600q90/674/xxbbPH.jpg)

I wonder how much that must have cost them!

RIP Mansion

Yep. I don''t think they spent much money on the bus getting us to the stadium mind.