blonde poker forum

Ladbrokes announced their H1 results yesterday.

Ignoring the rest of the business, Poker - an extremely small part of Ladbrokes overall - fell another 20%, as it seems to have done for 7 or 8 years now.

They have broken out some of the poker number which are on page 29 of the PDF below.  

http://www.ladbrokesplc.com/~/media/Files/L/Ladbrokes-V2/results-presentations/2015/interim-results-2015-presentation.pdf

For the new breed of Online players, you may say "so what?", but Ladbrokes was the biggest European facing site 8 or 10 years ago, they ran the Poker Million, Ladbrokes Cruises, & had a huge hospitality room at the WSOP every year, & sponsored Tournaments all over the shop.

It was a lovely bit of software, too (by the then standards) smooth as silk & very reliable. We all played there, & "The Daddy" was quite the thing to win.

Every afternoon they ran a $200 MTT with an $8,000 Guarantee, I played that every day as did most of the then regulars. It always beat the Guarantee, then one day, out of the blue, they halved the Guarantee & the thing died within weeks.

I don't have any flag to fly for Ladbrokes, but I do find it all rather sad. There's no way back for them now, of course, they have no USP to offer, & presumably they simply use it as a cross sell tool.

Shame really.


(https://1add.co.uk/Entertainment/Gambling/Ladbrokes-Poker/media/ladbrooks_poker.jpg)

I'm pretty sure that they are the only poker site whose WSOP "team" came back with a profit over the years - two winners came from the site, Eastgate and Hachem, with numerous other decent scores.  Somehow they managed to avoid cashing in on all that success.

I find it pretty amazing that Coral are in talks with Laddies. You can only suspect this is good news for Laddies really, because they really are on a "downswing".

Tikay is right Ladbrokes was massive in 2004/5/6

Remember the good old days there Tony ?

There were may faces played there  You & I (SarahJane) RED-DOG, Marky147 ,Skalie ActionJack ,Kunku Wap ( John Tabbatabai )loop8(IanFrazer) Sealey (ConorTate) T8MML(Tim Blake) Punk Floyd ( John Conroy)  and a massive swedish  crowd  ,William Thorson (ILCAPITANO) Erik Sagstrom (The Salmon ) Bengt Sonnert (pkrbt) and obv more

The afternoon 8K was actually a $250 buy in but as soon as the guarantee was cut in half all the other tournaments followed suit and the site very quickly died .As Tony says they used to have a strong presence in the poker industry  sending 40/50 players to the WSOP main every year

Strangely the reason why there was such a strong community spirit was because there was a massive scrolling chat box on every open table so everybody used to be able to chat way to each other , sometimes the banter got a bit lively ( a very young Kunku Wap was an absolute Legend) but generally it was all in good humour and friends (and enemies) were made ( I was always at loggerheads with Paul Jackson)

story about Joe Hachem,...its true he did play there under the alias KAIKEY but he was constantly foul mouthed in the chat box and had  actually been banned for about a year but as soon as he won the WSOP main event  Ladbrokes claimed him as their own player  :)

Met some great people from that site....Good Times !

Personally i think ladbrokes need to totally change their business model.  They prove every time they release their latest set of results that any part of their business which requires skill to price up they don't make money at.  Their entire income comes from products where the price is mathematically fixed so they can't lose.  They keep blaming 'unfavourable' sporting results blah blah.  The bottom line is every other firm faces these unfavourable results as well as them.  The reason they don't make any money is that they have a terrible trading team who are pretty clueless at pricing up the vast majority of sports they offer.  As a small defence quite often nowadays marketing teams incredibly have the final say over the price of the biggest turnover events on any given weekend rather than the trading director.  Even so, by price matching rivals on the biggest backed teams/horses of the weekend by offering commission free betfair prices/offering all these money back free bets etc etc you are just setting fire to margin.  

The amount of times i see Ladbrokes going top price the big 4 in the EPL (betfair price on 1/3 or 1/4 shots).  If you are laying a 4 team acca at betfair prices long term you don't have much margin in what you are selling.  Just because you are laying a 1/3 shot doesn't mean you have any margin in the bet you are laying.  Their old school mentality of 'you will never go skint laying a short one' is one of their biggest problems imo.  If they bet a football match to 108% they pretty much put their entire margin into the draw and dog which hardly anyone bets.

Betting is a really simple business.  If you keep pricing things incorrectly you will lose money.  For years Ladbrokes have been reactive to the now major players of the game and scared to lose customers to them.  I think now they are so far behind the major players it is time to reinvent themselves totally as a brand and become the UK version of Pinnacle.  Get a team of crack traders in for big money who know what they are doing, slim down their product offering to the core sports and focus solely on them at low margins but turn over huge volume and actually lay a bet.  When you lay a shrewdie who you respect actually go with his opinion, create some arbs to get action on the 'right' side, embrace arbers for the benefit they can bring to your business (because they are not going to go away) and move on from there.  People don't realise arbers have probably caused more harm to ladbrokes than any other firm.  The real problem with being on the wrong side of arbers is that by the very nature of the 2 way transaction if ladbrokes are losing one of their many rivals is actually winning the vast majority of ladbrokes loses to arbers.  Arbers only keep a tiny percentage of that transaction.  Effectively for years ladbrokes have been betting against their rivals, mainly betfair, via arbers and helping to finance the growth of their rivals effectively whilst sluming into the ground themselves.  

This would obviously be far too risky for a PLC board to do but the bottom line is their business is pretty worthless sports betting wise so they have very little to lose imo by taking a punt on this different angle.  They still have the fobt's to rely on to pay the ex's which they pretty much have for years.  They are never ever going to catch Hills,bet365,power,betfair.  They have all flown past ladbrokes and into the sunset for good.  Trying to keep up with these rivals is one of the reasons why ladbrokes are falling further and further behind because they don't have the skill set or resources to offer the products these firms do profitably.

Ladbrokes have for years tried to expand their sports betting product offering in order to keep up with the big players of the industry.  Bet365, hills, power, betfair etc.  These firms have far superior trading teams/software tools/wesbite customer experience to price these additional products than ladbrokes do.  As ladbrokes add more and more sports to their offering they just proceed to lose more and more money.  How they traded the General Election in running this year was just one of many examples of setting fire to money hand over fist.

Personally, a merger between Ladbrokes & Coral looks like mating an ass with a mule. Heaven knows what the progeny will look like.

But they have to do something, Industry consolidation is leaving them even further behind.

How bad must corals results be if they are keen to merge with ladbrokes though?  Consolidation isn't leaving them behind.  It is their inability to correctly price (what used to be and still should be) their core product week in week out which is causing them to fall behind.

Do Ladbrokes have a 'what if' plan if the FOBT's were banned?  I would love to see it.  They effectively don't have a business without them.

Good Post Fraser, so many memories there. Bob the Burtcher & Debbie used to play that afternoon jobbie, too.

I rarely missed it, I had retired from work & it was the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

Don't think we had luxuries such as Late Reg in those days - log on 2 seconds late, & that was it, too bad.

   

The important question is, did you ever win it?

Not often......

It used to get 45 to 50 runners most days, so maybe 6 or 7 got paid. I cashed regularly - more often that most - but the wins were far & few between. It was my sort of structure, very playable, lasted about 3 hours, & I could sit & nut peddle for hours. 

Generally, when it got 3 handed - & bearing in mind we all knew each other - we chopped it up. There was no Player Transfer facility, but we sorted it somehow, & I don't recall anyone ever getting diddled.

I went over to Martin de Knijff's Club in Stockholm once for some Fessie, & for the first time met up with most of the Scandies who dominated Ladbrokes at the time. I could barely believe it, they were all kids.

Tikay did you ever meet any of the scando high rollers who had ladbrokes over on an exchange rate coup moving their balances from their poker account to sports betting account depending on which way the $ moved against the £?

As someone who cover the online gambling industry for a living, I will say this is an excellent post.

In many ways they would be better outsourcing all their trading while they rebuild. Then they can focus on brand and marketing and tinkering with acquisition and retention offers.

Margin of 5% is fine if you have a) scale or b) a lower cost base

Interestingly though Coral has done very well with what many would call a "bad" trading team and they too book to about a 5% margin. They don't have anything like the same overhead as Ladbrokes though.

Not that I am aware of, but possibly, I met most of them down the years.

I first became aware of the tale via Keith Hawkins Blog, "The Camel Ruminates", which was in my Top 20 favourite blogs of all time. Camel broke the story, but if my memory serves correct, he later edited it down a bit, & perhaps with good reason.

For those not aware, a bunch of Scandies were transferring big sums every morning from Sports Betting to Poker or vice-versa (Ladbrokes always had separate wallets) on the Ladbrokes site - up to £100,000 I seem to recall - & re-transferring it later the same day. But Ladbrokes had messed up the Exchange Rates, & the Scandies had spotted it, & made a right killing. Not huge sums, but it was free money.

Strike that - here's Camel's version. Far more accurate.

Of course, this does not refer to Ladbrokes, no no.


http://www.camelpoker.blogspot.co.uk/


Just had a quick peruse of several entries - think I'll promote Keith's Blog to Top 15.

Ladbrokes was the first poker site I played on, primarily as I had a betting account with them.
Cutting them guarantees killed all the games, even at low stakes. Crazy that a bookie so big at the time, can fk up the simple stuff in running their business.

IIRC, they spent a good amount of time whining about Betfair and claiming they would use any legal avenue to get them stopped, sure worked out!!

Ironically now Ladbrokes is spending time and money on its exchange and Betfair is trying to become a sportsbook.

For 2 out of every 3 weeks I used to play to sat into the $250 5 days a week.  It was such a big thing to qualify, to play with the "big boys" as it were.  Still got my (handwritten) note book, probably proves why I never made it as a Poker Player.  My in-depth Notes were things like Fish, Solid, never folds, always has it etc etc.  With the exception of Collins3 (Which may have been Stu Fox?) which has war and peace basically saying he is the best player in the world, very little about his actual play (I may have used to stalk him a little), DOC_123, Decision and Red_Dog also have funny entries.

I miss Laddies, think the forum helped, which led to the Norwich weekends and the like.  Seems like a completely different game all these years later.

Because Ladbrokes is historically a UK site it helped bring all the British players together

I really think that Sky Poker has a great opportunity to replicate The Ladbrokes days and community feel ,I'm just surprised they haven't pushed on with Channel 861 given the great Sky TV Platform , still I'm sure senior management have their  reasons which are probably financial

Not financial, no, "technical issues" following the sale of 80% of SB&G to CVC Capital Partners.

SB&G has previously been wholly-owned by Sky, & the sale changed certain things. It broadcast on Ch861, & held a Teleshopping Licence, neither the channel or the licence were part of the sale, both were specifically excluded for regulatory reasons. The loss of the 24/7 channel has had no discernible effect (affect?) on traffic.

They still have an Online Forum though.

Just saying with Sky having the TV angle there is definitely a place to replicate the community old days, between them   Sky ,Blonde and DTD obviously does that

I'm fairly sure one of the biggest factors in Ladbrokes Poker dropping off the cliff was the Scandis leaving and not the Brits

Well yes, but you have to ask "does it drive traffic?".

You can't correlate it as such, but the Channel as was closed in March, (replaced by a weekly Show on Sky Sports) & the YOY figures since then are positive. It's something that is impossible to directly quantify, but there is no evidence of any damage to the Business whatsoever. Some people watched it for years, & never deposited a penny on the site.

Of course everyone would prefer it to remain in place, but its just not possible.

It's like Live Updates from DTD, almost everyone moans about their absence. I doubt Rob Yong would suggest it drove any extra traffic to play on DTD though, so it was a cost with no material return.   

That's almost certainly the wrong question to be asking

Didn't the fall in play/interest, coincide with them ceasing to be independent, and joining forces with Microgaming?

I became friendly with a fair few of the Scandis after going to Tallinn/Vegas/Cruise, and they were absolutely printing for years.

Laddies used to have $1.50/$3 NL tables, and a Swedish kid I became good friends with (leecz000r) was making $30k a month, which is just ridiculous.

I think Dolly must have won the $100 rebuy more times than I made the final table :D

They were always on Microgaming software, just not on the network. My memory is bad, but I would have assumed the move to the network came after the fall not before. Would be a logical reaction to dropping liquidity.

Decline came first, necessitating the merger.

Yes, worded badly by me, as I knew they were on Microgaming from the off :)

What was it that happened with the Scandis?

14:30 $250

18:00 $20r

20:30 $50 2nd chance

00:00 $75

02:00 $40 Graveyard


Think those were my fave tourneys.

Along with the Sunday Lunch ($530), Daddy ($320) on Tuesdays, and the Thursday night $200, which had a $100 rebuy and $100 addon, iirc.

I posted this a while ago:
Ladbrokes Monthly active poker player days:
2005 411,000
2006 461,000
2007 409,000
2008 362,000
2009 293,000
2010 226,000
2011 189,000
2012 110,000
2014   55,000
2015   42,000

They joined Micro in Feb 09 and iPoker in Dec 13.

Astonishing.

I may be misremembering but think they just moved to pastures new mostly ipoker and Stars

bwin.party (partypoker)

Active player days Q1 2010 - 11.6m
Active player days Q1 2015 - 2.6m

Poker is dead innit

A lot of "local" sites opened, too, think Expekt.com became the fashionable place for many Scandies at the time. Guess they all ended up on 'Stars eventually.

Unrelated, but I saw that  I-poker are merging - or re-merging -  their two player pools. As you were, then, as the sites all suddenly realise the value of recreational players.

Yeah that's a weird one. Was going to look into it today. Not sure the last sentence really applies. After all that was the entire reason for the split in the first place. I'd have to assume that changes ipoker made to rake distribution has helped the network so no need for it now? That's a big assumption though.

It was a long time ago, so likely I'm doing the same :D

Who really knows ? one can never really quantify the true amount of business generated through advertising unless you are cross referencing it with bonus codes for new accounts/deposits etc

As regards the live updates its my opinion( for what it is worth) they are a big positive because they keep the events in peoples minds ,however  I'm not footing the bill and am not party to Robs business model so everybody has to recognise the difference between a players ideal wants and a Poker Providers budget

I did very very well in this tournament for a long time however I did very badly subsequently playing the Scandis at cash games   :) 

I very quickly learned to concentrate solely on tournament poker

From what I have read, the rake distribution from deposits is what is driving the return to individual skins as their cut. Seems to be an active plan to kill off the smaller/independent skins and leave the business to the big books etc

That's certainly one way of looking at it...

Funny you mention this. I was linked to one of BigNittyBankers posts on 2+2. Noel Hayes. I was amazed to read about this. Crazy they only used to change it once per week!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=10210764&postcount=157


Regarding the iPoker split of the player pool the theory was it would punish the smaller skins who had a bigger % of players on big rakeback deals who were all largely winners. It was already designed to protect the recreational player. Obviously this would never work because as soon as a regular realized he was on iPoker2, he just swapped skins. I don't really understand how but almost every site that has tried the recreational protection activities has just tended to see a drop off in traffic. The new FTP, Ongame and Party Poker all saw traffic decline after the recreational player protection stuff they brought in. Almost none of it was successful.

It amazes me just how poorly pokersites are run. In the Stars mtt discussion thread, the PS rep actually told people, guarantees don't matter, its in the data. People suggested adding "guarantee boost" to a variety of comps on different days and this has already seen certain competitions have an increase in traffic.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=47719254&postcount=4897

Storm is still at 275k and managed 27251 runners last week so it might be getting the chop again!

Even more crazy is Ladbroke's arrogance that loads of high rollers had just forgotten about their huge balances and left them to Ladbrokes even though they were not giving any action for months across poker or sports.  This kind of arrogance across the whole business has slowly killed the firm.  Great story though.  Wish i was involved back in the day.

Less traffic doesn't necessarily mean less money though

The question that springs to mind is.. could Ladbrokes have been using that money for other purposes I.e. overnight investment in foreign exchanges or was it ring-fenced? This could have made them money if so.

Alun you really think any of those sites have made more money because of the changes?

I feel like you might know more than me here but such huge reductions in traffic can't be compensated by higher margins.

I actually told you about the coup in the early days as I noticed that they were slow to update the rate changes, but I was only taking advantage on a small scale as I only used to keep around £2/3K in my account.

Their error was that they only changed the USD/GBP exchange rate when it moved one whole point, (ie from £1.50 to £1.51) and often took a couple of days to update it, so all you had to do was keep your balance in either "poker" which was in USD, or in "sports" which was in GBP until the rate changed in your favour a day or so later.

Huge reductions, no, but more modest reductions probably yes. You can do the maths yourself, but if yield per player goes up by say 20% then what sort of drop can you stomach and still make more money?

For the sportsbooks it's also not really about making more money from the poker it's stopping poker from draining money out of the system. If you have a sports bettor who wins £1k and loses it all to some poker player and you rake £5 that's an horrendous situation for you.

Unibet's moves were not done to grow poker really.

Yeah I remember that guy!  He was crazy, had a really wild style and got some big value out of thin holdings with it.

Warning very tl dr

I first played Ladbrokes poker in 2002 when late night poker was all the rage on TV.  There were about 400 players max on at peak times and no MTTs at all.  They had a daily promotion where the highest hand dealt got $500.  No rakeback.  Roy "the boy" Brindley was the sponsored pro and a scary looking player called the_salmon sat at $50/100 fixed limit tables with $10,000.  At the time that seemed insane to me and I wondered what sort of mug would dare take him on.  The memory is a little hazy, $50/100 might have come in 2003 but Ladbrokes had big fixed limit tables quite early.  Every other player appeared to be from somewhere called "linkoping".

The site from 03-07 had a community feel like no other.  Ladbrokes helped it with the player profiles etc but there was something unique about the site as a standalone. Everyone from that time who tried online poker - their first experience was Ladbrokes (for me it was the one place I decided wouldn't rip me off if I won or deal dodgy cards).  I went on both the first two cruises (first one around the med second one the carribean) which were equally as amazing as each other and a dream come true for me to qualify for them both.  On the first I met some killer players at the time like pokergirl, the_salmon and Dared (wtf happened to that guy?)  I also met Adam "square7" Lee who I had talked to online a few times before  He was a real pro gambler, RIP.  On the second I played a wild cash game on the first night with a few scandis and the man himself tikay.  I remember one hand where tikay limped UTG and I raised AQs, a wild scandi who called pretty much anything flatted it but when it got back to tikay he went all in for approx. $800 (we were playing $1/2).  I folded and the Scandinavian called, tikay proudly showed me AJ (which won the pot) like it was the nuts and I wanted to spew.

Anyway I don't mean to ramble but there was an interesting incident on the 2nd cruise which for me started the downfall of Ladbrokes poker.  At the time I felt the staff in charge (who I had met on the events) were all knowledgeable etc about poker and really wanted to grow the game.  On the 2nd cruise Ladbrokes tried to implement a system where ppl could load up their Ladbrokes poker accounts before they left for Miami with money and take it out on board.  Great so I loaded mine up as did everyone else.  When we were at sea the action was wild, stacks of $20k at $1/2 and huge PLO games running etc.  The staff seemed to be having a lot of trouble with the withdrawals for whatever reason with huge queues.  Eventually something happened and everyone got access to the money on the ship.   A few weeks later back at home I thought my Ladbrokes account was a little large given I had withdrawn some money on board. Didn't think anything of it and just played as normal.  A good 8 months later I received a phone call from someone at Ladbrokes who explained there was a problem and I owed them money.  Apparently the internet did not work very well at sea and Ladbrokes had been issuing money without actually taking it out of accounts the whole time on board.  For whatever reason this had not been reconciled properly back in the UK and nobodys account had been debited - I owed them $800.  This matched what I thought but I squeezed the guy for more info and he admitted some players had got away with 6 figures and just withdrawn it when they got home and realised the mistake.  I asked him what would happen if I didn't pay he said they would put a negative balance on the account but couldn't do much else.  I paid (because I am dumb like that) but I don't think many who owed a total of hundreds of thousands did.  Funnily enough not long after that incident there were rumours of a massive change in staff at Ladbrokes poker and the site took a new direction.  From having ppl in charge that loved poker they went to having people in charge who were clueless about poker.  To me it was a big noticeable difference  Then the market started shrinking 2007 onwards and they could not hold on even by joining the microgaming network.  Many other networks survived like boss media but Ladbrokes started messing everything up big time.

Stuff I also remember from the time

1) Ladbrokes were seriously considering taking US players for poker only in the middle of 2006 then the UIGEA hit in October and put a stop to that.

2) The race horse "laddies poker"

3) Paul Jackson absolutely crushing MTTs on there when they first opened

4) Some Geordie guy folding AA pre on the bubble in the 2nd cruise and telling everyone about it constantly.

5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6BzGRm_pm0

Nice post. Pretty sure Flushy used to have Linkoping as his location!!

Great post. Can I add, as a tribute to the late great Fish this as 6) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLqKLHKs-oc

I remember that well.

It was a $1 $2 game, & a young Scandi plonked his cock on the table, in the form of $30,000, & a good bit of attitude to go with it, shooting his mouth.

I just decided to wait for something playable & test him. A-J was plenty, I would have done it with less actually. He got the lip on after that & left.

Do you remember that storm, on the first night? Jeez, that was quite something.  

The Cash Game TD was Megs, formerly of The Merrion Club, & during dinner one night on the Cruise, Roy Brindley proposed to her, slipped a ring on her finger & everything, the big daft soppy sod.

Had a read of this thread again, a bit of nostalgia is always good even if it does mean you are an online poker dinosaur :)


Yes it really was good the 03-09 version of the microgaming poker client.  Not quite up to stars and ftp's standards but nevertheless for the euro sites it was the best.  Very fast with crisp graphics and sounds.  As fun4fraser says the large chat box at the side was great for community spirit.  A lot of ppl railing friends etc.  An ex boss media skin manager told me having a good client/interface as a poker site is incredibly hard.  Stars got that spot on and the rest mostly struggled.  Microgaming (and Tribeca) got it right as well and I could never understand when they updated to the newer poorer version of the software.  Like all these things I suspect it was done to cut costs.


Yeah! I remember KAIKEY aka Joe Hachem playing (quite big, $10/20 NL before the wsop win from memory).  Never knew about the ban, lol.


Yes arbboy I think you are right and your post is a great idea.  Like you say they are nowhere near as successful in the recreational punter market as Paddy Power and Bet365 are.  I have a ton more respect on a professional level for PP/365 as well.  I agree with what you say that they will never catch up.  I mean just look at their TV adverts - they are basically begging for a specific type of punter ("mug") to come play with them.  Far prefer Ray Winstones for 365 or Paddys humour.

Your idea of turning their sports section into a pinnacle type offer is interesting.  Honestly I think it could work as you describe.  I consider pinnacle sports the biggest loss by far to the UK gambling market as a result of the new legislation here.  Financially it must be a close call.  Pinnacle spent nothing on advertising, nothing on affiliates and nothing on free bets/bonuses/marketing.  Everything went into the line setting.  The new 15% POC tax was enough to make it no longer viable to serve the UK market sadly for them but perhaps it could be done.  Pinnacle represent what a bookie should be, welcoming all action on their lines and taking huge bets from anybody.  Never closing accounts or even limiting them.  Funnily enough almost all my "high street" bookie accounts are closed/severely limited but at Pinnacle I was down thousands I am not ashamed to admit.


Lol yeah, remember the betfair of 2003?  So anti bookmaker and customer friendly.  How times change.


Agree with this, I mean poker is never going to be the same as during the boom years but still I think you are right, Sky could definitely generate the same kind of community feel.  I think this forum helps bring UK players together massively as well.

Anyone remember that old TV show poker night live it was called maybe?  Showed STTs etc on some random channel.  With some guy called Axeman commentating along with a bird?  There was a poker TV channel as well on sky at one point wasn't there, Barney boatman homegames etc.


Expekt ran huge rake races and attracted the high volume cash players.  NoIQ did as well but they drew the wrath of ipoker and got kicked off for doing the same as Expekt who were allowed to stay (Expekt had a sportsbook to attract fish with though).  Everyone did end up at Stars eventually but there is not a single company out there who was as customer focused as the old Scheinberg owned PokerStars.  Sure it cost money to play there (lower rewards unless you made SNE etc) but every single thing they did no matter what the cost to them always put the players first.  I cant think of another company that treats its customers that well, perhaps BMW.

As for the recreational players I think AlunB is totally right when he says its just about stopping the drain.  The sites pretend the changes are to the benefit of everyone when they introduce "rec friendly" ideas (like lowering rakeback and no find player tool).  All they are really doing is increasing their bottom line and trying to make the money circulate a bit more + have a higher yield at the same time.  There are not armies of rec players out there just waiting for the right site to spring up before they deposit, these changes will not increase the player base in that way. 

As far as Unibet are concerned they are completely hypocritical on that front anyway.  They say bum hunting is a bad thing and try and make it impossible on the poker site yet they bum hunt to extremes on their sports site.  Your a good player?  Ok Max £1.68 on.  You are a fish?  Ok £1000 on.


Haha I remember playing against Royal_Flush on the old Tribeca tables network back in 2004 kinda time (skins VC, paddy power, racing post poker etc).  Now that was a hilarious network to win money on I know a lot of the old timers on here will love it like I did.  Players like Corrie, Raistlin, JammyJo (who I met one time I think and was hilarious online when he went on mega tilt) GeeForce etc.  Christ the action on there was immense.  Some ridiculous things like before they updated the software every MTT over 36 runners paid 18 places.  You could short buy after getting stacked on the cash games.  Like if you were playing $2/4NL you could sit with a score.  Just so lol and degen.  There was a "lobby chat" area where they held quizzes (I just trolled it) and they ran a 10c rebuy in the early afternoons.  Sadly it was bought over by Playtech who merged it into their ipoker software and ordered the Tribeca software destroyed as part of the deal.  Maybe a good thing as I heard strong rumours that Tribeca had been cracked in some way just before the end anyway.


What a legend, very glad I got to meet the Fish on that cruise.  He came up to me and exhaled into his shoe after drawing on a cigarette which he then placed on a table.  It just sat there smouldering with smoke pouring out of it and he asked me "Whats that?" I said dunno and he replied "An Iraqi Soldier"


Haha yeah, that guy was a real product of the poker boom.  Great banter the games on that cruise.  The storm on the first night was crazy.  I remember everyone getting worked up about it and a dealer throwing up over a player at the table!.

Tribeca Tables (drool)

(http://www.pokercave.info/poker_img/vcpoker.jpg)

2003-09 Style Microgaming Software running the Ladbrokes client

(http://www.pokerplat.com/img/rooms/table_ladbrokes.jpg)

Another good old now defunct network - Pre upgrade Cryptologic poker (I remember The_Twin as a very good player)

(http://www.interpoker-rakeback.com/images/interpoker-table.jpg)

Anyone remember going round collecting £5 an hour to play at all the crypto skins back in the day?  totalbet, interpoker, William hill, ritz club etc :)

Slightly off topic, but Amaya released their 2nd Quarter results yesterday.


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amaya-reports-second-quarter-2015-results-521727711.html

....and Full Tilt introduce a new, what they describe as "recreational rewards programme".


http://www.gamingintelligence.com/business/33521-full-tilt-introduces-new-recreational-rewards-program

Which seems to be a large cut for high volume players (one reg on 2+2 states that the new "edge prime" level gives lower rb than on stars.

Coupled with the 2.5% currency exchange fee (and attempts to stop deposits into GBP on stars being converted and transferred) they really are hammering the costs on the players and being hoovers these days.  I mean I am all for stopping table selection, allowing name changes and forbidding all software but I do think high volume players should be fairly rewarded and sites shouldn't rip off ppl via exchange rate fees etc.  Just a money grab and fully expect FTP's numbers to continue to decline.

Cut my teeth in my eary years around 06-07 on Ladbrokes and it was a simple and clean piece of software