Rob Yong's Blog V3 "READ ONLY"

[TightEnd]

Rob has asked me to put up a read only version of his thread. Just his posts, no comments

We think this will be a huge thread and some people will just want to read his posts without the difficulty of navigating through lots of comments


Here we go

[TightEnd]

March 30th 2010

Entry 1:  DTD WSOP Road Trip

Well, its been 5 years since my first WSOP diary, I read it last week after a guy at the club mentioned it to me, it reminded me of what my life was like back then, travelling the world playing poker for 3 years with little stress in my life, there was no damn recession, no DTD, no football club........don't ask me what I would do if I could rewind the clock

Anyway, it's back to the WSOP for me this year, my flights are booked but this trip is going to be different, this time I am hoping to take 15 - 20 DTD qualifliers with me - we have pre booked 20 rooms at the MGM from my friend Oliver Spier -who promises us all VIP treatment. Oliver is the Casino Host that usually looks after us at the Bellagio, he came over to the EPO at DTD in September and twisted our arm to change venues and promissed extra special treatment at the MGM, so we'll give it a go. The Bellagio and MGM are owned by the same company, but apparently there is a big push to promote the MGM at the moment since they built a new hotel block called Skylofts in their complex.

We also have a DTD Party planned in one of the nightclubs in Vegas, we are joining forces with Smart Gambler, owned my my Nowegian friend, Segal, the guy that originally helped bring the Norwegain Chamionships to DTD. By the way, I went to the Norwegian Chamionships in Latvia last week, the organisers moved it there this year which was a major disappointment to us, but we could not compete with the deal that the Riga Casino offered Donke, the championship sponsor, however, you never know, we might get it back in 2011 Lips Sealed

The slight problem is I'm not exactly sure how we are going to qualify 15-20 players from DTD yet, with flights, hotels and buy-ins we need to raise between $200,000 - $260,000 by way of some type of satelitte structure, live and online, but we have plenty of time to work that out. I remember when I did my last diary, the Gutshot took a team of 10 players over to the WSOP and had a great time filming them, one young Gutshot lady, Tiffany Williamson, finished 15th if I remember, how cool would that be if one of the locals like Ali 'Bag Of Bollocks' went really deep - you never know, strange things happen in life.

Anyway, my WSOP Diary and Dusk Till Dawn blog threads kept a few of you amused so hopefully I can make this third 'blog' interesting, and it's about time I did a follow up since the club opened, and go into how it feels after being open for over 2 years. There is plenty of stuff to tell you all, I don't know where to start, but we have 90 days till I fly to Vegas so that's ample time to re visit the DTD story and all the other crap that's been going on since then. This blog will be condemned to the Blondepoker archives when the last DTD qualifier is knocked out of the 2010 WSOP. Again, as with the previous blogs, feel free to add anything on the thread yourselves - but can I just ask you not to post compaints about ecash and the weekly tourney schedule on here please  

Hey you never know -  maybe if I try really really hard I might get as many hits as that great blogger and DTD's no.1 fan Mick McCool

Cheers Rob

[TightEnd]

April 3rd 2010

New Blog Entry (2): “DTD For Sale - True of False?”

The format of this blog is going to slightly different to ‘a diary’; Each entry will discuss a random DTD subject in the build up to DTD’s WSOP Road Trip. Let's start by answering the question/rumour that I get asked at least once a week by a different person – “is DTD going bust/being sold?”

The truth is that I did consider selling DTD when the new ‘poker tax’ was made UK law in 2009. I was feeling pretty beat up at the time; we had just had the £80,000 of overlays for our Grand Slam comp, some more bad news on VAT and a 300% increase in our business rates. It was looking like the mountain was now way too steep and it was time to finally throw the towel in, plus, I was feeling quite sorry for myself, like a poker player bemoaning bad beat after bad beat Cry.

I met with 4 companies who had approached us within a month of the ‘poker tax’ news breaking, 3 of them made offers but the 4th wanted to do more of a joint venture deal, I couldn't imagine this ever working - I didn't fancy getting a bollocking by a 'business partner' after the next inevitable big DTD overlay. The sort of offers I got were nothing to get excited about, basically I could recoup most of the investment in DTD back, which now stood well over the £5m mark, including the set-up costs, the court delays, plus the club’s operating losses for 2008 and 2009.

I had got my mind around selling DTD, I was tired, but still, in my heart of hearts, I didn’t want to accept failure, even if that was the correct business decision. I asked Nick what he wanted to do and he replied very simply, “what else are we gonna do if we don’t do this?” That was all the encouragement I needed, Nick still had some faith, and my business brain ‘rebooted’. I told him that we needed to face the reality of being a poker club that was shackled with the costs and taxes of being licensed as a full casino, so we would have to operate a more professional business model going forward, we highlighted three areas that we needed to focus on ASAP; increase our online revenue, introduce some gaming into the club and increase our opening hours to generate more revenue.

I really didn’t want table games in the club, so we agreed to put in some electronic gaming, create extra weekend events and recruit some professional online expertise.  The downside was more up front cash investment, and I was reminded of the saying ‘throwing good money after bad’, but being an expert at doing this, it didn't concern me that much;  we needed to deposit of £150,000 with the gambling commission for the electronic gaming, spend £100,000 fixtures/fittings etc in the club, and bring in an experienced person to recruit a back office team for www.dtdonlinepoker. We managed to put all of these things in place by the end of 2009, so we were all feeling really optimistic, motivated and pumped up about 2010, and just when we thought nothing else could go wrong, the ‘poker gods’ sent the worst recorded weather to Nottingham in 113 years…………and we were back ‘in the hole’ in January with overlays and low attendances!

I guess nothing else bad can happen……"DTD - not for sale/going bust (at the moment Wink)"

Cheers Rob

Next Blog Entry (3): “Mick Mccool, DTD’s No.1 Fan”

[TightEnd]

April 4th 2010

New Blog Entry (3): ““Mick McCool, DTD’s No.1 Fan”

Everyone has there critics, they often can help make life more interesting and make you question yourself and ensure that you continue to maintain and improve your standards, and DTD’s no.1 Critic is without doubt the infamous, Mick McCool.

I dont read it myself, but have been sent various links to Mick McCool's blog, also a link to a radio show, and numerous private messages/emails that he has sent to people, slagging off DTD. Despite the malicious intent of his wholly inaccurate and unfounded comments, I have never responded or even felt the need to, his opinions are very much in the minority judging by the growth in DTD customers over the last 2 years, and I am sure the 500 people that have come through the doors of DTD today, on a Sunday, cannot all be wrong, but clearly he has an axe to grind rather than being an impartial critic whose opinions are without obvious personal bias.

However, since his last outburst was not very complimentary to BP as well as DTD, I see no harm in stating the facts on here, which are the absolute truth, regarding DTD and Mick McCool, then people can draw there own conclusions, below is the opening paragraph from his latest outburst from his blog.

Blondepoker and Dusk Till Dawn
Now unless you live in a cave in the Shetland Islands you will know l hate the both of these fuckin things and everything they stand for more than anything in Poker. People come on the blog and on Blonde shortly after my attacks saying various nice things like, l’m attention seeking, a useless wanker, a fat kunt, billy no mates and all sorts of other bullshit. I couldn’t really give a monkeys what these fuckers say as it has no effect on my life and how l live so ying yang mother fuckers. Before l talk about my main subject, l was speaking to a lot of Norwegian's in Prague at the cash tables and they were telling me that their Championship of Poker was being held in Riga this year, main reason was prices at DTD were extortion and the other was location which didn’t surprise me really. I really like the Norwegians and have made plenty of friends there over the past 3 years so will be sad to not see them over here again even though it was making DTD money.

The Facts

Fact 1: I first met Mick McCool on the UK Grosvenor circuit and got on pretty well with him, okay, he was a bit outspoken at the table and rubbed a few of the ‘established uk players’ up the wrong way, but I personally thought that he was more of a breath of fresh air than what the general consensus was, plus the UK poker circuit was quite ‘clicky’ at the time, and he wasn’t scared to play anyone and give them the rubdown, I sort of liked that.

Fact 2: The first problem I encountered with him was when he publicly accused DTD of putting ‘in house’ DTD players into the $25,000 online freeroll for the launch of the DTD online room, to try and win the ‘free money’ back for DTD. With respect, after investing £5m, why would we do this? This was a blatant lie, and I could not understand why anyone would say such a thing or really believe that we would do this, especially someone that knew me personally.

Fact 3: When the DTD club finally opened, Mick was a regular, his brash style and direct banter did upset a few of the customers and some of our staff, especially some of the dealers in the cash games. Simon Trumper and Darren Whiten had a some quiet words with him on a few occasions, often it was ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’, and since Mick knew me quite well, I was sure these problems would blow over and he would realise that you just can't behave like that to people.

Fact 4: Mick’s behaviour did improve, the staff and players got to know him a bit better and realised that was ‘just his way’ and he meant know harm with what he said, he was 99% of the time just having a bit of a laugh and to be honest, he made the games more lively and fun a lot of the time. DTD is full of 'charactors' and sometimes our staff need to adjust and take this into account, Mick was one of these people and his heart was in the 'right place'.

Fact 5: Unfortunately, I got a phone call one evening to say there had been a problem in the club between Mick and another customer over a financial disagreement, whist that was nothing of DTD’s or my business, the situation has escalated to the point where the police were called and threats had been made, I was not there, but was told by my management that it had all got a bit messy in front of the customers in the club, which did not look good for DTD, and my management thought is best that Mick was at least barred for certain time. I said I would talk to him and get to the bottom of it, as I was sure there must have been some sort of misunderstanding and reasonable explanation.

Fact 6:  Before I got the chance to speak to Mick, I was emailed the latest entry on Mick’s blog, where he was very disrespectful towards DTD, at that time, we were in the process of negotiating with the WPT for the UK Leg and I was very unhappy that someone who knew me personally would write such damning comments on the internet for everyone to see. I was furious that Mick would do such a thing, so I called him and told him exactly what I thought of him in no uncertain words, I made it clear that he would never be allowed in DTD while I owned it.

Fact 7: Mick’s ‘anti DTD’ blog entries have continued ever since that day, I would describe them as distasteful even If I was neutral, this has offended some of the Blondepoker members, due to the close link with DTD and BP. Mick even went on a poker radio show and had a real go at DTD to Jesse May, although to be fair, Jesse did seems to encourage him/fan the flames - I guess to make more interesting radio.

Fact 8:  The situation is quite sad and I actually feel quite sorry for Mick, he is local to DTD and it’s a shame that he has put himself in this position. Despite his personal crusade against DTD,  he has been consistently trying to get his ban lifted which makes no sense? After getting a ‘no’ from Darren, the General Manager, Mick even contacted Nick personally to ask to be let back into the club, this was only a couple of months ago. Nick spoke to me and I said ‘no’, and my decision has been proved to correct when you see what Mick has written on his blog since.

Fact 9: Mick is clearly not the person he makes out to be,  ‘I say what I think’, ‘take me or leave me’, ‘ I don’t give a xxxx what people think’, is all just front, if he really  ‘lived by his principles’ he surely would want to play poker anywhere else but DTD! Instead, it makes me cringe when I know he has been desperate to be allowed back into the club, a place he so publicly chastises. To be honest, I find it astonishing that he dare ask us to lift his ban, I would have thought he would feel humiliated to do so, especially when you read his latest comments on how he 'hates us'.

Fact 10:  Mick should start by deleting everything that is derogatory in his blog, not just the DTD stuff, unless it is backed upsolid facts, he had made disrespectful comments about various people/organisations in poker, that simply leave a bad taste and give a bad impression of him as a person. If he does this, I will consider meeting with him and reviewing the situation with him being barred from DTD, I know he’s not a bad bloke underneath, but he should stop embarrassing himself with what he writes about third parties in his blog, maybe is would be a good idea to focus his very good blogging skills more on poker, rather than fuelling silly vendettas that don’t actually exist in reality.

Life is too short, Mick, stop being such a plonker, you know it makes sense Tongue

Cheers Rob

Next Blog Entry (4): “DTD & Blondepoker – what’s the score?”

[TightEnd]

New Blog Entry (4): “DTD & Blondepoker – what’s the score?”


Back in the days when there was no Blondepoker, I remember nipping Dave Coleclough at the Bellagio cash desk for some dollars for my buy-in to the $25K WPT Championship in Vegas. We got chatting about his and TK’s plans to set up a new poker site and a few months later BP launched, it quickly became somewhere for us all to chat, make arrangements and enjoy a bit of bantor.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and BP is still probably the most popular forum in the UK, although competition is fiercer nowadays as more poker sites and forums have become established and I think it’s fair to say, most of them are probably run on a commercial basis. In all honesty, that’s probably why I like BP, it’s never made any money and although it has flirted with various affiliate deals and sponsorships, it has effectively remained very much a community portal.

My personal links with BP have been strong from the start, we organised the Yongsta Home Games through BP, and I have posted and written blogs on the site. I have also made many friends through BP, people that I would never have come into contact with, even when I was full time on the poker circuit. BP has replaced the names that people were born as, with new identities such as ‘Red Dog’, ‘Ironside’, ‘Booder’, ‘Tightend’ and many more, it has literally made a difference to people’s lives, enabling new entrants onto the poker circuit to feel part of something. I like this, the downside of course of any community is that sometimes it can become a bit ‘clicky’, and I would agree that sometimes this has been the case with BP. However, overall, BP has had an overwhelming contribution to the UK poker community, and some of its first members have now become top poker players, such as Julian Thew.

BP existence is the reason that DTD has not set up a DTD forum, this would not feel right, regardless of business reasons for DTD doing so, when you look at the exposure that BP gave DTD, free of charge, in the painful run up to its opening, I believe this would have been out of order, even though BP have never expressed any wishes against DTD doing so. When DTD finally got its green light, I wanted to repay BP for this exposure, so we sponsored the BP updates and put some DTD banners on their site, I think it was about £50,000 for 12 months, but there was little profit left for BP, as the EPT and WSOP updates were very costly for them.

Over the last 2 years, I have heard various shares in BP have changed hands, I don’t know the details and have never made any offer to buy or been asked. Obviously I talk to TK about BP in terms of “how’s it going”, but that’s about it really, people generally think there is a stronger link, but they are mistaken, the only financial link until recently is that DTD paid BP for updating its £300 Deepstack Weekend.

About six months ago, Nick had a word with me about BP, him and TK had been having a chat, the BP online room was suffering some fairly hefty chargebacks and penalties which were making it harder to make ends meet. I wanted to help so told Nick spoke to TK to see if there was anything that we could do. A deal was agreed for DTD and BP to work more closely together. I was not party to any of the talks, but as I understand it, the basics of the deal are;

1.   Duration of 12 months
2.   DTD underwrites BP’s operating costs such as wages, updates, IT costs etc
3.   BP becomes an exclusive online affiliate of DTD

The idea behind this was to help BP continue to do their updates and other value added stuff, without having the stress of worrying about their operating costs. No shares changed hands therefore DTD does not own any part of BP whatsoever; in fact, I am not even sure myself of the BP current ownership structure.

I believe the deal lasts for 12 months, which gives BP a bit of breathing space after they were treated so badly by ipoker, after that I am not sure what will happen. The rake generated on DTD by BP members has been very small since BP moved off ipoker, which is a pity. I actually think DTD helping with BP’s costs has in this way, probably not done any favours in terms of online rake from BP members, as BP online players probably now perceive there is no need play online with BP to support the site anymore, as DTD are picking up the tab anyway! I am not moaning about this, DTD’s business model also relies on poker players to support the club through playing online, but the theory is flawed, as the majority just chase the ‘value’, and who I am to say that there is anything wrong with that!

Going forward and it is none of my business of course, I would like to see BP moving more towards a UK version of 2+2, I would like to see more pros posting on here and there be more serious poker talk. I don’t want to see the site dominated by DTD stuff, I want BP to remain independent. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I was moaning about the amount of DTD stuff on BP, and asked for us to only have 2 official threads, one for club news and one for online. I am conscious that I do not want BP to become the DTD forum, I want both businesses to work together but retain their own identities, hopefully this is the direction that things will move in the future.

Cheers Rob

Next Blog Entry (5): ”Poker Tax…..what the xxxx is that?”

[TightEnd]

New Blog Entry (5): “Poker Tax…..what the xxxx is that?”


In early May 2009, I received an email from my tax advisor at Deliotte Touché, Darren Hobson, it said, “Hi Rob, I hope you are well, it looks like there are going to be a couple of tweaks in the finance bill this year, mainly for bingo, I’ve attached the draft bill and will get back to you, cheers Darren.” It was a small, polite, none descript and casual email, little did I know, it was the beginning of another mini crisis for DTD.

I had totally forgot about the email from Darren, I get so much information every day from various sources, if it’s not mega urgent, it gets deleted until the subject comes up again! Darren called me a week later sounding very concerned, he confirmed that there was going to be a new ‘poker tax’, I replied, “poker tax, what the xxxx is that?’, he went on to say that there was going to be new gaming duty of up to 50% on all revenues generated from poker, tournament registration fees, cash game rake, cash game session fees, even sit and go’s qualified for the poker tax. I was in a meeting at the club with Nick and Simon at the time, discussing possible overlays from online satellites to our pending £1k event, we were debating how many seats to GTE online, I put the phone down feeling sick and just said, “forget about overlays, we are in very deep shit.”

I can not be 100% certain, but I believe that DTD generates the largest amount of revenue directly from poker in the UK, by some distance, the casino groups may generate more with all their UK venues combined, but this new tax was based on a per venue basis, so we would be the biggest contributors of poker tax in the UK, so I found it quite amazing that we were never even consulted or given any advance warning. 

Poker is hardly mentioned in any government literature, and the question still exists whether poker is a ‘game of chance’, therefore subject to UK gaming law, or is a indeed a ‘game of skill’, in which case poker winnings should be subject to taxation, and losses would be able to be set of against your personal tax bill! The government believe it is a game of chance if it takes place inside a licensed casino, but you only have to look at the 40-50 unregulated card clubs that continue to operate, to see that the government is not exactly sure what to do with poker in the UK.

The new tax on poker was made law in August 2009, it was even backdated to March 2009, it only effected poker which is played in casino licenced premises, it was an attempt by the government to increase the overall taxes on casinos in the UK, and is linked to numerous gaming tax battles between the UK Gaming Companies and Customs and Excise, unfortunately, DTD just got stuck the xxxxing middle!

My first reaction was that we need to find some way of getting round this, like call our poker revenue a ‘service charge’ or something, but my accountants and lawyers were uncomfortable with this approach, DTD is owned by my holding company, so everything needs to be 100% legal. The additional taxes increased DTD costs by £400K, the club was already losing money, so this was a bit of a disaster for us but totally out of our control, a bit like when the price of petrol goes up because OPEC have decided to produce less oil, that is also xxxx all to do with us, but we still have to pay for it when we fill our car up the next day.

I have to admit, I was getting pretty sick of owning a poker club at this point, I thought opening the damn thing was hard enough, the £80,000 worth of overlays in our £1k grand slam tournament did not make me feel any better either, so I decided to have a few days away to think about things, I hate being a quitter but am well aware that there comes a time when you have to walk away when everything possible has been tried. We were faced with three clear options;

1.   Sell the club
2.   Generate more revenue (somehow!)
3.   Install casino table games

We looked at all three options in detail, I was always uncomfortable with plans to install casino and roulette tables, and in reality, quite a few of our poker tables would have to have been sacrificed to do this, therefore reducing our capacity to run larger events. We had no shortage of interest in purchasing the club, from inside and outside of the UK, the amounts of money were not great, but you’re not in a good bargaining position when you are ‘on you knees with your pants around your ankles’, everyone knew we had problems. I spent 2-3 weeks working solidly with Nick, we had plans drawn up to install casino table games and quotes from suppliers, we also met with potential buyers, a decision needed to made quickly, as the rumours were not doing DTD’s reputation any good, players were even withdrawing their money from the online card room and our club members were getting really concerned. There was never any danger of DTD closing or going bust, I would never have let that happen, but it’s hard to stop the rumour mill spiralling.

In the end, we decided on a hybrid solution that would enable us to continue running DTD as a poker club but try to generate more revenue;

1.   Install more electronic gaming in addition to the current 4 machines
2.   Open DTD every weekends
3.   Open 7 days if necessary

I personally felt much happier with this solution, we could keep out 50 poker tables and start being creative with designing different weekend events, although I would prefer not to open 7 days if possible. A lot has happened since the word ‘poker tax’ was first mentioned, we have had to invest a further £350K in gaming reserve and fixtures and fittings, the staff have put a huge effort in to make things happen, from Maria on reception to Danny and Mark in the card room, everyone has pulled together. DTD has paid every single penny of the new duty on poker, we are operating going forward on a breakeven position, okay, the weather screwed us in January, but the crisis caused by this change in taxation has been dealt with….….what’s going to go wrong next, maybe a bolt of lightening will strike the club and hit me directly while I am sitting on the toilet?


Next Blog Entry (6): “DTD & Pokerstars”

[TightEnd]

Blog Entry (6 ) DTD & Pokerstars

One of the most common rumours that I get asked about, usually in the DTD smoking area, is whether we have sold or intend to sell any part of DTD to Pokerstars, especially since it was announced that DTD was to be one of the legs of the new UKIPT. Last year, I did meet with a few of Pokerstars’ management and they presented us with a few different options, one of which was to work with them by hosting some of their live events, and this was my preferred choice. To associate yourself with their brand can only be good for DTD going forward and it’s really important that this UKIPT event goes well this week. If at some point in the future, I wanted to move away from DTD, Pokerstars would be the first company that I would approach if they were interested in having a live venue in the UK, because they are genuinely passionate about poker and I believe they would at least maintain the standards we have set.......and probably not replace our 50 poker tables with blackjack and roulette!

I wanted to write a bit about Pokerstars because I find their organisation very interesting, in comparison to stereotype market leaders in other business sectors, who can often be bureaucratic, corporate and sluggish. I have found Pokerstars to be very different, they are able to pay attention to every single detail, they are always looking to enter new markets aggressively and every single Pokerstars employee that I have ever met seems full of enthusiasm for their job. Their company has remained privately owned, I think the founder owns 75% and the employees 25%, therefore the organisation is free of the constraints and expectations of the stock market and external investors. In such a small space of time, Pokerstars have been right at the centre of the huge growth in poker’s global popularity, I remember when they founded the EPT with John Duffy, smashed their first £1m Sunday guarantee and of course, how they held their nerve and continued taking US online customers, despite changes in US legislation, its been quite an amazing ride so far for what effectively started off as a few lines of computer code.

I am not kissing ass because Pokerstars are holding their UKIPT leg at DTD this week, far from it, I normally loathe big companies that tread on everyone else in their quest for world domination, I hate seeing how the supermarkets are putting our corner shops and pubs out of business and how these big retail parks are killing our town centres as well as being built on green belt land with taxpayers money and backhanders to corrupt councilors. I naturally always side with the ‘David’, not ‘Goliath’, in fact, I was one of the poker players that often slagged off Pokerstars, especially when they put the EPT buy-ins up, but now I am on the other side of the fence, I can see how really professional they are and there is a basic difference between them and some of their competitors, they genuinely love poker and maintain this ethos by employing people who share their love of poker.

I have decided to treat myself and play the UKIPT this week, I have never played an event at the club so I am really looking forward to it, this is such a good value tournament for a £500 buy-in, I just have to play. I spoke to Nick this morning and he told me we already have over 400 runners confirmed, so hopefully we will set a new record for the UKIPT, between 600 – 700 is probably my estimate, although we have staffed for 810 just in case. I expected Day 1b (Thu) to be much more popular than Day 1a (Wed), but so far we have about 200 runners for each, so it looks like I was wrong about that! I am also interested to see how their £50 freezout super satellite does tonight, most of DTD’s satellites to events are rebuys, but maybe we could look at doing freezouts if this one gets a good turnout at the club this evening. I guess the only thing I would change is their £100K GTE, I think they could have pushed the boat out a little more to maybe £200K, as £100K only equates to 200 runners, but I guess in their first season, they did not expect their tour so be so popular.

With the GUKPT’s, the Gala Tour, the UKIPT and our own DTD events, there is so much poker available in the UK now, whilst this choice is currently great for players, I am not sure if this is sustainable in the long term and believe we could see a decline in certain events, there is only so much money to go around, and the growth in new poker players will inevitably reduce in what is already becoming a mature marketplace. Personally, I favour the recent trend towards lower buy-ins and higher fields, this allows a bigger pool of players to take a shot at winning decent money, but I am still fearful of the sheer volume of poker tournaments going on in the UK at the moment.

Good luck to anyone on Blondepoker that is playing the UKIPT at DTD this week, here is the link to the UKIPT schedule at DTD this week http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/festivalinfo.php?id=33

Cheers Rob

Next Blog Entry (7) My Day 1b UKIPT

[TightEnd]

New Blog Entry (7): “My First UKIPT”

I was hoping for 700 runners, but 650 was not too far off and it was the 2nd largest field ever in England, behind last years EPT. The main event was also a record number of runners for any DTD tourney, so I think everyone was pretty happy with the field, players, pokerstars and DTD (okay, maybe the DTD kitchen got a bit of a shock!).

I believe we are close to agreeing a deal with Pokerstars to hold the event again next year so they must have been reasonably happy with how things went over the week. What was nice to see was the success of the side events, very well supported by the DTD members, in particular the 177 runners in the NL 6 max, which I am a big fan of. I think we could look at developing this 6 max concept in DTD, both in terms of cash games and tournaments. A big thank you to our regulars for supporting the week, I know these events were quite a bit more expensive that our normal weekly schedule!

This was my first event that I have played at DTD, the structure was great and I have actually changed my mind about the 12pm start that Pokerstars decided to go with, players on the whole found it more enjoyable to finish at 9pm, and have time for a few beers with friends, as well as play some cash.  Finishing earlier also helped some of the travelling players as they had enough time to drive home and get a decent nights sleep, before returning feeling fresh to play more poker the next day.

I have hardly played any poker for the last 4 years, I have been way to busy with DTD and my football club, but things have settled down a bit now, I am looking forward to playing more, Simon Trumper has recently set up some VIP games every week in the club, Wed (DC), Fri (NL) and Sun (Omaha), and I have been playing in these. Unfortunately, I am £7,000 down in these cash games so far this year, even after taking into account winning £10,000 in cash games last week, but that’s not really a significant amount for the size of the games being played, however, clearly I am not playing that well!

Despite my ‘rust’ in playing tourneys, I had set myself a target to end day 1 with 45,000 chips, which would mean I went into day 2 in good shape or busted out early. I know many players believe grinding and waiting for hands is the correct strategy and going into the next day with average chips is fine, but the arguments for a more aggressive early strategy are equally as valid, you have to navigate through so many difficult situations with 650 runners, I think its better to have more chips and be able to survive the inevitable accidents and coin flips along the way.

During Day 1, I was never all-in for my tournament life and rarely had many show downs, I also never outdrew anyone after the money went in, so I felt that I played pretty well. The key hand was when I flat called a min re-raise by obvious AA after I had raised UTG with QQ, flop came and I check raised all-in on the flop, I actually think my opponent can possibly think about folding here, as the pot was only 6,000 ish, but he insta called his remaining 24,000, I guess I had a VLAG image on the table.  I ended day 1 with 55,000 chips, I peaked at 75,000 but lost 2 coin flips against short stacks, however not a bad days work and I was about 25th in the chip counts.

Day 2 started off pretty badly, I stupidly called a UTG raise on the BB with and donked off a third of my stack checkraising flop and betting turn on K high board (I put him on QQ as he was in check call mode), I should have moved in on the end as I then knew I was behind to AA or AK, but river went check check and AA won, it was a scary board and I believe he would have folded for an all-in as he would have been beat if I had any 2 pair or better.

I got back up to 50,000 with a few positional re-raises and continuation bets, the table was very tight and I felt I could probably get through the day without taking too many showdowns, until I found a monster starting hand, in the SB, with an UTG limper in the pot. It was 600 more to call with about 4,000 already in the middle, so I decided to take a flop but not get married to an 8 high board, the flop came down , I had flopped an 8 high flush with a 1 outer to the straight flush. I checked expecting the UTG limper to represent, but the BB fired out 4,000 and the UTG limper just flat called, I am never folding the hand unless another club comes/pair up so I just called aswell, the turn was a and I checked again, this time the BB fired out 10,000 and the UTG limper folded, the BB was a very tight player but I was almost sure he had 2 pair/small set and would pay me off even if the river did not pair the board, so I smooth called the 10,000, the river came a two hearts, and I moved in for 30,000 representing a busted flush draw, he insta called with 10c and I was out. I have thought about the hand and people have said I should have bet out and then folded to a re-raise on the flop or turn, but because of my VLAG image, people with sometimes go all the way with just top pair/weak kicker with me, so I can't fold hands like this as their range is much wider, I’m happy with how I played the hand, and I really enjoyed the tournament.

I got a small £1000 touch in the £50 bounty comp on Sunday (maybe more my level at the moment) where I had a £300 bounty put on my head generously donated by Pokerstars, I should probably have won it when we got down to 3 players, I had half the chips in play but I lost 8 all-ins to one player, when I had her crushed almost every time, so it was not meant to be. I even lost with AQ on a QQ2 flop, all the money went in against her 88 and she rivered her 2 outer to make a boat! I think I had 350,000 chips and she had 25,000, and she ended up knocking me out – ahhh!

Overall, an excellent week, good to see so many familiar faces, the £10,000 winnings on cash games meant I ended the week in profit, so roll on the next Pokerstars UKIPT at Dusk Till Dawn!

During the week, I had quite a few questions about what we are going to do in Vegas at the WSOP this year, so I’ll talk about the plans/arrangements in the next blog entry, there is a £20 RB sat into the main event satellite tomorrow at DTD (3pm start – buy in for 3 levels) if you don’t fancy stumping up the £500 to try and win a seat. There are also some 20 euro stats online, here is the link for all WSOP info http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/satellites.php?satellite=7

Next Blog Entry (eight) “WSOP...here we come”

[TightEnd]

Rob Yong’s £40K GTD Grand Prix Update

 

Well, we launch our marketing campaign this week for our first attempt at breaking the record poker field by getting 800 runners into our Grand Prix event on the 29th – 31st October. We have 31 runners bought in through our online card room so far, so just 769 short of our 800 runner guarantee! I am not panicking yet, although I won’t be looking forward to the “I told you that was a crazy idea” comments should the event prove to be a flop.

 

Speaking to customers at the club, the event seems to be have been received very well, although I have been politely asking them to hurry up and register so we can get a to a respectable confirmed total as soon as possible.

 

Dusk Till Dawn will have been open almost 3 years to the day when we try and break this record, and it would be fantastic to do so, especially after winning the British Poker Awards a couple of weeks ago. It has been a well documented struggle with unforeseen hurdles but getting an award is great recognition for everybodys hard work connected with the club, and to host the biggest ever poker tournament in 5 weeks time would be amazing for us.

 

I will keep our members regularly updated with how the Grand Prix is progressing, and please forgive me for a few gentle reminders now and then in the club. I don’t mind asking for a bit of support on this one, as it’s like a personal idea, rather than a business one, to host this tournament.

 

Of course, it’s highly likely setting a guarantee of 800 runners will result in a pretty big overlay, something Dusk Till Dawn has been known to do pretty well on more than a few occasions. However, we also see the overlays as going directly back into our members’ pockets, and therefore the poker community. As we know, poker money has a habit of being recycled at the tables, so they are not totally bad news. I also really want us to continue pushing the boundaries in the poker industry going forward, so a few accidents along the way are inevitable!

 

£50 for a 1st prize of £13,000, the option of playing day 1 on either Friday or Saturday, plus a great structure…………… I really need your support on this one as the “reasonable buy-in with a large prize pool” is a concept that I would like to develop, as well as breaking the record of course!

 

Cheers,

 

Rob

Dusk Till Dawn

 

For full event details as well as how to register, please visit www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/grandprix

[TightEnd]

Rob’s £40K Grand Prix Update – 25 days to go!

 

Many club regulars will already know that we have done a deal to televise the Grand Prix and the November £300 Deepstack weekend on Virgin 1 (recently changed to Sky Channel 1) and Sky 860. The company that are filming the events, have done work for most of the major poker brands, and are talking to us about televising some of our bigger events coming up at Dusk Till Dawn, such as the £1k Grand Slam Events (starting December).

 

As it was the Grand Prix event which initially sparked an interest, this will be the first to be televised. It will be great to see some of our locals on T.V, and hopefully one of the ‘characters’ will make the final table!

 

Sigh… we now have a “massive” 81 runners bought in, so with 25 days left to enter, we need an average of 31 entries per day to break the 848 record set by Pokerstars at the EPT last week. I need your help! With the record attempt now being televised, I would like the minimum amount of egg on my face for trying this event!

 

Not surprisingly, a few of my savvy poker friends have seen this as an opportunity to make a few quid out of me by betting how many runners we will actually achieve at the Grand Prix. The general consensus is that we are going to struggle to get over 500, and I think my pride may have been getting the better of me as I have taken on some of these bets - including one quite sizable one that we will get under 600 runners!

 

This is a really fun tournament to put on. It’s not just a great structure and loads of value for £50, it’s more about having a go at something that seems unachievable. I think our largest ever field for a £50 comp is just over 300, and that was inflated because we had a Riley’s third part event the next day; quite a few players deciding to make a weekend of it.

 

Several players have questioned the 1pm start time on the Friday. To avoid an early start, we could have done a 30 minute clock or given fewer chips, but I wanted to give this event as good a structure as possible. If a player is a couple of levels late, he or she will still have plenty of chips to play. Actually, the person may have saved themselves chips by not playing the early levels and getting AA busted by J3 when the blinds are so low. As we know, some of our players such as ‘Chip Shop Frankie’ will call with any 2 cards just to Google a rock!

 

I have no shame in asking for your cooperation in getting me to a respectable number (500+ is ‘respectable’), so come on, help me out here.

 

 

Cheers Rob

[TightEnd]

Hello,

I read a lot of peoples the comments on here, especially the ones on Dusk Till Dawn, for what it’s worth here of my comments on some of the recent subjects;

Quality of our Dealers

I think the quality of our dealers in the up there with any card room, when we hold larger events, we bring in self employed dealers, on the whole, these dealers are good, many of them such as Harvey are almost permanent fixtures now, but there is the odd time when a self employed dealer doesn’t work out, and we don’t bring them in again. There are also times when some of our own dealers get a bit sloppy and need a nudge in the right direction, but for every complaint about one of our dealers, we do get a lot more compliments.

Changes to Weekend Tournaments

We do change our weekend schedules around, events such as Sky, Redtooth, Pokerstars, Rileys, APAT often mean we have to shuffle our events around. We also try different things such as Super 50’s, various Deepstacks, Grand Slams, Terminators, 6 max and Twenty Twentys, some work, some don’t, its trial and error. We recently tried a £300 Deepstack a couple of weeks  after the monthly one, and it went pear shaped, we had a £80k overlay in one of £1K comps last year when we could have selected a better date, proven when we got 313 at the next one. We definately make mistakes but I think we do get more stuff right than wrong.

Overlays

Overlays in the club and online average about £10k - £15k a month, some weeks we get hit by a big one, for example, £15k when we clashed our £300 event with the Irish Open, however, we do not spend much marketing money externally, some card rooms and sites pay thousands a month to be in magazines and third party web sites, we set big guarantees as part of our marketing, sometimes we even create tournaments when we know there will almost certainly be an overlay, sometimes we don’t change our guarantees when we know we are going to get less runners due to other events happening on the same weekend, we want to be known for big prize pools relative to the buy-in, and that of course, has its risks, but means we don’t have to spend advertising and marketing in other areas. At the end of the day, an overlay is just adding to the prize pool and therefore giving money back to your customers, which hopefully they will come back and try and spin up again at the next comp.


Our Next Big Tournament

“When is the next big one” is a common question I get asked at the club, last year we did £250K GTE and £1,000 buy-in for our annual December event, we have not released details for this year yet because Pokerstars have been asking us about the possibility of a December date for their UKIPT, but that’s definitely next February now, so there is no problem hosting our annual December event, details will be on the web site soon and it will be televised.

Grand Prix

I have read some comments on here about some people not wanting to buy in online because this is a hassle for them. Over 90% of club members that have played a £50 FO or a weekend Super 50 at the club already have an online account, it takes like 2 mins to register maximum, less time that waiting in the queue for cash desk. The tournament is really targeted at our £50 regular players, not bringing in new poker players, when we did Super 50’s and Twenty Twenty’s we got 200+ people buying online for each day, it was no problem at all. We have “in house” online support, based at my head office and at the club in the evenings, so any problems can be dealt with straight away for anyone that has the slightest issue buying into the Grand Prix. The time spent posting on the subject is probably more that it would take someone to buy-in, no one says you have to play online to get into the tournament, you just have to register online, SKY Poker did this at their grand final at our club, as do most of the companies that hold events at our club, so I really think this is no big deal, I actually prefer to buy-in to all comps online myself, so I know 100% I have got a seat and I can use my online funds to do it, its so simple. The Friday 1pm start has been mentioned, well, if that doesn’t suit someone, just buy-in on Saturday, there are 400 places left!   

Television

When we opened to club, we invested in a TV table with hole cameras, a TV lighting rig and various cabling to make the club TV friendly, but apart for third party events and a bit of web streaming on our site, we have never filmed any of our own tournaments as the cost is around £30K - £40K per event.  A couple of months ago a TV gaming production company called Casino tv approached us for some poker content to go on Virgin 1 and Sky 860, we have agreed a deal to televise 5 events at Dusk Till Dawn over the coming months, which will be broadcast on Virgin 1 and Sky 860, and probably  a third channel. To be honest, I think they had already planned to do this in a venue in London, which would make more sense as they are based in London, but when they saw how easy it was to film at our club, that may have swung it. I think the viewing figures average around 200,000 on Virgin 1 at the time when the show will be broadcast, which is pretty decent as far as poker shows go, so will be great to see some of our regulars on TV, especially if they make the final table. The events agreed so far to televise are:

29th – 31 October   £50 Grand Prix (GTE £40K)

6th – 7th November   £300 Deepstack (GTE £100K)

16th – 19th December   £1000 Event (details to be confirmed)

The TV company ideally wanted a £100K prize pool for the November £300 deepstack, we could have increased the buy-in to £500 rather than try and get more runners, but that would have been too easy, so we are sticking with £300 and keeping our fingers crossed, it would be amazing to get both these events rocking for our first every televised events at the club.

VIP Room

Most of our members have noticed the VIP room has been ripped to bits and is having a new fit out, can I confirm that we are definitely NOT putting Blackjack and Roulette tables in there, I must have had 100+ people ask me that! We are just putting 3 -4 cash tables in there for higher limits, our version of Bobbys Room at the Bellagio, and therefore giving it a makeover, plus we want to make it TV friendly. Over the last 6 months Simon Trumper has been arranging bigger and bigger games at the club, and we feel that the next step is to have a dedicated area for these games. I play in the NL games regularly, and the games are getting bigger and bigger, especially at Deepstack weekends, we do have some very good players who have worked there way up to these stakes from the 50p £1 in the club, I have been trying to bust them but they are too good!

I hope this update helps,

Cheers Rob

PS. Please buy into the Grand Prix early , Nick and Simon thought I was mad to do this for a £50 comp and we only have 91 people so far, so it’s not looking too rosy

[TightEnd]

Robs Grand Prix Update

 

Well, the numbers are looking a bit more respectable now at 254 with 15 days to go. We never actually anticipated we’d have this many signed up at this stage, and the registrations per day are getting higher each day. There are players entering from every part of the UK, even as far as Scotland, eyeing the £13,000 winner’s prize, for a modest investment of £50 + £8.

 

I have been asked why we are planning on running a 45 minute clock for a £50 tournament. This is not like a normal £50 tournament. People are playing for a £40,000 prize pool, equivalent to a £500 buy-in event with 80 runners, so I wanted to give as good a structure as possible. This is the first time we’ll be running an event like this, so I’m sure if we decide to repeat it, there will be certain tweaks and changes. Like everything we have done at Dusk Till Dawn, we constantly try and improve things, often by trial and error!

 

We have changed the start time on Friday’s day 1A to 4pm. Some of you wanted to play Friday, but didn’t want to take the whole day off from work. This is hopefully now possible with a slightly later start time. Saturday’s Day 1B, is still set to a 1pm start time, as is Day 2.

 

Usually, when online tournaments are set up this far in advance, they are done so with the chance of small fluctuations in the exchange rate. As the exchange rate has moved 5% since the tournament was set up, we have refunded €4 to all players that bought in at the initial price of €70. The entry fee is now set at €66, to ensure that players are still paying the right amount. We are working with our software providers to offer tournament buy-ins in GB Pounds in the near future, so hopefully any movements in exchange rates will not be a problem if we decide to repeat this type of event in the future.

 

On a final note, we will be announcing our annual £1000 event shortly. We’re aiming for another televised event, which will fall on Friday December 17th – Sunday December 19th. We have a few extra things to finalise beforehand, as this is almost certain to be televised on one of the main terrestrial TV channels, as part of a longer term project that we are working on.

 

Cheers Rob

 

[TightEnd]

Rob's weekly Update

The Grand Prix, the New Monte Carlo and £54K in Online Satellites

Well, against most people's predictions, including mine, the Grand Prix sold out at 900 players with 8 days to go.

Since then, we have been inundated with requests to increase the field by adding an extra Day 1 on Thursday. However, the 45 minute clock and 10,000 chip structure means that we wouldn't finish at a suitable time for the filming, or for our gaming licence.

Looking at the emails to our support team and in the club, this event was oversubscribed by as least 400 – 500 players. This obviously means a field of 1300 – 1500 people is possible for us in the future. For now, I want to see how we cope with the 900 guests over Friday - Sunday, before we look at doing this type of event again. The Norwegian Poker Championships, and the Pokerstars UKIPT were big events, but the Grand Prix will be the most demanding so far due the sheer amount of entries in the tournament. We estimate Saturday could see us having over 800 people in the building; it's a good job that we have been able to get the marquee at short notice!

Events such as the Grand Prix and Monte Carlo are important. We need to keep the interest levels up, especially after now being open for 3 years. When we hold a bigger buy-in event, we always try and give our regular day to day customers the chance to qualify. £1090 for the Monte Carlo Event is a lot of money in this current economic climate, so we are guaranteeing 50 Monte Carlo seats in online satellites, worth over £54,000. These will commence 5 weeks before the event itself, so people can plan to take time off work if they qualify. Day 1 is on a Friday.

There has been a big focus on our weekend events over the last few weeks, adopting the Grand Prix model, giving players big prize pools for lower buy-ins. We do know that the weekday evening tournaments also need to be freshened up, so from Wednesday 10th November, a new evening schedule will commence. Details will follow shortly.

Thanks again to everyone that has supported the Grand Prix. We are all very proud to be on course (provided everyone turns up) to break the UK record on our first attempt. We set the guarantee higher than the number of players we thought we would get, so it's been a great surprise to sell out at our 900 cap so quickly. It's given us all at Dusk Till Dawn a boost!

Cheers, Rob

[TightEnd]

Hi guys, a few people have asked me about my lack of blog updates etc, I have been waiting for our IT people to sort out a proper blog, they have now have written some blogging software on our web site, ill be posting my usual drivel on there. Here is the link

http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/blog.php?profile=4


Cheers Rob

[TightEnd]

http://www.dusktilldawnpoker.com/blog.php?profile=4&id=85