Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[Tonji]

Photographs of Tower Bridge being constructed.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertypicturegalleries/8923147/Photographs-of-Tower-Bridge-being-constructed-are-found-in-a-skip.html

Click to see full-size image.

[tikay]

Tremendous photos, Tonji, thank you.

I never realised it was a steel construction - I always assumed it was stone.

Dread to think how many accidents to the workforce happened, but judging by the photos - no hard hats, no guard rails, unsafe working areas & platforms, da de da, there must have been plenty.

The miracle of these Victorian (?) constructions to me is their longevity - in this case, over 115 years, & still as solid as the day it was built, despite vehicle traffic across the brige having multiplied x times.

Incidentally, the Clifton Suspension Bridge is an astonishing 146 years old, &, like Tower Bridge, wholly retains it's structural integrity.

[gatso]

I never realised it was a steel construction - I always assumed it was stone.

I was reading about this a couple of days ago though I can't remember where. the original architect planned it with a red brick finish but he died during construction; his assistant took over and decided to switch to a stone facade

[tikay]

Wow have you seen these?

Quite complicated...

http://www.gillesvidal.com/blogpano/cockpit1.htm

Make the next one full screen (the last button) for the full effect.

WTF complicated!

http://www.museeairespace.fr/votre-visite/collections/aviation-civile/aerospatiale-bae-concorde-sierra-delta-213-f-btsd-air-france/cockpit-360.html

Ooh, thanks Aaron.

Aesthetically, the Concorde cockpit seems much more interesting, all those analogue instrument clusters etc.

In the A380, was surprised to see a real - albeit somewhat sturdy - lappie! The height of the cockpit is quite something, too, I believe it is about as high as a 5 storey building.

British Airways have just completed some major work at their biggest Heathrow hanger. It was high enough to accept a Boeing 747, but they had to create a little upturned "V" in the roof to accept the tailplane of the A380. BA have 12 A380's on order, with options for more, & they receive the first of them in 2013. They'll replace the older 747's I guess. Be quite something to see BA A380's coming in & out of Heathrow daily.

[tikay]

I never realised it was a steel construction - I always assumed it was stone.

I was reading about this a couple of days ago though I can't remember where. the original architect planned it with a red brick finish but he died during construction; his assistant took over and decided to switch to a stone facade

Yes, the footnote to one of the photos said......

the bridge's original architect, Horace Jones, wanted to clad the bridge in brick; however, following his death he was succeeded as architect by John Wolfe-Barry who decreed the bridge should be clad in stone.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Jones_(architect)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wolfe-Barry

When peeps Post these things, I spend hours afterwards drilling down on google, it's amazing what can be learned.

[tikay]

Ugly but unsurprising news from Paradise Poker today, that was the first Online Poker Site I ever played, late 90's I signed up, I seem to recall, & I have very fond memories of that, & my later asociation with Sporting Bet, more of which later.

Sporting Bet purchased them a few years back, & integrated the player base into the Sporting Bet Client, but retained the Paradise Poker name. Sadly, that laboured them with the IPN (Boss) poker software, & it must be as hard as hell to grow the player base on that network, with due respect.

Anyway, the numbers reported today suggest an 18% y-o-y decline in their poker revenues, but more strikingly, a 30% decline in the latest quarter, the first of their 11/12 financial year. The year end numbers will be an absolute bloodbath. The parent company, Sporting Bet, that apart, had a great year, as the Online gaming boom, poker excepted, continues apace, with revenues nicely up.

There had been talks with Laddies, who investigated a takeover of the Poker room, but they came to nothing. The numbers must have been super-bad for Laddies to walk away, becaue both rooms are in dire trouble, & damaging to the otherwise successful parent brand.

Thing is, what few can have anticipated, is that a failing Online Poker Room has just about nil value, even as a strategic purchase. I mean, why would you pay to pretty much just buy the Clients you already have, or have access to?

And so the downward spiral continues, with the Networks being the ones feeling all the pain. It's so damn hard to "work" a Network skin, because a) You only have VERY limited control over Network policies & Promotions, & b), the Network is gonna skim 20% to 30% off the top, "network charges", & this & that. The maths are easy - 25% (say) in network charges, 30% in Rakeback, then add (say) 20% for promotion costs, Network Subsidies, chargebacks, staff, cage costs, & you are left with about 20% of the gross margin. Hardly worth getting out of bed for, given the associated risks to the parent Brand's image. Eventually, the Board has to say "enough, we can make better use of the working capital elsewhere".

[tikay]

Talking of "Network Subsidies", after the first 2 Events, IPOPS had overlay of some $28,000, though I don't know how the numbers stacked up for the third Event & subsequently. Either way, the $28,000 has gone from the Network to the players, never to come back. And players will say "happy days", but eventually, the end user always pays the bill.

I don't know of it's still the same, but when blondepoker had the i-Poker skin, (& I wince at that bloody memory, it cost me more than you will ever know, & a big liability still exists to this very day), we, & all the other skins, had NO input to Fessies like IPOPS (or the then equivelant), & indeed ANY of the Guarantees on the Tournament Schedule. Which is fine - except that when there was overlay, guess who paid it? The Skins! That's the Skins who had no input to the decisions. So blondepoker might have a tidy week on Casino, & Poker, but when we got the figures, they had deducted "Network Subsidies" from the gross. Marvellous - how can you run a buisiness when you get no input to the decisions, but pay the bill when they go wrong?

So, unless it's changed, (and I hope it has) "Marvellous" himself, Lord Channing, & all the other Skins, will have to dip in their pockets this week to cough up for the IPOPS overlays. So the Networks lose nothing, but the Skins foot the bill.

I really don't see how the Networks will survive much longer, but I get no satisfaction from that, & hope they eventually find an angle, or niche. And that's exactly what BlackBelt has done - find an angle. No Rakeback, or "Loyalty Schene", C4P, call it what you will, but they work hard at the mentoring & social side. Good luck to them, but swap places with them? You'll be all right, as the great man might say.

[mulhuzz]

pretty sure skins pay for it directly.

they certainly will indirectly!

[DaveShoelace]

iPoker are rumoured to be going towards an adjusted rake model, like the OnGame Essence model, which might at least curb some of the more cannibalistic elements of their ecosystem.

But yeah, christ knows how the skins make any money

[mulhuzz]

iPoker are rumoured to be going towards an adjusted rake model, like the OnGame Essence model, which might at least curb some of the more cannibalistic elements of their ecosystem.

But yeah, christ knows how the skins make any money

well, it kinda helps a little bit, but I've yet to see evidence from ipoker that they are taking the problem seriously.

[mulhuzz]

and their main problem is their disregard for how lack of regulation and enforcement is killing them slowly. a new rake model doesn't fix that if people are still allowed to break the rules

[rex008]

Wow have you seen these?

Quite complicated...

http://www.gillesvidal.com/blogpano/cockpit1.htm

Make the next one full screen (the last button) for the full effect.

WTF complicated!

http://www.museeairespace.fr/votre-visite/collections/aviation-civile/aerospatiale-bae-concorde-sierra-delta-213-f-btsd-air-france/cockpit-360.html

Call your Concorde and raise you a Shuttle:

http://360vr.com/2011/06/22-discovery-flight-deck-opf_6236/index.html

Make sure you do the full 360 - all the robot arm and cargo bay controls are at the back. Oh, and all the minor controls on the ceiling as well. The Dell lappie is a little out of place tho!

[GreekStein]

not heard anythingg about Karl/Paul ever having to foot any such bills with ipoker as yet. Maybe I'm wrong and they've kept it quiet but I very much doubt it.

As for Boss media, it's really horrible horrible software. I always knew that the DTD/Blonde deal would be difficult because of that. It's just horrid to play on. Sky/Encore/Party etc aren't perfect for sure - each have a way to go until their softwares are as smooth as FTP's was (feels funny saying that!) but they are all usable and functionable, unlike the horrid Boss.

[Bad Beat]

 Just to give you guys the heads-up. The iPops is alternate days so Event #3 is happening right now. It's a $100 6-Max PLO where 1 rebuy in the first hour but no add on is allowed. This had a guarantee of $150,000. It was obvious to me from the second I heard about it that there was going to be an overlay on this one, it was just a matter of how much. With many players in the iPops qualifying via satellites, (many of which also offered overlays), most of the players would not be able to afford a rebuy. If we assume that 20% of people do then the event needs 1200+ runners to beat the guarantee. To put that bin perspective iPoker is 16% the size of Stars in terms of real-money cash players and it gets 1000 players every week for it's biggest weekly event the $215 buy-in $200k guarantee NLH. To get 1200+ for an expensive PLO tournament was either overly optimistic or moronic, depending on how you view it.

  651 played in the end and 231 (a much bigger percentage than I guessed) took the rebuy. iPoker gave away $61,800 (are giving away with 47 players left).

 It makes for a good way to sign up players, many of you will have received spam from me this week. I hope you don't see it as spam as I believe I'm doing you a favour telling you to play these. If you do...bad luck.

 The main event on Sunday has a $500,000 guarantee, the buy-in is $125 (+10) for NLH. If somebody can explain to me how iPoker are planning to get 4,000 runners when their normal Sunday event is 1000 I'd be interested. Would anybody out there given the job of organising iPops for the day picked $125 as the main event buy-in? Wouldn't $320 or $540 seem a better choice? Wanting a $1m guarantee festival would you have had just four events or would you have made the guarantees smaller on each and have five? Would you have made one of them PLO with a rebuy? Would you have made one turbo $50 NLH rebuys?

 I'm not saying these things are ctotally easy to organise but I think it was easy to spot mistakes a long way out here.

[scotty77]

I rarely play on network rooms, and iPoker, but have done recently for GUKPT sats and for iPops.  The weirdest thing about the whole series for me is how all the 'side' events are 100 and the main is 125.  Makes no sense at all, and as most will sat in, it wouldn't have had any real impact on the numbers of the main. I hope that Genting, with their massive launch into the live poker circuit, do something bold in their online arena and dump iPoker....

FWIW been having major issues on DTD tonight which probably cost me a seat into tomorrows 300.  Got the 'have you turned it off and on again' treatment from support.  I find it so weird how they can run such an amazing live venue and let their brand be tarnished with that awful awful software.

Sky gets so much abuse from 'poker' players but it really has done things the right way.  Every time I go onto a skin of a network they are just awful and terrible and the whole experience is tilting and annoying.

Stars/Sky are where I play 99pc of poker and very much doubt that will change.

Also to Neil....I really enjoy all the blackbelt content/blogs but have never opened account on their because it being on iPoker. Will probably play the next blackbelt live as heard some great things about the one at DTD.  I do realise that there aren't many choices out there tho...