Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[Bad Beat]

 To answer on how it's communicated to us from the network it might be slightly different for us, as a white-label skin. We are effectively a sub-skin of Boylepoker and as well as running our cashiers cage and customer services they deal with iPoker on a day to day basis for us. It was one of the reasons we went down that road as we didn't want the extra headache of dealing with the network, meetings, paperwork etc when we started. What it does mean though is that we get a lot of things a bit second-hand. When I read on The Hendon Mob the guy from Genting answering questions about iPoker promotions, software, future plans etc, I'm often learning and thinking "how did we not know that". I think it can be the same for other small skins like One Way and Encore while big skins like Paddy Power are probably consulted a bit more.

 Every week I get the iPoker Newsletter which tells me every promotion currently running network-wide (things like iPops or WSOP Warrior, not things like Encores Vegas Dream Team). The newsletter also lists all live events iPoker are currently running satellites for and whet you get in the package plus when the sats are. It also has details of all online sats. Sometimes this is totally the first I've heard of it. A recent example was the Aussie Millions sats. I had no idea that the network was doing any until a few days before the first mega-satellite. Didn't give us any time to promote these.

Every quarter I get a list of four or five network-wide promotions. These are things like tournament leaderboard, the thing to promote limit games they did recently, the Vegas Warrior or the Champions League thing. The iPops would be another major example of the sort of thing you get in these. We have to now opt-in to all of these or none. If we opt out we cannot offer these things on our skin - in fact they will simply not appear in our lobby. This makes it hard for the network to do landmark hands type promos because if the guy who wins the 10m hand is playing on a skin who opted out he gets pissed off and the network get massive bad publicity.

 They would obviously prefer that we all do everything. The problem here is there is very little time for consultation. If I think: "that one is way too complicated, or people won't like that one or it's impossible towin that one or they'll do their brains on this one" I really don't have much time to tell them and to give them time to change it. I might also think I don't want to tell them as I want to really sell it to our customers and get lots of sign-ups or repeat visitors. I like to tell our players this one is great value you should play it and I don't neccesarily want to tell iPopker they've cocked it up. Sometimes the quarerly thing will come around two weeks before the start of the 1st promotion. By the time I do give any feedback to Boyles and them to iPoker it is often too late. They may also think "It's just Channing complaining, they're only a small skin, let's do it anyway".

 The only other communication I get from iPoker is when they have planned software upgrades (3 or 4 big ones in 4 years and one about to happen). They will send a massive document explaining what is happening. It may take a week to read it and they ask for feedback. I don't think I've ever had the time to give any. I probably should.

[Bad Beat]

 Cheers for the kind words Scotty. In answer to that and partly some of the other comments - what other choice you gonna make. iPoker is now bigger than Party in second and the software is improving. If I could be a skin of Stars that would be very nice. If I owned a lovely piece of software and had 50% the liquidity of Stars I'd be very happy.

 For now we are a small (growing) iPoker skin employing some people, just getting by and trying to grow in a very tough market where people are dying all around us. If you think it sounds hard just imagine how much harder being a skin on Cake or Entraction or Boss (The International Network) would be.

 On the subject of how iPops is funded and who pays for the overlays
 In past festivals it sort of went the way Tikay said. Ecoop used to be the festival on iPoker. I think the last one was 18 months ago and I believe they sacked the guy responsible - massive overlays and a disaster for iPoker.

 In the old days iPoker would say this festival could cost us $100,000 (say). They would put up $50,000 and the skins would have to put up the other $50,000. If they didn't want to do that their players couldn't play Ecoop, they couldn't offer it. The $50,000, (I think actually it was 60/40 split but I forget which way), would be proportioned to your skin's size in terms of total rake of your players. In those days we were less than 1% of the network so we'd pay around $500 (it was more actually cos I think $50,000 was actually higher). If there were a load of overlays then the numbers would all rise proportionally and we'd have to pay more (maybe $1200-$2,000).

 We were in for that number even if very few of our players played Ecoop. If we just had a few guys playing two or three events we'd done it in cold blood. We needed to get players in to get back costs. Luckily the overlays were a great way to attract new sign-ups and we lost small on the events but signed up a few players. We wouldn't make money from them unless they played though.   
 

[Bad Beat]

 Some of the skins didn't like that system, the smaller ones without many tournament players, (the ones full of rakeback grinders), felt they had to offer the events but they could never get enough players. The ones with lots of micro players (like Paddy Power), were paying a fortune because of the large share of the rake they have, but not getting enough $200 players in the events. William Hill, (who are owned by iPoker), talked of opting out of the monthly $500,000 guarantee (doesn't exist anymore).

 The system now changed and we were charged on the proportion of the "value" in the offers our players actually took. If you worked hard and got lots of players to play an event with overlay you got rewarded by having to pay more towards it. It now was really bad for you if your regs played the overlay events, you only wanted anyone to play them if you were signing-up new players as this was the only value to you in the events.

 iPoker now realised (by this time last year) that these "festivals" just brought migratory Stars and Tilt (remember them?) players temporarily. They stayed, got the benefit of the overlay and fucked off. They didn't enjoy giving these people money. Obviously some might get introduced to the network, but generally they came and saw the software wasn't what they were used to and the fields and prizes in the other things were smaller and they didn't stay.

 iPoker decided to run a festival of their normal events with reduced buy-ins but the smae guarantees. A neat trick that - The January Sales. The normal $200,000 guarantee wasn't $215 to enter just $110. In the end twice as many people enter and you beat the guarantee. There were a couple of overlays but not too many, the regs got to play their normal events for less, the schedule wasn't disrupted and the visiting players got to see hwat a normal week looks like.

 The summer sales in June wasn't half as popular and I guess they've given up on that idea. Funny that June not so popular with all the bigger players away and the sun shining.

 To answer the question of who pays for the overlay the charging us was different this time.

 Everyone paid a proportion of the $50,000 again (I think it may have been $100,000) and we were given "free" tokens to enter the events to the value of the amount we paid. We could run internal satellites (just for our players), add them to tournaments, (our league winners got one each week), give them to high-rakers, offer them as bounties, whatever we chose. We'd paid for them and we could use them how we wanted. I think they thought this would get enough names in the lobby to kick things off and avoid the overlays. I'm not quite sure who pays for the rest (I bet it's us).

[smashedagain]

One of the kids just woke me up, now Neil's kept me up most of the night. 

[vegaslover]

sats have been poorly done too imo.
They have little/none after midnight. wtf that about? put a couple of scheduled with a seat guarantee and would get a lot more interest.

[mulhuzz]

sats have been poorly done too imo.
They have little/none after midnight. wtf that about? put a couple of scheduled with a seat guarantee and would get a lot more interest.

would still mean overlay though. poorly thought out from the start, as Mr Channing stated very well (somewhere..can't find it..)

[vegaslover]

Of course there would have been, redic to expect to find 4k players.
Just adding another point to mr Channing's piece.

[scotty77]

thanks to Neil for explaining so candidly on how iPoker works.  very interesting read, and as I said before, I think that the brand that blackbelt have built up is a very strong one and you def have the perfect idea with the pricing or your live events.

[smashedagain]

I am gonna give the main event a spin on blackbelt with my min cash from the live event.  That's if I can borrow another laptop. 2 screens in 1 week Ffs

[tikay]

Thanks, Mr Channing, for that detailed reply, with a shade less spam in it than I expected, too, you kept it below the expected 90% level.

Pretty much (i-Poker) as it used to be then.

It's so easy to sound off when things are not to our personal satisfaction, but we don't know i-Pokers business plan, so caution is necessary, but from where many of us sit, it's hard to make sense of this latest Fessie, not just the seemingly absurd Guarantees, but the decision to hold the Final "Live" somewhere. A bizarre message from an Online room if ever I saw one! However, it is easy for i-Poker to offer unsustainable Guarantees if their skins are footing the bill, or even part of it.

Cutting to the chase with Skins, the financial logic is this - whereas an independent, standalone room keeps ALL of the profit, when you add skins, & sub-skins, you are dividing that profit 2 or 3 ways. So it needs enough upside to compensate for that downside.

Great Posts Neil, thanks, & I wish you & all who sail in i-Poker the very best of success. What you in BBP have also proven is that you do not HAVE to get into a rakeback auction to be successful. For that, you deserve all the success you get.

[tikay]

Saw a cracking piece in my favourite Trade mag yesterday, "Inside Poker Business", though the title was a bit morbid - "The Death of Poker".....! But much of the article was beautifully tongue in cheek, like, to a degree, the article. Poker will not die, but it is in steep decline, with only the more innovative rooms showing improved figures y-o-y.

A few gems from the article included......

To be more specific, traffic data shows that the seasonal uptick expected at this time of year, which has happened with regularity for years, is not happening this year. In the last few years, the seasonal increase has ranged from 3% to 10%. This year has seen a 7% drop instead.’

For those not aware, the months from November to March are all "Christmas" to Online Poker Rooms, so if numbers are not at record levels right now, they never will be.

Ladbrokes continued their dismal performance in poker in 2011 with net revenue down 12.5% and active players down 14.0% the previous year. Amazingly the firm drew some positives from this saying the results represented ‘an improvement in the trend seen in H1’ where Ladbrokes was down 30%. The firm’s CEO had previously stated poker was not a priority for the one time European market leader,

I loved this masterpiece of irony, too.....

What has been perhaps most surprising is the collapse of Full Tilt has seen so little growth from the chasing pack. This was a huge opportunity to capitalise, but firms stuck in their groove with little marketing money to spend simply let it pass them by. In the latest bwin.party results the firm noted that since the suspension of Full Tilt’s licence at the end of June it had seen a rise in poker revenues, which were up 4% on Q2 in August. A 4% rise following the removal of the second largest site that was more than double its size? Amazing.

And for balance, they reported positively on 888.com, who have surged ahead 22% I gather.

For poker industry geeks only, the whole (quite long) piece is here......

http://www.insidepokerbusiness.co.uk/poker/analysis/1027/the-death-of-poker.html?utm_campaign=insidepokerbusiness_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter

[DaveShoelace]

Did you catch my article a few issues back in ISB? Its also my fave poker magazine so I was well chuffed to get something published in it (Didn't make it to the website unfortunately).

[tikay]

Witnessed an awesome hand at Luton on Friday, in the £100. Allow me a little artistic licence, but it went down something like this.

Hand involves Advent Calender star nirvana, & a man whose fingers, thicker than most people's thighs, he was clearly not a watchmaker. Nirvana was in seat 4, with the the Villain in Seat 5.

Our hero pops it up, at which stage the villain picks his cards up - with some difficulty, it must be said, to view them in front of his failing eyes.

Nirvana, perhaps the only troll I have ever met with good manners & morals, now says, "steady on mate, I think I just saw one of your cards, it was a red queen, or very similar".

Villain says "oh really?".

Anyway, safe in the knowledge that Nirvana has seen his red queen, makes the call.

Flop, 5-4-8.

Nirvana bets, & gets called by villain.

Now it's Nirvana's turn to say "oh really, you still want to call me?".

MBN to be betting into someone who is calling when you know you are ahead.

Turn 2, rinse repeat, Nirvana bets, & gets called again by the Villain with his red queen.

By now, the Table is agog, & railers are gathering from other tables to watch this masterpiece of thievery by Nirvana.

Ever the gentleman, Nirvana repeats "Sir, you DO know I have seen one of your cards, yes?"

Villain says "you play your hand, & I'll play mine, OK?"

Whoops, oh dear, but seems furry muff.

River is the gin card for Nirvana, an A. Because Nirvana has A-8, for 2 pairs.

He bets again, nice & teasy, it screams "call me".

At this stage, it all gets rather surreal. Fat-fingered short-sighted villain needs another look at his cards, & this time, proceeds to drop them BOTH on the floor. Face up.

Nirvana theatrically runs away, eyes covered, "I don't want to see those cards, I know one already, & I don't need to see the other one".

But Steve Spring, I think it was, in Seat 3, lets it be known that HE saw the card, so everyone is entitled to know what it was. (Save us the correct rulings here, it's not important). It was a red Jack. So now nirvana knows he is up against a red queen & a red jack, for Q high, v his 2 pairs. Nice.

Then a strange thing happens. Villain shoves all-in!

Nirvana can't believe his luck, & truly snaps.

On their backs, & nirvana flips his 2 pair, & Villain, not quite soo predictably, flips........ , for the flopped straight.

Some things you just can't explain, & we all enjoyed some pleasant mocking of Nirvana, for a good few hours. I mean, that's a quality misread by any standards, none of us could be so stupid, could we? Deffo not me.

[tikay]

Hours later - well 12 hours later in fact, after one of the longest sessions of Live Cash I've played in many a year, & in which nobody could have played QUITE as badly as I did, I flopped a set & turned a house in a big pot, & done just shy of £400 in the hand.

There were some quizzical looks when I tabled my house, as I tried to justify it by saying "yeah, guess in 6 card I should never call with the under house".

To which it was pointed out that on an unpaired board, I cannot possibly have a house......

I look again, & they were right. The board had not paired.

I was busto now, & "x" had already kindly loaned me £500, & he offered another £500, unsurprisingly perhaps, given the quality of my play.

I politely declined, & exited the cardroom (10am Saturday!) with a chompy-esque flounce.

[tikay]

Did you catch my article a few issues back in ISB? Its also my fave poker magazine so I was well chuffed to get something published in it (Didn't make it to the website unfortunately).

I read ALL your missives, Mr C.

Agreed, too - IPB is the absolute nuts trade read.