Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Spent most of last night in the studio with a lad named Chris Kirkland, who was at one time the hot tip to be England's future goalkeeper, before suffering a string of injuries at exactly the wrong moments in his career. 

A really likeable guy, his default setting was not to think ill of others, which I always like to see, & he spoke well, no umms, arrs or y'knows, & was very personable in every way. Proud family man, too.

He is currently doing a bit of work for Sky Sports News, & I hope it works out for him, he's a smashing sort.

His only bad words were for Neil Warnock, & most of the story was "Green Room" material & not for the Show itself. It followed the famous incident when he was attacked by a drunken fan during a game with Leeds United - no surprise there, the place is rotten through & through of course - & when the game finished, Warnock had made light of the incident. Chris was a bit het up & stormed into Warnock's dressing room to confront him, & a bit of a scuffle ensued which resulted in the police being called.

The key point of the tale was that Warnock was halfway through changing his clothes at the moment Chris burst in, & was dressed only in Y fronts. Would have been quite the sight, one supposes, to see 6'-6" Chris grappling with the Y-fronted Warnock.

[TightEnd]

good player Chris. from Leicester


do you happen to know when the recent Tuesday show with Mike Carlson will be on the sky poker you tube? a) I like Mike and b) I provided some questions. interested to know his answers

thanks

[tikay]

On the subject of the TV Show, Richard Orford was last night's Presenter, & he was celebrating 10 years with Sky Poker TV.

That's quite the achievement, especially as he floats a little close to the wind on Sky Sports who are notoriously conservative in such matters.

Richard is one of those guys who under achieves - immensely talented, likeable, quick witted, & very sharp mentally. God knows how many hours he & I have spent together in TV Studios, (well over 1,000), & with him sat next to you, it's always a bit uncomfortable in some ways, as he drifts off-message easily. He's the consummate pro though, & an absolute pleasure to work with.

We have this routine where we diss each other, (last night he referred to me as a legendary coffin-dodger) but I think everyone knows I respect him & love him to bits.   

Congrats Rich, now get your arse in gear & get yourself a Breakfast TV Show, or a job on Top Gear or somesuch. You can do it mate.

No idea where or when this photo was taken, fair to say he's aged very much better than me.

[tikay]

good player Chris. from Leicester


do you happen to know when the recent Tuesday show with Mike Carlson will be on the sky poker you tube? a) I like Mike and b) I provided some questions. interested to know his answers

thanks

Yes, a Barwell lad, seemed to frequent such exciting places as Hinckley a lot.

The latest Mike Carlson Show will be released to You Tube later today, all being well, it's normally 8 days after the Live TX, as Sky Sports don't allow it's release earlier.

I'll post a link for you as soon as it goes up.

Did you enjoy the game at Filbert St last night, or whatever it is called on CL nights?

[TightEnd]

Did you enjoy the game at Filbert St last night, or whatever it is called on CL nights?

yes thanks

in another black mark against UEFA, the groundsman is only allowed to mow the pitch in straight lines, no patterns such as
not allowed



allowed



patterns are a clear risk to the game of football, clearly

 

[tikay]

Whilst on the subject of 10 year milestones......

On 6th October 2006 (2006, not a typo), I received an e-Mail right out of the blue from a chap at Sky Poker by the name of Mark Robson, inviting me to come along & see him with a view to doing some work, he wanted someone to recruit the Presenters & Analysts for the soon to air Sky Poker TV Show. I toddled along a few days later, got the job, one thing led to another & I've now been there 10 years & one month.  There was no gold watch, no "well done", nobody even knew as far as I am aware, but that does not matter, this was my milestone & I was not too bothered if they never knew. 

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that coming from a Railway family, where longevity of service is a trade mark, I was really keen to get over the 10 year mark, & when the day came I gave a little mental fistpump. God knows why it mattered so much to me, but it did.

I was a tad jealous that last night Sky Poker tweeted "congrats to Richard Orford on 10 years with Sky Poker", (ego is such a horrible thing), but no matter, I am still chuffed to bits I got over the line.

Not sure how much longer I'll hang on, & my Contract is up for renewal in January, so we shall have to see. Whatever happens, I gave of my best, & that's what matters most to me.

So you'll have to bear with me as I ramble on a bit about the last 10 years there, which has varied from exasperating to exciting, wearisome to wonderful, frustrating to fruitful.

Earlier this year was as close as I have ever come to quitting, what with one thing & another, & the lure to accept a really exciting job that was offered to me elsewhere. But I wanted 10 years so badly - daft I know - so I hung on in. And, as is so often the case, after the dark came the light, & the last 6 months or so have been as enjoyable as any of my time there, as my current immediate line manager, despite being a rough-arse Leeds lad, treats me like a grown up, replies to my e-Mails, keeps me in the loop, & most of all is huge fun to work with.

It's a chuffing big Business now though (SB&G), & a very fine one as it happens, but you just never know what tomorrow - or January - might bring. And if the powers that be decide my time is up, all the sweet talking & schmooze in the world won't change their mind.  

[tikay]

I have 2 separate jobs, one with the TV side, one with the poker side, & both are totally separate.

For the TV side only Richard Orford & the Director, Chan, have managed the full 10 years. Scores of Presenters, Analysts, cameramen, producers & so on have come & gone. The current Producer, Dan, & his #2, Louis, are amazingly good lads, work very hard & always give of their best.

I sort of have 2 roles there, one as a sort of poker advisor, & the other as an Analyst.

No idea how many Shows I have done, but it must be well north of 1,000. Each show was either 1, 2, 4 or 5 hours in duration, so that's a lot of hours. And if at any time in those thousands of hours you stray off message, utter a profanity, or say something politically incorrect, abuse a customer, that's it, you are gone the next day.

Must have dodged a few bullets there.

It's been huge fun, & I've loved most of it. The current format is 2 hours, but a 6 hour shift, so it involves a lot of hanging around, which I don't much like, as I like to be active every minute of every day, but there are worse ways of spending a evening.

I don't get so hyped up before a Show these days, no nerves or anything, but my current on-screen stuff is very minor, almost just a stooge, so not surprising really.

It's been fun.   

[horseplayer]

Have not played poker for probably a decade now Tony

However one thing I really miss is your shows with Richard with not having sky anymore

very qwell done

[DaveShoelace]

Which reminds me, why does this video only have 328 views? I probably did about 200 of those myself

[tikay]

The other side of my work - far & away the biggest part - is the stuff I do for the Office & cardroom.

Boy oh boy, some stories there, some ups & downs, some of which have to stay under the radar for now.

Think I have worked under 4 different "Heads of Poker". Got on with them all, but we don't have a Head of Poker as such now, Management lines have changed & become more central. Poker is part of "Gaming" in SB&G (Vegas, Casino, Bingo, Poker etc) whereas "Bet" is run as a completely separate profit centre. So my ultimate Line Manager is a Big Suit in Gaming. In fact I'm not even 100% sure who it is, but I seem to get along OK with most of them up there.

The Heads of Poker included, in a sort of bizarre twist, Des Duffy at one stage, & he looked after me a treat. Later, a chap named Richard Milner got the gig, & we got along great, too. 

Apart from a lad named Adam, who is a Serious Suit these days, I'm not sure anyone else has survived 10 years with the Sky Poker cardroom.

Due to the relative size of Sky Poker compared to Gaming/Bet/SB&G as a whole, staff tend to "move through" Sky Poker, & very often end up elsewhere in SB&G, so there has not been much continuity in who I report to. 

It's an amazingly exciting Business to work for. They keep us all in the loop on almost everything. Bet, for example, send out a Liability Report every evening at 7.30pm, so we get to see what the evenings liabilities are, then at around 11pm, we get to see how they did, what they won or lost. Every liability on every sport is included, but the two headliners are always Football & Horse Racing.

Financially, it makes not a dot of difference to me how much they win or lose, but it does not matter, it's just exciting to see the swings & swongs, & admire the way they monetise the Business with such efficiency. You cannot begin to imagine how clever some of the strategy is. 

They do these football "Specials", where they offer a Price Boost on 3 of the biggest matches. The liability on these, which run 3 or 4 times per week, is usually "many millions" so I get to sweat the results. It's almost the same as having a bet, as we often get a real sweat. When they dodge a multi million payout after a 93rd minute equaliser, it feels the same as having a winning bet.

Then there is the Daily Report, every morning at 10am, where we all get to see how each profit centre did yesterday. That's another sweat, looking to see how many Uniques Sky Poker got yesterday, what the SPU was, gross Margin, Freebet spend etc.

Then, once a week, the two V V V Serious Suits, Ted Moss (Bet) & Conor Grant (Gaming) send a report company wide, all of us, explaining how we did in the last 7 days, what missed target & why, what the plans are to address it, what new stuff is in the pipeline. It's quite a hard hitting report, full of immense detail. I set aside half an hour to properly read through both of them. The feeling of being involved in their successes & failures really contributes to job satisfaction. 

We see a good deal of dissing of Sky Bet & Sky Poker etc, well all Gaming Sites I suppose, but it's mostly really ill-informed piffle.

SB&G has grown at a rate of at least a 40% increase in revenues every year for as long as I can remember. In a mature business, that's quite something.  Last year, they topped that with a 51% increase. and a 31% increase in Uniques. ("Uniques" are different people). They now have an amazing 1.95 million active uniques.  To support that, you need a serious piece of software & really robust servers, especially as loads tend to have very very high peaks at certain times. Highest loads on Bet are just before the 3pm kick offs on a Saturday, then again 5 minutes BEFORE the end of the game, as punters love to cash out early. oioi.

To give a flavour of how many bets Bet take, it's measured in hundreds of bets per second (or thousands per minute) at peak times. If we assumed for a moment it was exactly 100 per second, that's an awful lot of bets per hour. The notion that a Business of such size "spies" on Fred (when it was busy, not now of course) to be forewarned of ool prices is, not to be too rude to those who believe it to be true, fanciful at the very least.

The loads on Bingo, Poker, Vegas & Casino are of course much flatter & less inclined to gave these 5 minute burst of hyper activity. We know, for example, that on a poker site, loads will increase steadily from early evening, peak around 9 or 10pm, then gradually tail off.   

Won't go too much into numbers, but here's a recent piece which gives a flavour....

https://bdaily.co.uk/industrials/10-10-2016/sky-betting-gaming-gambles-on-international-expansion-as-revenues-hit-373m/


As you can probably see, I love being part of it, albeit the tiniest cog in a very big machine.

More of all this to follow, I must warn you, with some of the ups & downs I encounter in the little jobs I do for them from day to day. It won't be much fun to read, but it's my Diary & my celebration, so too bad.   

[tikay]

Have not played poker for probably a decade now Tony

However one thing I really miss is your shows with Richard with not having sky anymore

very qwell done

Ha, thanks John, very kind of you.

And there you see the paradox of "Televised poker", the same as "Live Updates" in some ways, people like to watch (some) of it, but it does not necessarily translate into increased Business. Quite hard to measure the (perceived) value actually, it's mostly intangible. And Accountants don't like intangibles, they like to put a value to everything. 

[tikay]

Which reminds me, why does this video only have 328 views? I probably did about 200 of those myself

Marv.

And I just described him as "the consummate Pro".

Consummate arse, more like.

[tikay]

Think that's enough waffle on that subject for today, but be warned, more follows when time permits.

[DaveShoelace]

More of all this to follow, I must warn you, with some of the ups & downs I encounter in the little jobs I do for them from day to day. It won't be much fun to read, but it's my Diary & my celebration, so too bad.   

I nerd out on this shit too keep it coming.

[RED-DOG]

Think that's enough waffle on that subject for today, but be warned, more follows when time permits.