The story behind the blonde Live Updates.

[Colchester Kev]

Just in case there is any misunderstanding, I do not own any part of blonde, I have no shares in blonde.

I am paid a salary to run the cardroom and oversee all back office stuff such as reports,figures etc.

Believe it or not (and it has been said many many times before) the shareholders/owners of blonde dont take a penny piece from our revenue, everything that comes in goes back out on wages/updates etc.  The majority share holders dont even take a wage !

the aims of blonde are to bring in enough money to pay the bills without EVER having an overdraft or owing anyone money ... we are managing that at the moment, which means the shareholders do not have to keep digging into their own wallets to fund blonde.

Of course i get frustrated when cardroom figures are bad .. I get frustrated when we manage to negotiate added value for members through third party sites such as the recent freeroll, and all and sundry come out of the woodwork wanting the password... many of those have never participated in a blonde game, in fact many dont even have a blonde poker room account.

as said before, no one could seriously expect anyone to play 100% of their poker on blonde, unrealistic obviously.  But I dont think it would be seen as putting people under pressure to ask them to sign up, i think it would be more like good manners for them to do so.

We are lucky, we have a good community, with regular meet ups and events ... we strive to bring fun packed added value to our members, is it really too much or seem like putting too much pressure on people to ask them to do their bit and sign up to the card room and play a few comps a week or an hour of cash here and there ?

I really didnt think it was ... I still dont.

[jakally]

We are lucky, we have a good community, with regular meet ups and events ... we strive to bring fun packed added value to our members, is it really too much or seem like putting too much pressure on people to ask them to do their bit and sign up to the card room and play a few comps a week or an hour of cash here and there ?

I really didnt think it was ... I still dont.

Guilty as charged.

I play very infrequently on Blondepoker for the very simple reason that I can make more money elsewhere.
But you are right - an hour or two every week wouldn't be a big problem.

Meassage received and understood, Captain! (But you may need to give me a push every few weeks to stop me slacking off).

[jizzemm]

is it really too much or seem like putting too much pressure on people to ask them to do their bit and sign up to the card room and play a few comps a week or an hour of cash here and there ?

no its not, but IMO people should have blonde account and played on it within some specific period of time when these comps come along, im sure people who dont contribute to the blonde funds would not complain, how can they?

[Snatiramas]

We are lucky, we have a good community, with regular meet ups and events ... we strive to bring fun packed added value to our members, is it really too much or seem like putting too much pressure on people to ask them to do their bit and sign up to the card room and play a few comps a week or an hour of cash here and there ?

I really didnt think it was ... I still dont.

Guilty as charged.

I play very infrequently on Blondepoker for the very simple reason that I can make more money elsewhere.
But you are right - an hour or two every week wouldn't be a big problem.

Meassage received and understood, Captain! (But you may need to give me a push every few weeks to stop me slacking off).

Me too.......need to find a regular tourney that I fancy

[boldie]

is it really too much or seem like putting too much pressure on people to ask them to do their bit and sign up to the card room and play a few comps a week or an hour of cash here and there ?

no its not, but IMO people should have blonde account and played on it within some specific period of time when these comps come along, im sure people who dont contribute to the blonde funds would not complain, how can they?

good point...i might actually have half a chance of winning one of them things then as I'd only be up against 13 others

[taximan007]

I did play 2 tourneys I believe it was a while back, then if I remember rightly the software or something changed, and due to my location I am unable to deposit into a "real money" account. Otherwise I would willingly use the blonde poker room as my main place to play.

[AndrewT]

Never mind all the poker stuff - where's this free drink?

[Laxie]

The Duke arrived........................................................end of. 

[TightEnd]

I think we've said elsewhere, but I'll repeat it..

from now on when we put a password protected added value comp on, on a third party site, for our members only we are only going to gove the password out if the member supplies their blondepoker card-room username.

The background is pretty clear here. blonde is not a cash cow for anyone. The shareholders have never taken dividends and most not a penny from it. We pay, currently, 5 staff. We pay some of them way below market rates for the job they are doing..something I would like to change. Some individuals are owed four figure sums because, when times have been tight, they have personally paid that month's server bill or the latest freebie merchandise order or whatever.

We have our own card-room. Aside from that we are able to offer added value from elsewhere to our members

To date these partners have included

Mansion
Virgin, via the very successful team challenge
Gala
Stanleys
dtd

the upside? these companies, and other potential partners, see the benefit in being associated with blonde and its members and would like to have access to you. They can offer added value to you. This is added value we could not offer if we went alone, as we don't have the funds to do it.

the downside for blonde? well of course most of these partners want sign ups to their own rooms, and want promotion on blonde/advertising on blonde as part of the deal that sees them offer the prizes they offer. This of course conflicts with us having our own card-room, as it can be seen to take blondes onto other sites. It can drive Kev mad, understandably! In the bigger picture though I structure things so that the revenue we gain from promotion and percentages of sign ups balances any loss of our own card-room revenue in addition to doing leagues on two sites etc etc.

The business models of other forums/sites can be different. Some have very public affiiliate deals with every card-room, and promote sign ups wherever they can get them. Others are associated with one site, on a super-affiliate basis. All, to a greater or lesser extent, seek third party advertising. Not many try to balance up the conflicting demands of having your own card-room and promoting other people's! To my mind, having inherited something, its a "wouldn't necessarily start from here if I had a blank sheet of paper" situation.

Finally, no matter where you play, I think that whether its just by using the forum or by benefitting from any of the promotions we run, we offer a range of opportunities to benefit from being a member. Yes, blonde is undoubtedly more commerical than it was in the early days. Its bigger, its more professional we hope. However I personally ensure that any commercialism is with one eye on the community. If blonde wasn't more commercial, its no exaggeration to say it would not exist today. The shareholder funding that kept blonde functioning in 2005-2006 was not a bottomless pit.

This is the background to why we promote, whatever we promote. 

 

 

[LLevan]

Having recently converted to playing on Blonde Poker I can honestly say the range of different stake tournies is good as is the guarantees. Plenty of rebuys but still enough freezeouts for those who prefer them. I believe a lot of the smaller buyin tournies are exceptionally good value and the standard of play is not particulary good in these. For a bit of fun I like playing the $10 rebuy donkfest at 830pm - with a 35k guarantee it usually attracts anything from 1200 runners and pays from 150th place. It is actually easy enough to cash in this without playing anything other than premium hands. Haven't managed to final table in it yet but came close the other night in 19th place. I also like playing omaha and although the stakes are small for the tournies they are also good value since the standard is very poor imo. Obviously you still need the cards to fall right for you and need your hands to hold up but by playing ABC poker I believe its possible to play small value mtt on blonde and make it pay although not fortunes. Having said that a final table finish in one of the small buyin donkfests like the 830pm and you can show a tidy profit. Some of the higher value buyin tournies are good value as Red Dog attested to a week ago last Tuesday with the $100 rebuy. There appears to be a wide range of tournies to suit everyones pocket.
As for dislikes naturally there are a few:
1. Lobby is very slow to update - not good when nearing the bubble or an increment in prize money.
2. No hand for hand - coupled to the lobby being slow to update very frustrating and I dint know why Ipoker haven't introduced it.
3. Its nice to receive a loyalty bonus but it would be nice to have someway of checking how much is going to be paid - the $9 increments seem to appear for every 1000 poker points and personally I'd prefer them to appear as a lump sum at the end of the month.


Finally can I add that I decided to download Blonde Poker to try and help repay something back for the free updates. I didn't feel any pressure to do so and if the above 3 bugs could be fixed I think Blonde would become my favourite site to play poker on.

[stewart]

well i have been here since the start i dont post much but i remember the 1st update and i allways read them only reason i come to blonde and will allways come for them i prefer domstic ones where i know half the guys but my fav was the 2005 wsop udates

stu

[booder]

they have freerolls as well   

[Claw75]

As Llevan mentioned, the $35k guaranteed is a good tourney to play.  I cash in it more often than not, and have finalled a few times.  I'm going to take it down one of these days, I can feel it in my water.  Now, if I feel I can take it down, I'm sure it would be a breeze for some of you!

[AllInKev]

Thats a great read TK! Great to find out how it all started! I first read about BP thru the BadBeat website which i think i saw a link or THM forum. The Live Updates was what brought me to this site as i'd been an occassionally poster on the badbeat forum and they had plugged your live updates to follow the likes of strummer et all! To be totally honest, i dont post enough on here and i find myself reading alot of the threads during the day but dont really contribute much at all and i'd like that to change! I have made a couple of small deposits on BP but have never really ever got it going so far on the poker front. Im simply not a huge fan of the software and i find everything quite slow. I'd love for this site to be my number 1 place to play poker, but quite simply - as has been said elsewhere, there is more money to be made playing on other sites.

Kev

[kinboshi]

As Llevan mentioned, the $35k guaranteed is a good tourney to play.  I cash in it more often than not, and have finalled a few times.  I'm going to take it down one of these days, I can feel it in my water.  Now, if I feel I can take it down, I'm sure it would be a breeze for some of you!

Not the water that leaked from your bathroom down into the kitchen?