Rob Yong's Blog V3 "WSOP 2010 & Life After DTD Opened"

[Rotty]

I think it is also very gracious of you to extend a public olive branch to mick, especially under the circumstances.

certainly more gracious than I would be to someone who had posted that sort of vitreol

[action man]

you have to take mick with a pinch of salt, hes a good mate of mine and if people arent too highly strung you will have fun with him.

[MC]

you have to take mick with a pinch of salt, hes a good mate of mine and if people arent too highly strung you will have fun with him.

Yeah, exactly this...

Nice of you to offer an olive branch, it will be interesting to see how Mick responds...

[outragous76]

you have to take mick with a pinch of salt, hes a good mate of mine and if people arent too highly strung you will have fun with him.

Trigg - like you and many others i get on well with mick and he has always been good with me (infact my first interaction with him was giving both him and Paul Jackson a rub down on a final table at DTD, he certainly takes it as good as he gives).

I would even consider myslef like Mick in someways, I know i can rub people up the wrong way when at the table, but Im sure that most people who know me away from the poker table think I am a good bloke. Its just the way I am when I play, its the fire I need to beat people, and niggling people is certainly something I use to good effect at the table.

However, I think if you put yourself as owner of DTD, you might take a different view given the circumstances.

Lets hope that this is the start of probably a very slow reconciliation.

[jakally]

you have to take mick with a pinch of salt, hes a good mate of mine and if people arent too highly strung you will have fun with him.

A table with Mick Mccool on it is >>>> than one without IMO.
But the comment above implies that if someone doesn't get on with him, there is something wrong with them, and not him. Hmmm.....

[typhoon13]

Hi Rob

There is one thing above all others that DTD can teach every other poker venue in the UK

"Professional Discipline"

I play quite a few different venues and none of them come anywhere near it

At DTD if they say a tournie will start at a certain time, well it starts on the dot, no later, unlike most other places

If they say 10 minute break, well its 10 minutes, no later

If they guarantee a tournie and they are way short, it still starts on time with no bickering about overlay

If you need the floor they are there straight away with the correct decision from someone who knows what they are talking about.

I can go on and on, but at the end of the day THERES NO PLACE BETTER

You run an excellent ship Rob

[Royal Flush]

Hi Rob

There is one thing above all others that DTD can teach every other poker venue in the UK

"Professional Discipline"

I play quite a few different venues and none of them come anywhere near it

At DTD if they say a tournie will start at a certain time, well it starts on the dot, no later, unlike most other places

If they say 10 minute break, well its 10 minutes, no later

If they guarantee a tournie and they are way short, it still starts on time with no bickering about overlay

If you need the floor they are there straight away with the correct decision from someone who knows what they are talking about.

I can go on and on, but at the end of the day THERES NO PLACE BETTER

You run an excellent ship Rob

Yeah its pretty incred i love the no extended breaks, nothing more tilting than breaks that are too long, some comps waste a whole extra level in a day that you could just bust out of and save the early wakeup.

[typhoon13]

Problem with casinos an

Hi Rob

There is one thing above all others that DTD can teach every other poker venue in the UK

"Professional Discipline"

I play quite a few different venues and none of them come anywhere near it

At DTD if they say a tournie will start at a certain time, well it starts on the dot, no later, unlike most other places

If they say 10 minute break, well its 10 minutes, no later

If they guarantee a tournie and they are way short, it still starts on time with no bickering about overlay

If you need the floor they are there straight away with the correct decision from someone who knows what they are talking about.

I can go on and on, but at the end of the day THERES NO PLACE BETTER

You run an excellent ship Rob

Yeah its pretty incred i love the no extended breaks, nothing more tilting than breaks that are too long, some comps waste a whole extra level in a day that you could just bust out of and save the early wakeup.

Problem with casinos and breaks, is that they dont want to drag you off the roulette wheel

[Acidmouse]

Not talking about people who slag off DtD but in general and in life you often have to pay for what you get. If its a top quality product you have been craving for for years then I would be more than happy to pay that little extra. It seems a little bizarre that once people have exactly what they want they critique it on the fundamental business needs to provide such a service/product.

[Girgy85]

Next Installment?

[robyong]

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?”

[the rage]

Nice blogging Rob. You talk a lot of sense. It was good of you to take the time to chat to me when i bumped into you at DTD a while back, you brought me some luck and i hit my first and only DTDFT. Good Luck, in poker and life.

[thetank]

Great to see the first post on this diary that didn't mention Mick McCool by name.

It was beggining to get a bit homoerotic   

[StuartHopkin]

Rob

Have you ever thought about promoting Blonde a little more in the club.

For example on £300 deepstack posters, you could have a 'Follow the action at blondepoker.com' or similar?

I always find it amazing the number of people who know who I am at DTD because of Blonde when I have no idea who they are!

Stu

[Karabiner]

Rob do you not think that the lack of rake being produced by BP's affiliate scheme is largely due to the fact that the vast majority of us already had DTD online accounts in place so were not eligible. The only people who would not have had DTD accounts would be newcomers or certainly very recentcomers to the forum and so the figure that they generate would not really reflect all of the accounts that have been generated by BP over the last few years.