What's happened to Poker?

[AndrewT]

Why, what's happening.

[Dave 1961]

Why, what's happening.

LOL Thinking about it probably nothing you would be interested in, but if you do show up I would be happy to give you a guided tour.

[jgcblack]

Why, what's happening.

LOL Thinking about it probably nothing you would be interested in, but if you do show up I would be happy to give you a guided tour.

seriously, no idea what's going on in Prague......

[Dave 1961]

Why, what's happening.

LOL Thinking about it probably nothing you would be interested in, but if you do show up I would be happy to give you a guided tour.

seriously, no idea what's going on in Prague......

Hi

Europe's largest poker festival runs from the 26th November to the 16th December at the Corinthia hotel in Prague. There is a WPT, GSOP, World sit and go championship, 888 bounty tournament and of course the EPT (Which is in the Hilton) there are 30 +other events ranging from 100 euros to a 10K High roller event and ots of great cash games to suit all players. It is the most supported on line event in Europe with more than 40 sites running qualifiers.

Last year more than 2000 players from more than 25 countries played and this year we are expecting even more. There is also the first mind sports festival with a 10k Scrabble tournament, Bridge, Backgammon, Risk and a 30k League of Legends event. The rooms are only 99 Euros and include breakfast. I wont put up the Prague Poker Festival link without permission but I am sure you can find it.

We have Rachel Riley from Countdown presenting the Mind Sports and expect many events to be live streamed on the the WebTv channel.

There will be at least three events in 2013 that are similar to this. The next one is Vienna in February then Marbella in April. We are hoping that DTD will be joining us at these events and maybe even have a Blonde Bash.

We are trying to provide an event that appeals to all players and attracts new ones and hope that all who come along have a great time...Even Andrew

Cheers

Dave

[AndrewT]

Why, what's happening.

LOL Thinking about it probably nothing you would be interested in, but if you do show up I would be happy to give you a guided tour.

seriously, no idea what's going on in Prague......

Hi

Europe's largest poker festival runs from the 26th November to the 16th December at the Corinthia hotel in Prague. There is a WPT, GSOP, World sit and go championship, 888 bounty tournament and of course the EPT (Which is in the Hilton) there are 30 +other events ranging from 100 euros to a 10K High roller event and ots of great cash games to suit all players. It is the most supported on line event in Europe with more than 40 sites running qualifiers.

Last year more than 2000 players from more than 25 countries played and this year we are expecting even more. There is also the first mind sports festival with a 10k Scrabble tournament, Bridge, Backgammon, Risk and a 30k League of Legends event. The rooms are only 99 Euros and include breakfast. I wont put up the Prague Poker Festival link without permission but I am sure you can find it.

We have Rachel Riley from Countdown presenting the Mind Sports and expect many events to be live streamed on the the WebTv channel.

There will be at least three events in 2013 that are similar to this. The next one is Vienna in February then Marbella in April. We are hoping that DTD will be joining us at these events and maybe even have a Blonde Bash.

We are trying to provide an event that appeals to all players and attracts new ones and hope that all who come along have a great time...Even Andrew

Cheers

Dave

Dave you should have called it 'The Rachel Riley from Countdown Festival (plus poker and other things)'

[jgcblack]

Sounds like your poker organising is pretty awesome, even if I am tilted a little by your quoting skills.

I'll be looking into it myself, sounds awesome.

Thank you, sir.

[Dave 1961]

Sorry about messing up the quoting, the marketing team don't let me post very much nowadays for this very reason   I hope to see you in Prague

[pleno1]

maybe this question needs a thread of its own but surely i can not be the only one thinking it.

Why the f@#k have pokerstars bought fulltilt?

it just doesn't make business sense...online poker players don't have one account, they have several...so when fulltilt went tits up the following happened...1) they joined other sites namely the most reknown that was pokerstars or 2) they went bust and didn't play.

so what can pokerstars possibly hope to achieve by stumping up the cash to reimberse fulltilt players???

what'sthe odds that 90% of fulltilt players also use pokerstars and also what are the odds that those with big deposits just withdraw them and raise a glass saying 'praise the lord' i didn't expect to see that again.


no matter how i look at it i can't see why on earth they did it...buy a competitor and honour the deposits just (it seems) to get a list of players that they are likely to find is much the same as their own.

And if it was to persuade the American government to legalise the game then surely this could have happened with or without this crazy move.

Monopoly.

[AlunB]

Yeah I don't really understand how people can't see the obvious benefits in it for them. Even just on a basic level of buying a profitable business at a decent multiple never mind the huge benefits of settling with the DoJ, having a dual brand to limit churn, dominating the market, preventing competition etc etc

[SuuPRlim]

I feel like pokerstars are just going to rule the world one day

I always felt like FTP was the place that wanted to drive huge cash action, sponsor cash games and really set itself aside as "The" high stakes place, whereas Stars always liked doing Tours and tournament series' - now they can both do these and still own the mast majority of the pie.

Wonder if we're going to see some ludicrous stakes online games spilling in from Macau to FTP...

[Dave 1961]

Just a few thoughts

So basically this is what the online poker industry looks like: We have one player -- PokerStars -- which, following the Full Tilt acquisition, will have in the neighbourhood of 50% to 70% market share of the dot-com online poker market. PokerStars benefits greatly from strong network effects where online players will continually gravitate to one large site with the greatest volume and the greatest variety of games and offerings, in much the same way that eBay benefits from network effects where buyers and sellers ultimately gravitate to one site.

And then we have everybody else at less than 6% market share each.

We have an industry plagued by rising player acquisition costs and marketing costs as a percentage of revenues. Things like sign-up bonuses, rakeback programs, and affiliate programs used to acquire new players and drive traffic to a given site are expensive marketing tools that I am pretty sure have slim to negative value, particularly since a player has effectively no switching costs to move from site to site once a promotion has been exhausted. This is similar to slot free-play and table games match-play offers often used by bricks-and-mortar casinos, which are promotional offers that generally have negative value with little to no long-term benefit to the casino.

We also have countries like Spain, Italy, and France that have left the dot-com space and installed new regulations where players in each of those countries can only play poker online with players located in the same country (i.e., a player in Spain can only play with another player in Spain, and not against a player in France or Germany) on their respective .es, .it, and .fr sites. These regulations served to remove liquidity from these markets, made the markets less attractive, and effectively chased IGT from Europe.
And then, for online poker room operators other than PokerStars, poker revenue typically accounts for only a fraction of total online gaming revenues for each of these companies.

A self-defeating game: The skill gap problem

There's another aspect of online poker that is often overlooked in these types of discussions, and that is an increasing skill gap problem.
Bwin.party's investor presentation contains a slide entitled "Dotcom poker in structural decline," which includes a chart showing that the average hourly number of players in the dot-com space has fallen from over 80,000 players per hour in January 2011 to around 50,000 players per hour in July 2012, which bwin.party attributes to five things:
1.       Poker maturing in European markets
2.       Regulation fracturing dot-com liquidity (referring to the switch in countries like Italy and France from .com to .it and .fr)
3.       Tax leakage
4.       Full Tilt removing $180 million from the market
5.       More sharks = fish eaten quicker
Bwin.party then goes on to list six steps to "optimize the poker ecology," which include:
1.       Rebalance player pool in favor of more casual players.
2.       Focus on driving and retaining net depositing players.
3.       Removal of highest stakes tables.
4.       Protecting recreational players from "fish hunting."
5.       Rebalance bonus packages in favor of recreational players.
6.       Introduce new features to lobby and interface to benefit casual player.
Get it?

There are too many professionals in the online space, and not enough fish. Thus, the game has gotten too tough to be interesting for the casual player, resulting in less overall activity.
Walk into any locals poker room in the country, and you are bound to find seven or eight regulars at the table. Back in 2006, when the average skill level of such regulars wasn't that high, this would be no problem for any reasonably skilled player. But in 2012, everybody is better, and the average skill level of the regulars has risen considerably, to the point that I think the average professional-level player in 2006 would be a fish in these games without having made similar advancements in his/her own game.

Consequently, the games today have become uninteresting to many former professionals -- even to those good enough to still beat these games -- because no matter how good you are, win rates will decline because the regulars aren't as bad as they used to be, and the fish are in shorter supply.
Meanwhile, the casual player today has no chance.

There is an underlying irony here, and it is that the professionals and other regulars in online poker space are generally the most valuable players on any given site. This is because these players put in the longest hours, and often play four, eight, or even 16 or more tables at a time.
The more players you have playing multiple tables, the more tables run. And the more tables that run, the more hands that get dealt. And the more hands that get dealt, the more revenue that is generated as rake.
But in a sense, poker is a self-defeating game where the most valuable players are also the ones killing it. And if you're a poker player looking for a return to the PartyPoker of 2006, you're not going to get it.

However with the emergence of WebTV and the evolution of Mind Sports the future may hold more surprises than forecast. The continued growth in on line gaming will evolve through new broadcast technology and different real life experiences in 2013. The conventional wisdom on who will lead and what on line will look like will in my opinion be very different from what is being portrayed by the industry at this time.

[AlunB]

You forgot the link

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/10/22/sorry-mr-online-poker-nobody-cares-about-you.aspx

[Dave 1961]

You forgot the link

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/10/22/sorry-mr-online-poker-nobody-cares-about-you.aspx

I dont post links as I have been told you need permission and I couldn't paste the entire article...that being said I think its the best article I have read on the industry and is in line with all the work we are doing in the US. I believe that a new player will emerge in the on line space probably from a bricks and mortar casino such as LVS, Wynn or Genting who will likely purchase an existing operator such as Bwin and use the combined player bases to introduce new technology such as WebTV and this will provide the next generation in social networking.

[Doobs]

You forgot the link

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/10/22/sorry-mr-online-poker-nobody-cares-about-you.aspx

I dont post links as I have been told you need permission and I couldn't paste the entire article...that being said I think its the best article I have read on the industry and is in line with all the work we are doing in the US. I believe that a new player will emerge in the on line space probably from a bricks and mortar casino such as LVS, Wynn or Genting who will likely purchase an existing operator such as Bwin and use the combined player bases to introduce new technology such as WebTV and this will provide the next generation in social networking.

You need permission to post links, but none to lift someone else's work?

Not sure if you are serious?

[Cf]

Linking to articles to show your source is fine.