Ladbrokes H1 Results.

[AlunB]

Yes, worded badly by me, as I knew they were on Microgaming from the off

What was it that happened with the Scandis?

I may be misremembering but think they just moved to pastures new mostly ipoker and Stars

[AlunB]

I posted this a while ago:
Ladbrokes Monthly active poker player days:
2005 411,000
2006 461,000
2007 409,000
2008 362,000
2009 293,000
2010 226,000
2011 189,000
2012 110,000
2014   55,000
2015   42,000

They joined Micro in Feb 09 and iPoker in Dec 13.

Astonishing.

bwin.party (partypoker)

Active player days Q1 2010 - 11.6m
Active player days Q1 2015 - 2.6m

Poker is dead innit

[tikay]

Yes, worded badly by me, as I knew they were on Microgaming from the off

What was it that happened with the Scandis?

I may be misremembering but think they just moved to pastures new mostly ipoker and Stars

A lot of "local" sites opened, too, think Expekt.com became the fashionable place for many Scandies at the time. Guess they all ended up on 'Stars eventually.

Unrelated, but I saw that  I-poker are merging - or re-merging -  their two player pools. As you were, then, as the sites all suddenly realise the value of recreational players.

[AlunB]

Yes, worded badly by me, as I knew they were on Microgaming from the off

What was it that happened with the Scandis?

I may be misremembering but think they just moved to pastures new mostly ipoker and Stars

A lot of "local" sites opened, too, think Expekt.com became the fashionable place for many Scandies at the time. Guess they all ended up on 'Stars eventually.

Unrelated, but I saw that  I-poker are merging - or re-merging -  their two player pools. As you were, then, as the sites all suddenly realise the value of recreational players.

Yeah that's a weird one. Was going to look into it today. Not sure the last sentence really applies. After all that was the entire reason for the split in the first place. I'd have to assume that changes ipoker made to rake distribution has helped the network so no need for it now? That's a big assumption though.

[Marky147]

Yes, worded badly by me, as I knew they were on Microgaming from the off

What was it that happened with the Scandis?

I may be misremembering but think they just moved to pastures new mostly ipoker and Stars

It was a long time ago, so likely I'm doing the same

[FUN4FRASER]

Just saying with Sky having the TV angle there is definitely a place to replicate the community old days, between them   Sky ,Blonde and DTD obviously does that

Well yes, but you have to ask "does it drive traffic?".

You can't correlate it as such, but the Channel as was closed in March, (replaced by a weekly Show on Sky Sports) & the YOY figures since then are positive. It's something that is impossible to directly quantify, but there is no evidence of any damage to the Business whatsoever. Some people watched it for years, & never deposited a penny on the site.

Of course everyone would prefer it to remain in place, but its just not possible.

It's like Live Updates from DTD, almost everyone moans about their absence. I doubt Rob Yong would suggest it drove any extra traffic to play on DTD though, so it was a cost with no material return.   

Who really knows ? one can never really quantify the true amount of business generated through advertising unless you are cross referencing it with bonus codes for new accounts/deposits etc

As regards the live updates its my opinion( for what it is worth) they are a big positive because they keep the events in peoples minds ,however  I'm not footing the bill and am not party to Robs business model so everybody has to recognise the difference between a players ideal wants and a Poker Providers budget

[FUN4FRASER]

Didn't the fall in play/interest, coincide with them ceasing to be independent, and joining forces with Microgaming?

I became friendly with a fair few of the Scandis after going to Tallinn/Vegas/Cruise, and they were absolutely printing for years.

Laddies used to have $1.50/$3 NL tables, and a Swedish kid I became good friends with (leecz000r) was making $30k a month, which is just ridiculous.

I think Dolly must have won the $100 rebuy more times than I made the final table

I did very very well in this tournament for a long time however I did very badly subsequently playing the Scandis at cash games    

I very quickly learned to concentrate solely on tournament poker

[vegaslover]

Yes, worded badly by me, as I knew they were on Microgaming from the off

What was it that happened with the Scandis?

I may be misremembering but think they just moved to pastures new mostly ipoker and Stars

A lot of "local" sites opened, too, think Expekt.com became the fashionable place for many Scandies at the time. Guess they all ended up on 'Stars eventually.

Unrelated, but I saw that  I-poker are merging - or re-merging -  their two player pools. As you were, then, as the sites all suddenly realise the value of recreational players.

Yeah that's a weird one. Was going to look into it today. Not sure the last sentence really applies. After all that was the entire reason for the split in the first place. I'd have to assume that changes ipoker made to rake distribution has helped the network so no need for it now? That's a big assumption though.

From what I have read, the rake distribution from deposits is what is driving the return to individual skins as their cut. Seems to be an active plan to kill off the smaller/independent skins and leave the business to the big books etc

[AlunB]

That's certainly one way of looking at it...

[rfgqqabc]

Tikay is right Ladbrokes was massive in 2004/5/6

Remember the good old days there Tony ?

There were may faces played there  You & I (SarahJane) RED-DOG, Marky147 ,Skalie ActionJack ,Kunku Wap ( John Tabbatabai )loop8(IanFrazer) Sealey (ConorTate) T8MML(Tim Blake) Punk Floyd ( John Conroy)  and a massive swedish  crowd  ,William Thorson (ILCAPITANO) Erik Sagstrom (The Salmon ) Bengt Sonnert (pkrbt) and obv more

The afternoon 8K was actually a $250 buy in but as soon as the guarantee was cut in half all the other tournaments followed suit and the site very quickly died .As Tony says they used to have a strong presence in the poker industry  sending 40/50 players to the WSOP main every year

Strangely the reason why there was such a strong community spirit was because there was a massive scrolling chat box on every open table so everybody used to be able to chat way to each other , sometimes the banter got a bit lively ( a very young Kunku Wap was an absolute Legend) but generally it was all in good humour and friends (and enemies) were made ( I was always at loggerheads with Paul Jackson)

story about Joe Hachem,...its true he did play there under the alias KAIKEY but he was constantly foul mouthed in the chat box and had  actually been banned for about a year but as soon as he won the WSOP main event  Ladbrokes claimed him as their own player 

Met some great people from that site....Good Times !

Good Post Fraser, so many memories there. Bob the Burtcher & Debbie used to play that afternoon jobbie, too.

I rarely missed it, I had retired from work & it was the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

Don't think we had luxuries such as Late Reg in those days - log on 2 seconds late, & that was it, too bad.

   

The important question is, did you ever win it?

Not often......

It used to get 45 to 50 runners most days, so maybe 6 or 7 got paid. I cashed regularly - more often that most - but the wins were far & few between. It was my sort of structure, very playable, lasted about 3 hours, & I could sit & nut peddle for hours. 

Generally, when it got 3 handed - & bearing in mind we all knew each other - we chopped it up. There was no Player Transfer facility, but we sorted it somehow, & I don't recall anyone ever getting diddled.

I went over to Martin de Knijff's Club in Stockholm once for some Fessie, & for the first time met up with most of the Scandies who dominated Ladbrokes at the time. I could barely believe it, they were all kids.

Tikay did you ever meet any of the scando high rollers who had ladbrokes over on an exchange rate coup moving their balances from their poker account to sports betting account depending on which way the $ moved against the £?

Funny you mention this. I was linked to one of BigNittyBankers posts on 2+2. Noel Hayes. I was amazed to read about this. Crazy they only used to change it once per week!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=10210764&postcount=157


Regarding the iPoker split of the player pool the theory was it would punish the smaller skins who had a bigger % of players on big rakeback deals who were all largely winners. It was already designed to protect the recreational player. Obviously this would never work because as soon as a regular realized he was on iPoker2, he just swapped skins. I don't really understand how but almost every site that has tried the recreational protection activities has just tended to see a drop off in traffic. The new FTP, Ongame and Party Poker all saw traffic decline after the recreational player protection stuff they brought in. Almost none of it was successful.

It amazes me just how poorly pokersites are run. In the Stars mtt discussion thread, the PS rep actually told people, guarantees don't matter, its in the data. People suggested adding "guarantee boost" to a variety of comps on different days and this has already seen certain competitions have an increase in traffic.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=47719254&postcount=4897

Storm is still at 275k and managed 27251 runners last week so it might be getting the chop again!

[arbboy]

Tikay is right Ladbrokes was massive in 2004/5/6

Remember the good old days there Tony ?

There were may faces played there  You & I (SarahJane) RED-DOG, Marky147 ,Skalie ActionJack ,Kunku Wap ( John Tabbatabai )loop8(IanFrazer) Sealey (ConorTate) T8MML(Tim Blake) Punk Floyd ( John Conroy)  and a massive swedish  crowd  ,William Thorson (ILCAPITANO) Erik Sagstrom (The Salmon ) Bengt Sonnert (pkrbt) and obv more

The afternoon 8K was actually a $250 buy in but as soon as the guarantee was cut in half all the other tournaments followed suit and the site very quickly died .As Tony says they used to have a strong presence in the poker industry  sending 40/50 players to the WSOP main every year

Strangely the reason why there was such a strong community spirit was because there was a massive scrolling chat box on every open table so everybody used to be able to chat way to each other , sometimes the banter got a bit lively ( a very young Kunku Wap was an absolute Legend) but generally it was all in good humour and friends (and enemies) were made ( I was always at loggerheads with Paul Jackson)

story about Joe Hachem,...its true he did play there under the alias KAIKEY but he was constantly foul mouthed in the chat box and had  actually been banned for about a year but as soon as he won the WSOP main event  Ladbrokes claimed him as their own player  

Met some great people from that site....Good Times !

Good Post Fraser, so many memories there. Bob the Burtcher & Debbie used to play that afternoon jobbie, too.

I rarely missed it, I had retired from work & it was the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

Don't think we had luxuries such as Late Reg in those days - log on 2 seconds late, & that was it, too bad.

    

The important question is, did you ever win it?

Not often......

It used to get 45 to 50 runners most days, so maybe 6 or 7 got paid. I cashed regularly - more often that most - but the wins were far & few between. It was my sort of structure, very playable, lasted about 3 hours, & I could sit & nut peddle for hours.  

Generally, when it got 3 handed - & bearing in mind we all knew each other - we chopped it up. There was no Player Transfer facility, but we sorted it somehow, & I don't recall anyone ever getting diddled.

I went over to Martin de Knijff's Club in Stockholm once for some Fessie, & for the first time met up with most of the Scandies who dominated Ladbrokes at the time. I could barely believe it, they were all kids.

Tikay did you ever meet any of the scando high rollers who had ladbrokes over on an exchange rate coup moving their balances from their poker account to sports betting account depending on which way the $ moved against the £?

Funny you mention this. I was linked to one of BigNittyBankers posts on 2+2. Noel Hayes. I was amazed to read about this. Crazy they only used to change it once per week!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=10210764&postcount=157


Regarding the iPoker split of the player pool the theory was it would punish the smaller skins who had a bigger % of players on big rakeback deals who were all largely winners. It was already designed to protect the recreational player. Obviously this would never work because as soon as a regular realized he was on iPoker2, he just swapped skins. I don't really understand how but almost every site that has tried the recreational protection activities has just tended to see a drop off in traffic. The new FTP, Ongame and Party Poker all saw traffic decline after the recreational player protection stuff they brought in. Almost none of it was successful.

It amazes me just how poorly pokersites are run. In the Stars mtt discussion thread, the PS rep actually told people, guarantees don't matter, its in the data. People suggested adding "guarantee boost" to a variety of comps on different days and this has already seen certain competitions have an increase in traffic.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=47719254&postcount=4897

Storm is still at 275k and managed 27251 runners last week so it might be getting the chop again!

Even more crazy is Ladbroke's arrogance that loads of high rollers had just forgotten about their huge balances and left them to Ladbrokes even though they were not giving any action for months across poker or sports.  This kind of arrogance across the whole business has slowly killed the firm.  Great story though.  Wish i was involved back in the day.

[AlunB]

Tikay is right Ladbrokes was massive in 2004/5/6

Remember the good old days there Tony ?

There were may faces played there  You & I (SarahJane) RED-DOG, Marky147 ,Skalie ActionJack ,Kunku Wap ( John Tabbatabai )loop8(IanFrazer) Sealey (ConorTate) T8MML(Tim Blake) Punk Floyd ( John Conroy)  and a massive swedish  crowd  ,William Thorson (ILCAPITANO) Erik Sagstrom (The Salmon ) Bengt Sonnert (pkrbt) and obv more

The afternoon 8K was actually a $250 buy in but as soon as the guarantee was cut in half all the other tournaments followed suit and the site very quickly died .As Tony says they used to have a strong presence in the poker industry  sending 40/50 players to the WSOP main every year

Strangely the reason why there was such a strong community spirit was because there was a massive scrolling chat box on every open table so everybody used to be able to chat way to each other , sometimes the banter got a bit lively ( a very young Kunku Wap was an absolute Legend) but generally it was all in good humour and friends (and enemies) were made ( I was always at loggerheads with Paul Jackson)

story about Joe Hachem,...its true he did play there under the alias KAIKEY but he was constantly foul mouthed in the chat box and had  actually been banned for about a year but as soon as he won the WSOP main event  Ladbrokes claimed him as their own player 

Met some great people from that site....Good Times !

Good Post Fraser, so many memories there. Bob the Burtcher & Debbie used to play that afternoon jobbie, too.

I rarely missed it, I had retired from work & it was the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

Don't think we had luxuries such as Late Reg in those days - log on 2 seconds late, & that was it, too bad.

   

The important question is, did you ever win it?

Not often......

It used to get 45 to 50 runners most days, so maybe 6 or 7 got paid. I cashed regularly - more often that most - but the wins were far & few between. It was my sort of structure, very playable, lasted about 3 hours, & I could sit & nut peddle for hours. 

Generally, when it got 3 handed - & bearing in mind we all knew each other - we chopped it up. There was no Player Transfer facility, but we sorted it somehow, & I don't recall anyone ever getting diddled.

I went over to Martin de Knijff's Club in Stockholm once for some Fessie, & for the first time met up with most of the Scandies who dominated Ladbrokes at the time. I could barely believe it, they were all kids.

Tikay did you ever meet any of the scando high rollers who had ladbrokes over on an exchange rate coup moving their balances from their poker account to sports betting account depending on which way the $ moved against the £?

Funny you mention this. I was linked to one of BigNittyBankers posts on 2+2. Noel Hayes. I was amazed to read about this. Crazy they only used to change it once per week!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=10210764&postcount=157


Regarding the iPoker split of the player pool the theory was it would punish the smaller skins who had a bigger % of players on big rakeback deals who were all largely winners. It was already designed to protect the recreational player. Obviously this would never work because as soon as a regular realized he was on iPoker2, he just swapped skins. I don't really understand how but almost every site that has tried the recreational protection activities has just tended to see a drop off in traffic. The new FTP, Ongame and Party Poker all saw traffic decline after the recreational player protection stuff they brought in. Almost none of it was successful.

It amazes me just how poorly pokersites are run. In the Stars mtt discussion thread, the PS rep actually told people, guarantees don't matter, its in the data. People suggested adding "guarantee boost" to a variety of comps on different days and this has already seen certain competitions have an increase in traffic.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=47719254&postcount=4897

Storm is still at 275k and managed 27251 runners last week so it might be getting the chop again!

Less traffic doesn't necessarily mean less money though

[bobAlike]

Tikay is right Ladbrokes was massive in 2004/5/6

Remember the good old days there Tony ?

There were may faces played there  You & I (SarahJane) RED-DOG, Marky147 ,Skalie ActionJack ,Kunku Wap ( John Tabbatabai )loop8(IanFrazer) Sealey (ConorTate) T8MML(Tim Blake) Punk Floyd ( John Conroy)  and a massive swedish  crowd  ,William Thorson (ILCAPITANO) Erik Sagstrom (The Salmon ) Bengt Sonnert (pkrbt) and obv more

The afternoon 8K was actually a $250 buy in but as soon as the guarantee was cut in half all the other tournaments followed suit and the site very quickly died .As Tony says they used to have a strong presence in the poker industry  sending 40/50 players to the WSOP main every year

Strangely the reason why there was such a strong community spirit was because there was a massive scrolling chat box on every open table so everybody used to be able to chat way to each other , sometimes the banter got a bit lively ( a very young Kunku Wap was an absolute Legend) but generally it was all in good humour and friends (and enemies) were made ( I was always at loggerheads with Paul Jackson)

story about Joe Hachem,...its true he did play there under the alias KAIKEY but he was constantly foul mouthed in the chat box and had  actually been banned for about a year but as soon as he won the WSOP main event  Ladbrokes claimed him as their own player 

Met some great people from that site....Good Times !

Good Post Fraser, so many memories there. Bob the Burtcher & Debbie used to play that afternoon jobbie, too.

I rarely missed it, I had retired from work & it was the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

Don't think we had luxuries such as Late Reg in those days - log on 2 seconds late, & that was it, too bad.

   

The important question is, did you ever win it?

Not often......

It used to get 45 to 50 runners most days, so maybe 6 or 7 got paid. I cashed regularly - more often that most - but the wins were far & few between. It was my sort of structure, very playable, lasted about 3 hours, & I could sit & nut peddle for hours. 

Generally, when it got 3 handed - & bearing in mind we all knew each other - we chopped it up. There was no Player Transfer facility, but we sorted it somehow, & I don't recall anyone ever getting diddled.

I went over to Martin de Knijff's Club in Stockholm once for some Fessie, & for the first time met up with most of the Scandies who dominated Ladbrokes at the time. I could barely believe it, they were all kids.

Tikay did you ever meet any of the scando high rollers who had ladbrokes over on an exchange rate coup moving their balances from their poker account to sports betting account depending on which way the $ moved against the £?

Funny you mention this. I was linked to one of BigNittyBankers posts on 2+2. Noel Hayes. I was amazed to read about this. Crazy they only used to change it once per week!

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=10210764&postcount=157


Regarding the iPoker split of the player pool the theory was it would punish the smaller skins who had a bigger % of players on big rakeback deals who were all largely winners. It was already designed to protect the recreational player. Obviously this would never work because as soon as a regular realized he was on iPoker2, he just swapped skins. I don't really understand how but almost every site that has tried the recreational protection activities has just tended to see a drop off in traffic. The new FTP, Ongame and Party Poker all saw traffic decline after the recreational player protection stuff they brought in. Almost none of it was successful.

It amazes me just how poorly pokersites are run. In the Stars mtt discussion thread, the PS rep actually told people, guarantees don't matter, its in the data. People suggested adding "guarantee boost" to a variety of comps on different days and this has already seen certain competitions have an increase in traffic.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=47719254&postcount=4897

Storm is still at 275k and managed 27251 runners last week so it might be getting the chop again!

Even more crazy is Ladbroke's arrogance that loads of high rollers had just forgotten about their huge balances and left them to Ladbrokes even though they were not giving any action for months across poker or sports.  This kind of arrogance across the whole business has slowly killed the firm.  Great story though.  Wish i was involved back in the day.

The question that springs to mind is.. could Ladbrokes have been using that money for other purposes I.e. overnight investment in foreign exchanges or was it ring-fenced? This could have made them money if so.

[rfgqqabc]

Alun you really think any of those sites have made more money because of the changes?

I feel like you might know more than me here but such huge reductions in traffic can't be compensated by higher margins.

[Karabiner]

Tikay is right Ladbrokes was massive in 2004/5/6

Remember the good old days there Tony ?

There were may faces played there  You & I (SarahJane) RED-DOG, Marky147 ,Skalie ActionJack ,Kunku Wap ( John Tabbatabai )loop8(IanFrazer) Sealey (ConorTate) T8MML(Tim Blake) Punk Floyd ( John Conroy)  and a massive swedish  crowd  ,William Thorson (ILCAPITANO) Erik Sagstrom (The Salmon ) Bengt Sonnert (pkrbt) and obv more

The afternoon 8K was actually a $250 buy in but as soon as the guarantee was cut in half all the other tournaments followed suit and the site very quickly died .As Tony says they used to have a strong presence in the poker industry  sending 40/50 players to the WSOP main every year

Strangely the reason why there was such a strong community spirit was because there was a massive scrolling chat box on every open table so everybody used to be able to chat way to each other , sometimes the banter got a bit lively ( a very young Kunku Wap was an absolute Legend) but generally it was all in good humour and friends (and enemies) were made ( I was always at loggerheads with Paul Jackson)

story about Joe Hachem,...its true he did play there under the alias KAIKEY but he was constantly foul mouthed in the chat box and had  actually been banned for about a year but as soon as he won the WSOP main event  Ladbrokes claimed him as their own player  

Met some great people from that site....Good Times !

Good Post Fraser, so many memories there. Bob the Burtcher & Debbie used to play that afternoon jobbie, too.

I rarely missed it, I had retired from work & it was the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

Don't think we had luxuries such as Late Reg in those days - log on 2 seconds late, & that was it, too bad.

    

The important question is, did you ever win it?

Not often......

It used to get 45 to 50 runners most days, so maybe 6 or 7 got paid. I cashed regularly - more often that most - but the wins were far & few between. It was my sort of structure, very playable, lasted about 3 hours, & I could sit & nut peddle for hours.  

Generally, when it got 3 handed - & bearing in mind we all knew each other - we chopped it up. There was no Player Transfer facility, but we sorted it somehow, & I don't recall anyone ever getting diddled.

I went over to Martin de Knijff's Club in Stockholm once for some Fessie, & for the first time met up with most of the Scandies who dominated Ladbrokes at the time. I could barely believe it, they were all kids.

Tikay did you ever meet any of the scando high rollers who had ladbrokes over on an exchange rate coup moving their balances from their poker account to sports betting account depending on which way the $ moved against the £?

Not that I am aware of, but possibly, I met most of them down the years.

I first became aware of the tale via Keith Hawkins Blog, "The Camel Ruminates", which was in my Top 20 favourite blogs of all time. Camel broke the story, but if my memory serves correct, he later edited it down a bit, & perhaps with good reason.

For those not aware, a bunch of Scandies were transferring big sums every morning from Sports Betting to Poker or vice-versa (Ladbrokes always had separate wallets) on the Ladbrokes site - up to £100,000 I seem to recall - & re-transferring it later the same day. But Ladbrokes had messed up the Exchange Rates, & the Scandies had spotted it, & made a right killing. Not huge sums, but it was free money.

I actually told you about the coup in the early days as I noticed that they were slow to update the rate changes, but I was only taking advantage on a small scale as I only used to keep around £2/3K in my account.

Their error was that they only changed the USD/GBP exchange rate when it moved one whole point, (ie from £1.50 to £1.51) and often took a couple of days to update it, so all you had to do was keep your balance in either "poker" which was in USD, or in "sports" which was in GBP until the rate changed in your favour a day or so later.