I played Monte Carlo last year and it was a fantastic atmosphere, structure and set-up. I would love to play it again but managed to control my urge to do a last minute plane journey and chose the sensible option, to stay at home and to do some work. Also, I really couldn't justify blowing another 12,000 euros out of my ever diminishing poker bankroll.
Burnley Jon rang me today and I thanked him for he kind words he put in his latest interview on the pokernews web site. It was through Jon that I first met Chubbs, his ever present poker partner. I guess things are not quite the same for Jon now that Chubbs is working for DTD and does not have the time to play as much poker as before, but hopefully we will see plenty of the grumpy tea drinking XXX at DTD when it opens.
I sent the first payment for the Gaming Licence today. Its £8,500 just to get your application read by the powers that be, and of course, its non refundable even if you are unsuccessful. If you are granted the "Certiciate of Consent" you then have to cough up £35,000 more to the local magistates court to get their blessing. Double or triple that with legal fees, its no wonder all the card clubs in the UK are unlicenced. What does the governernment expect a small 10 table card room to do, fork out £100k to set up a business that probably wont make much money anyway? Whenever I watch the Robin Hood film with Kevin Coster in, I think nothing has really changed, the average bloke still gets shafted by the government from all angles.
We are now very close to signing up with an online poker room provider after I spoke with their Sales Director today. If you want to set up an online poker room you have 3 options:
Option 1. Have a skin of a skin (effectively you are a glorified affiliate)
Option 2. Have a skin from a cage (eg. Victor Changer or Blue Square)
Option 3. Go direct to the software provider.
Each have their pros and cons, mainly down to control versus cost. We are favouring Option 3, which is more expensive but gives you much more control. Option 3 requires set-up costs and additional support costs, but at least you have more of your destiny in your own hands. If everything goes to plan, we hope to launch the online side in July/August 2006 and Chubbs will be in charge of generating revenue for this area of DTD.
It is key that we make the online side work, as we be less reliant on external sponsership from other poker sites to subsidise the live club. Our strategy is to do everything "in house" at DTD, so noone controls us and we can do the right things by the members and remain independent.
I transferred the first amount of money into the new DTD bank account today. My bank manager seems a but nervous about the whole DTD thing and has been asking me for a full 3 year business plan for the last 3 months. When I told him that "I havn't got one but I can make one up if he wants" he got even more nervous. When I told him that I needed a £20,000 company credit card for miscelaneaus expenses he nearly fell of his chair. However, when I reminded him that I might move sf groups bank account somewhere else, he sorted it all out.
The shocking thing is that I am a qualified accountant and I have not even done an accurate financial plan for DTD, whats the point, who the hell knows what is going to happen? When I first took on the project 9 months ago, I did one (which I posted the summary on Blonde), but costs have escalated so much, I'd rather not do one at the moment! With a project like this, I think you have just got to go with your gut feel, and not get too hung up on making up figures such as number of customers per day, average spend per customer etc. The number of assumptions will make the profit/loss so wildly inaccurate anyway - you could be worrying about nothing. My thought process is much more basic:
1. Is poker growing? YES
2. Will it continue to grow? YES
3. Why? BECAUSE ITS ADDICTIVE WITH NO AGE RESTICTIONS
4. Is the project interesting? YES
5. Should we do it? OF COURSE
Good luck to everyone in Monte Carlo. My tip to do well is DC, as he is due a result in a major comp and I just have a "gut feel" about this one.
