The Poker Affiliate Blog

So its 5am and I’m still awake. Had one late night mid week and that’s thrown me completley off sync. I’ve been going to sleep at 1 in the afternoon and getting up at 6pm and don’t feel to great about it. So hopefully a bit of writing will help me nod off and get up around 10 tommorow (5 hours pfft).

I deposited some money onto PKR to check it out and overall I don’t feel the softness of games outweigh the lack of volume / rakeback which you can find elsewhere. I just can’t multi table. So I just have withdrawn $1.2k now which is not bad for a days work. Bit of a hit and run on the site. Although because the money has been transferred in and out of my account in $ I’m sure it will earn HSBC a nice £20. Always good to do my bit for them. I guess on PKR there are too many distractions for the fish / donks to spew their money off optimally. They’re getting distracted by all the little gizmos. It just hasn’t really done it for me. I prefer SkyPoker when it comes to uber soft sites.

I’ve been doing some research into some new shares to buy. Well more like thinking not much research. There just seem to be some certain undeniable truths in the west at the moment. Consumerism overall will grow, people are becoming more money oriented, lazier and our world is becoming more driven by technology. I don’t mean I’m going to go out buy HP or Sony shares because they’re too widely spread and just because tech is on the grow in the longterm doesn’t mean Sony will be. I was thinking a company involved in nano-technology.

The other company in general I quite like is Mcdonalds. Are their sales going to go down anytime soon ? Who is realisitically going to challenge them ? They just seem to have it nailed down, although maybe their price reflects this. Another company would be Nike. I just find it hard to see how their actual business isn’t going to grow. There aren’t many legitimate competitors and the market for trainers, sports clothing, fashion etc is on the up and up. The population of the world isn’t going to buy less trainers in 2010 than it did in ’09. I mean I don’t have any facts whatsoever its just hard to see. Obviously, the company can have a fundamental flaw and regardless of what market its in it just won’t enjoy the same growth.

Onto something I know more about…
I guess a few readers will have followed the ipokervip legality debate on 2+2. My guess is playtech haven’t made a firm decision and now Titan are at it.

It was suggested to me that my thread was removed from affiiates/rb forum because of the word rakeback in the forum name. My site has no mention of RB anywhere and I categorically don’t offer it. Whereas RTR and friends seem to get off with it. I guess I can live with that but, now Titan are using the word Rake and Rakeback consistently in their ad campaign. I guess it might be good for the network and at the end of the day what they’re offerring doesn’t compare to me so it has its positives but, it just goes to show how having it in with the owner of the network can do wonders for you ! Or just being the same person altogether.

As you can see on the right I’ve got players on Titan and don’t have anything against them. If you have an advantage, I guess push it as far as you can. The fact remains a lot of other skins would be afraid of doing something as bold.

Cynics will come along and say I effectivley did the same thing with iPokerVIP and I guess the difference is a) In my honest opinion I didn’t think the methodology of my offers were different b) As a business I represent myself. Playtech are a PLC and the owner owns Titan. Whereas I just want to showcase the best offers I can find and don’t want to do anything apart from give players the best. Anyway, its nothing against Titan I’d do the same in their shoes. Its going to be an interesting next few months because I’d be suprised if their was no reaction to this.

New offers should be up this week along with the support thread. May is going to be a really big month on iPoker so its defo a better time to kick off compared to August or something.

Tags: iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, online, Playtech, titan, VC, VIP Deals

I feel a lot more positive about things. I kept on saying how the negative press from competitors just meant that ipokervip was such a threat but, didn’t really appreciate.

I got a bit too emotional at the weekend about the whole thing and kinda regret some of my posts and their bad spelling ! I was doing this on no sleep just trying to give almost instant rebuttle so that a pile of neg stuff didn’t come up.

I’m feeling a ton more positive mainly thanks to VC being behind me 100% which is really awesome. Although this issue is much bigger than ipokervip for them its really refreshing and certainly not something that they need to do.

A ton of new offers are coming on tommorow and I’ll be getting together some statements for 2+2. From there its up to them whether they will get behind the support thread and at least confirm they have emails from the right people that confirm the legality of the offers.

Hopefully, the new support thread should be up soon with the banners – I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said this.

* VC Poker Olympics *

Here is some great news for all my VC players. The next events in the Poker Olympics will be based to a higher degree on rake meaning that the limit players cant take advantage anymore. I don’t have the full details yet but, this actually means some of my players might take the next events seriously !

So its all positive ! Feel like I’m still growing up at the moment getting huge mood swings… I’m a weirdo.

Jamie

Tags: Bet365, Deals, iPoker News, iPokerVIP.net, Rakeback, titan, vcpoker, vip

It bothers me that without the UIGEA coming into action on June 1st that the prospects for networks like iPoker, OnGame, Microgaming and in some respects Party are pretty bleak. I guess at the bottom of it is the fact that if a network makes a bad judgement its practically irreversible becuase of the complexities involved – mainly the sheer number of licensees in the case of iPoker.
So basically I’m just going to list some problems here and in all honesty I think many of them will never be adressed / its impossible to address them.

1. Various conflicts of interest: As a network your primary interest is in recruiting licences and serving them well and not in providing a good gaming experience for the player. Often, these are the same thing but, unfortunatley not always. Pokerstars and FTP have a link to the players whereas ipoker and the like do not have the players contact details and so on.

2. Hung Parliament – Not sure if this is a good metaphor but, when a hung parliament occurs in governemnt i.e. 2 parties have an almost equal number of seats / power nobody is in control. I guess on the surface it sounds fair enough. You would be forgiven for thinking “Oh well that means things will really be discussed and evaluated before they become law”. History unfortunatley tells us this is not the case. Things don’t get done and no progress is made.
Poker networks arer a bit like this -Too many cooks, too many decent sized skins and cages all with differing opinions. Its a lot like government in the way that all skins are working to the same end while competing with each other to get there. I mean when you have 30 + skins or whatever it is, some of them probably run out of someone’s bedroom (or definatley in the case of OnGame skins) its hard to imagine how things would get done. Or when they get done people feel pretty pissed off. This isn’t necessarilly because of the system but, becuase iPoker isn’t equally transparent with all the skins.

Conflict of interest b)i) Playtech owns a pice of Will Hill and all of Titan Poker ii) BWIN owns ongame iii) Party gaming owns Party Poker
This is inevtiable since networks start off as skins or independent sites but, again its not exactly ideal.

3. PLC – Playtech & Party are both PLC’s. I know nothing about the stock market but I’d imagine with publically documented accounts these networks would never be prepared to go over a facelift at the risk of damaging short term figures because that damage itself would have a negative impact for the company.

4. Backwards Development
These networks all have sub-par software. Someone gave me the analogy of ‘its cheaper to repair an old house than build a new one from scratch’ – I’m not sure if that’s always true or at least it depends what kind of repairs you need doing :p ! I’ve seen a new network with hardly any players whose software blows every other sites out the water (apart from Stars – although I think I prefer it to stars personall). Its more functional than ipoker, lighter than ftp and just better to look at than all the rest. How can Playtech, a company in excess of $1bn not knock something decent up ? I just don’t get it.

5. Mass Marketing
Simply put: Running even a dream marketing campaign on the TV or sponsoring a big tourney would be a huge loser for any skins on a network (with the exception of Party possibly.) These campaigns wouldn’t necessarilly be losers for Stars or FTP though which is why they’re growing rapidly and the networks aren’t.
If I’m the owner of an iPoker skin and I decide to invest big in a TV campaign say $1 million what can I expect in return ? Well completely guessing lets say I get 10k signups ( I really don;t know if that’s realistic but, the predictions don’t matter too much for the purposes of this example). Firstly, these 10k players are not going to be the high raking variety – any serious players will hunt about the network for better promos for what is effectivley the same site. Secondly, these players are going to be bad and bust their $50 deposit pretty quickly.
So let’s say these 10k guys rake $50 a piece – after support, deposit / withdrawl costs, the 20% for the network the skin is maybe left with $250k which is nice.
The problem is the value in fresh fish is the liquidity they add to the games, your current players will rake more and win more as a consequence and the money will flow around your sites economy. This is fine if you’re pokerstars – you will enjoy the ripple effect from this liquidity injection but, if you’re an ipoker skin with 15% of the network 85% of the liquidity of the fish is being enjoyed by players on other skins.
Furthermore, its not as if iPoker would be capable of putting network ads out it would just confuse people.

6. Finally we have the networks giving away licences like they’re going out of fashion. They’ve realised this is -ev now I think but, it doesn’t make things easier it just further complicates them.

I’m tired now but, I could go on forever. I’m not even going to get into win/ loss or the lack of RB cap. Basically a lot of these problems are never going to be fixed and the answer lies in a new network that has learnt from the mistakes of ipoker. Again this is easier said than done and several large skins would need to jump ship in sync. If stars and ftp don’t go down I really think this is what needs to be done. Based on pokerscout they’re just running away with it and its not even because they’re amazing or unbeatable. Its simply becuase the alternatives are pretty flawed.

Tags: iPoker News, ongame, poker networks, promotion, rake, titan, titan poker, vcpoker, vip deal, will hill