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
