Before I begin this diatribe against online poker, let me first state that I believe we should all have the choice to play, live events or online, and I enjoy playing online poker – perhaps not as much as some do, but still, I enjoy being able to just plunk down, click on a poker site, and get in a game. I miss it! It should be regulated, licensed, and taxed, especially in the United States since my understanding is that 50 Million Americans play online poker. If you look at Zynga Poker, you’ll know that a huge number of those players come from the US and it Zynga be the next big harvesting ground for a new breed of player that overtakes the poker world. After all, Zynga’s stats a few months ago stated that over 37 million people a month played at Zynga Poker and you can play Zynga at Facebook; Android; iPhone; Myspace; Yahoo; and Tagged.
This is lengthy and required reading, so settle in.
The DOJ is a given, a monumental PITA that loves to pat itself on the back for being so deviously tricky in setting up the bad guy that they, are actually the worse bad guy. Take for example the fake processing company:
“This time, instead of just assigning a mole gambler, the feds set up an entire fake processing company. Over two years, Linwood Payment Solutions reached deals with BetEd and K23 Financial Services and processed $33 million in transactions linked to online betting in Maryland and elsewhere, according to federal charging documents.” Read the report at the Baltimore Sun.
I won’t go into my usual rant about how I hate the government protecting my morals. I also won’t go into the fact that I think President Obama is a coward because he won’t get in our face and talk to us about online poker…he knows we’re out here, millions of us, yet he stays hidden.
Although the Department of Justice has tried to stamp out online poker in the United States, it has not been done. There are still online poker sites that are open to US customers. And there will be more. In that respect, online poker is alive and well, especially in other parts of the world.
On flawed marketing, this is the issue that I have considered and buried the idea that I should write about it, yet it continually tugs at my thoughts and I believe it’s time to air it. The following observations are mine, mine alone, not to be construed in any other manner than the ramblings of a mad woman.
Originally when online poker hit the frontier, it began with one site that eventually lost credibility due to a glitch in the software that allowed a cheater to win large amounts of money and when he tried to cash out, he was obviously caught. It wasn’t the only issue that plagued Planet Poker, they had software developer problems and a myriad of other trials going on after they opened the first real money poker game to the public on January 1st, 1998. In 1999 Paradise Poker jumped head first into the market and overtook Planet Poker’s baby steps like their baby shoes were stuck in dried concrete to a basement floor.
I played Paradise Poker – and loved it. I really couldn’t stand the Planet Poker software or the games. But by 2004 Party Poker had overran the whole scene and everything went into a mega race it seemed, more and more poker sites popped up everywhere. I did love Party Poker too. I eventually left Paradise Poker for Party Poker – for good. When PokerStars came along, I wasn’t a big fan of the software and rarely played there. Party Poker was my pick until it left the US market.
The current list of online poker sites is carried at Poker Scout – they have stated these are real money sites and there are over 600 of them. At one point, some years ago, PokerWorks carried over 200 online poker sites as affiliates. And yes, it’s highly possible that some of these are skins but they are still viable poker rooms.
My opinion on flawed marketing.
Many older poker players (include me in that) will remember the old gas wars. I remember them when I was a kid, I still remember seeing signs in travels that advertised gas for a few cents less than the station down the street sold it at, causing the station down the street to drop his price a few cents lower, and the first guy had to drop his too if he wanted to stay competitive. It gets ugly. There’s no market left and no profit margin, everyone suffers…the consumer may think this is a big bonus but what else gets jacked up to take the place of lost income and who is profiting from it?
Flawed marketing happens when everyone is trying to get a slice of the pie and the only way they can do it is to offer a bonus or better prices for you to spend your time with them. Take the world as a whole and one has to consider there is a huge amount of money out there, obviously waiting to be scooped up by all the control freaks and big businesses that figure if they can wring one last penny out of your dead ass before it hits the coffin, they’re going to do it.
And so it is with poker…
Many years ago I dealt poker in Montana, in a seriously depressed area where a $20 bill would get you two bags of groceries, a tank of gas, and a night out at the local pub sucking down schooners of beer until you either gagged or passed out. That might be a slight exaggeration but it’s not far from the truth. Originally there was one poker room, then there were two, then three, then a few slots were introduced into the places because the state legalized them, then there were more poker rooms. Actually you didn’t have to have a room, you could apply for a table license and run a poker game in a bar if the bar OK’d it.
Let’s figure that the town I dealt in had around – stretching to the high end – 500 poker players (mostly occasional) when I first got into dealing in 1979 and the town – Missoula – was the hub of five valleys which brought people in for shopping with more choices, and it was a college town, had a railroad station, and a bus stop (right out the back door). As the competition got stiffer in bringing players into one poker room vs. letting them play somewhere else, the gas wars poker wars started…the ultimate beginning of flawed marketing although it wasn’t a concept developed in Missoula poker, it was surely happening everywhere else too in business in general.
One of the first things that happened was the Car Contest poker tournament at the Oxford and players had to accumulate points to be dealt one hand *shake the dice baby* to declare a winner. I think they qualified by making certain hands that earned them points. Although over the years in the same poker rooms, we had ‘hours played tournament freerolls’, etc. So it could have been any format to qualify for a shot to shake the dice for a car.
How much money do you think these players lost trying to make a hand that would win them points so they could be dealt one hand along with 21 others players to see who could catch the Card Fairy off guard lightning in a bottle and win that car? And how much money do you think the house might have made if they have not purchased the car (even with a special deal) and just took a normal, mind boggling 6% rake out of each pot? You’re not naive enough to believe there was a ton of action in those games trying to win points are you? Players checked, and checked, and checked, trying to draw a points hand. The qualifying period probably ran for three months to half a year, although I don’t remember the length of time because I wasn’t a dealer then, I was a bartender.
Are you even close to getting the picture of flawed marketing? You may disagree with me but let’s continue. When the car tournament was over, everyone went other places to play because they had bonus offerings, like: a $20 buy-in at noon will get you $25 but you have to play for one hour. More tournament freerolls were offered, more places tried to bring in more players, some loaning out money to players that went bust (you can never collect on this and they will go play somewhere else when they have money rather than come into your place knowing they have to pay you back), others took checks from players which were legal to cash for the player but not for the purpose of gambling, hence uncollectable in court.
New games were introduced. Everyone loves a new game to break the monotony but anyone with half a poker marketing brain knows that new games have a tendency to make players gamble and the money runs out too fast. Hence, busto players, no game. The ideal poker game is to have a nice steady influx of money coming into the game – either from new players taking seats or from players rebuying – to keep the game moving for hours so the house can pay the freight for being there. You aren’t one of those braindeads that think the house collects so much rake that they are making a killing, right? In live poker games, most poker rooms do not make anywhere near a killing, they keep players in the casino that play other games that the house does make a killing on – craps, roulette, slots, etc. Read The Cost of Doing Business!
Then to completely erase any possible way to continue with regular poker games, the flawed marketing campaign brings in Bad Beat Jackpots! Think about the size of the player pool in Missoula, Montana, in 1984ish. Perhaps a standard 500 players that rotate in and out of all of the rooms, some traveling poker players that drift through from Vegas, the South, CA, and other areas and stay for a week or three because they like the games and then move on, but all-in-all a small poker player base to draw from.
Think also about the pot limit law in Montana in that time period…$100…that was it. As written in Tango pages before, some counties/cities did not adhere to the pot limit law but Missoula definitely did. You really could never win. Take a 6% rake, throw in the fact that the best structured game for the $100 pot limit law was either $2-4 or $3-6 limit and unless you had the Card Fairy as your donkey that day, you weren’t going to beat the game. A good win might consist of $20-40 but how often could one do that under those circumstances? You’re on a good run, the cards are in your favor, players are dying to pay you off, and you can’t trap them into a pot where they pay and pay and pay. Add the fact that you normally only had one game to choose from in each poker room, and if you have two maniacs in your game, they could bust everyone in an hour or less…including you…and the game was over for the day/night. Oh yeah, and you were expected to tip. One hundred dollar bills didn’t just float down from the sky and most people had a buy-in of $20-40, there were obviously a few exceptions but we are talking ‘the regular working stiff, with a family to take care of, and bills to pay’ and those were the ones that hung precariously on the brink of breaking up a game. Lose their buy-in and they were gone unless they could borrow and there was never a long line of people waiting for a seat.
Continued tomorrow – check back