With your permission... (From July 2005. Edit/MH.)

[Grummin]

Hi folks,

As you’ve all been around the block many times with poker sites and their crazy promotions, I’m looking for some feedback on this promotion. Does everything make sense?

<font color="orange">Guide to Gold Cards:</font>
You win Gold Cards by playing at real money ring games. The first two hole cards in any game you are dealt cards are eligible to turn into Gold Cards at the end of the hand. If you win, your name plate will get a gold graphic around it and you'll see the Gold Card move from the dealer to you. At this point, the Gold Card is yours and it is put into your Collection.

<font color="orange">Process of Gold Card Awarding</font>
The Gold Card Vault starts with 260,000 Series 1 Gold Cards inside it. The most available card is the 2 of clubs and the most rare card is the Ace of Spades and all other cards are weighted in between.

Once a table reaches a certain amount of rake (let's say $8 for argument's sake), it puts in a call to the Gold Card Vault. Then the Gold Card Vault chooses a random number and pulls out a Gold Card. That Gold Card is then compared against every card that was dealt to players at the start of that hand: win, lose or fold (even if the hand doesn't go to showdown, a player might still win a Gold Card). If it doesn't find a match, the table tries again on the next hand to make a match and will continue to do so until a randomly drawn Gold Card card matches a Gold Card dealt to a player at the table.

All players at the table will see who the player is who won the Gold Card, but they might not see what the Gold Card was. For example, if a player folded pre-flop and ended up having the winning Gold Card, we do not show the card to the table (all other players will see the Back of the Gold Card). But if a player shows cards during the showdown and one of their hole cards happens to be the winner, then we show the actual Gold Card for everyone to see.

To use your Gold Card, visit the Gold Card Awards page. Every single day a new Gold Card Daily Lottery will be announced.

<font color="orange">Gold Card Awards Screen</font>
You'll see today's Gold Cards that are needed to redeem the announced prize AND the time remaining for you to claim the prize (usually a 24 hour window).

<font color="orange">Gold Card Collection</font>
Your Collection screen shows both the type of Gold Cards you have AND the multiples of the cards if you have more than one of one type.

Every Gold Card you collect gives you more chances to win. And every Gold Card that's redeemed means that yours will become more rare. Since there’s a set number of each type of card, whatever Gold Cards get redeemed are destroyed and whoever didn’t redeem their Gold Cards of that type now has a more rare card then before. And when a Gold Card becomes more rare, the prize awards for that card will eventually climb.

<font color="orange">It's basically Let's Make a Deal. Will you turn in your pair of 2's for $10 or hold out for a better offer?</font>

Suggestions:

Thoughts? Too complicated? Comments?

[Tuff_Fish]

Allow me to weigh in on a subject near and dear to my heart.

I am a fish. AKA "Tuff Fish" (do a search on here, I am famous) I am exactly the player you need on your site. I work all day, I am not a poker pro, or even a semi pro. I play for fun and perhaps some profit.

I absolutely hate having to deal with multitabling pro grinders. I suspect the niche you need for success is to advertise very heavily the fact that your poker site IS NOT a haven for multitabling grinders. I propose that you limit play to one table only, and further more, take steps to ensure that the grinders don't hinder your games while playing 6 tables on some other site.

Then you educate the recreational players to the fact that they are "safe from the sharks" on your site.

The average 2+2er here will cry "heresy" but your interests are not their interest. If you cater to the multitablers, you will be indistingusable from all the other sites. Any fish who wanders in will be decimated , they will get skinned and never return, and you won't be very successful.

Don't worry about traffic. If you advertise and promote sufficiently to get fish, you will get all the 2+2ers too. They will just constantly whine about not being able to take the full 40 seconds to get around to folding their 93o while playing the other 5 tables.

BTW, I submit that the rake paid by a site full of multitabling grinders is fractions of what a site full of recreational players would pay. What do you want a room full of? If you have good fast software, like UB, you can easily get in a hundred hands an hour if everyone is focused on one table only.

The rest is the basics. Good, I mean REALLY good software, I have seen little of that, good customer service, I have seen less of that, Fast, action filled games, rarely seen on any of the mainstream sites, Fast payouts, a big problem some places, and lots of promotions designed for the fish, NOT the grinders.

Just my two cents worth.

Tony

[MicroBob]

But a site needs so many more single-tablers to make up for the inability to multi-table.


And if you have a site that only has 2 or 3 tables going at a time then you're just hurting yourself if you are preventing the handful of people who want to multi-table from playing in more than one game.


You bring up some interesting points that it could be a worthwhile approach to say 'safe from the multi-tabling, always-timing-out sharks' (I know that they aren't always timing-out, but that's the perception out there).
But I'm just not sure it will bring in that many more players to make up for what you are losing.


Lets face it, there are only so many players (or potential players) out there and there are lots and lots of sites.
And only a handful of those sites can ever be really big.

Many are trying to offer bonuses and rakeback out the wazoo and they STILL can't bring in very many players.
Especially now that WPEX is grabbing some of them away.

[smartalecc5]

Why not make a middle ground, and make it 3 max tables?

[Grummin]

Agreed. 3 Max Ring games sounds fair.

I guess the Gold Card promotion is flawless? *hint hint*

[Tuff_Fish]

[ QUOTE ]
Agreed. 3 Max Ring games sounds fair.

I guess the Gold Card promotion is flawless? *hint hint*

[/ QUOTE ]

The gold card promotion is a gimmick, just like hundreds of other gimmicks used by struggling card rooms to try to lure a dwindling base of new players.

If you are to succeed, you will have to be different in SOME significant way.

WSEX is rake free. Party advertises a lot, Stars has excellent software and great tournaments. A couple have "name" players supposedly affiliated with the site. The rest are mostly distinguished by poor software, even poorer customer service, and a miniscule player base.

I proposed one way I thought would lure and, more importantly, RETAIN new recreational players.

3 Tables, 6 tables, same thing to the recreational player.

He comes in, plays a day or two, loses, notices that the same tough player that took him yesterday is sitting at ALL 3 TABLES, leaves never to return. (you are going to have to really grow your site before you have enough tables that this is not obvious.)

Suit yourself. Online poker is killing the golden goose by letting the multitabling TAGs clean out the recreational base.

Another thing, a lot of rec players like quick action. When it becomes obvious that the play is slow because of waiting on the multitabler to fold, it becomes VERY irritating. (This is my biggest peeve. I actually don't care how many tables anybody plays, but don't leave the table hanging. Imagine sitting in a B&amp;M and some joker jumps up from the table to run over and check out his hand at another table. Yeah, the other players wouldn't mind the wait at all)

OK, good luck. When you have 10 tables of $2/4 6 max NL, I will check back. If the games are fast paced and action filled, I will stay, if they are tight, slow, and filled with multitabling TAGS and rocks.... see ya, forever.

Tony

[FatalError]

2 check boxes

- auto post blinds/ante
- auto straddle

[Grummin]

Hi folks,

We're trying out a new fun promotion and I'm curious as to anyone's feedback on it. Our Gold Card 500 for $10,000 banner is in on the left side of this page this month. As we just started it yesterday, I'm always looking for initial feedback from people here to see what your thoughts are on it: good or bad.

Doug

[$Robbed$]

I would like to be able to take money out of my stack while still seated. Sometimes while multitabling I go broke on one table and quadruple up on another. I hate having to stand up and then find my tables again.
Plus something that doesn't really matter but I like...When support has the emails (Party) that are pretty much a template with your name inserted it pisses me off to no end. I got an email from WSEX the other day where it stated ,and im quoting here..."Lol. Ok deal ;-D") Of course it had the signature, but this made it feel like I was actually talking to a real person and that they gave a [censored] what I had to say.

[Grummin]

Thanks Robbed,

I appreciate your suggestion. I'm wondering though if you have any feedback on the Cake Poker 500 promotion I put together?

We're close to the 2nd spot being filled and I'm looking to improve the promotion before we run the next one. =)

Doug