Cake Poker Reload

[Grummin]

Hi folks,

I wanted to speak to the comments in this thread so far.

Jah: The worst thing that could happen once we chose a name was for it to not evoke any reaction, good or bad. We needed a name that symbolized two things: Rewards and Fun. Cake by itself is a silly name. But personally, I was sold on it when I saw the logo. =)

Wise: Our Gold Cards were created to reward players directly for their ring game play. With the Gold Card 500, we've basically created a Ring Game Leaderboard with a $10,000 Prize Pool. We've given out thousands of dollars to date just on Gold Cards alone and all players need to do to collect them is play a ring game. Hell, on Monday, a player got a King of Clubs Gold Card on our $.10/$.20 table and now looks to be getting $400-$750 dollars on Oct 2nd when our first Gold Card 500 race completes. PLUS...he'll be able to get more when the Daily Lottery for Gold Cards gives up a prize for his King of Clubs.

I fully admit Gold Cards are nutty at first glance when you're used to playing on the rest of the sites. Yes, you might not get a lot of Gold Cards if you're playing low stakes games. But players who play $2/$4 and up see their table getting Gold Cards every 6-10 minutes and the highest games we've had going $10/$20 limit had them firing out every 5th hand.

Wise, Kim, Orentha: The fact we're light on players is no secret. From 5-6 ET to midnight ET, we usually have 4-6 tables with players on them. Much of this is due to the fact we haven't marketed the site except to some smaller forums and a banner now and then on 2+2. Since we built this site from scratch, it was vital to the long-term success of the project that we take measured steps to insure our servers, database, security, game, etc were all very stable before moving to the next stage.

After being live for a little over 2 months, we've had plenty of time to listen to players, add little features and to get to know everyone. We regularly hit the tables to offer impromptu bounties or just chat with players. Since we both built and operate the site, we're always interested to hear what folks are thinking. We won't be able to do that as much once we hit the gas with big ad campaigns and larger promotions to drive the traffic up.

With that said, we still are giving away over $13,000 in prizes each month for those folks who are helping us out in these early days. Our $10,000 Gold Card 500 has been a huge hit, because it's basically a leader board for Ring Game Players. The guy who won first place got $2,500 and he did it in 3 days of play, just for playing at ring games. Same for the 2nd place person who earned $2,000..she did it 6 days after the race completed. The regular grinders here at 2+2 would have cleaned up on this race, but again we're too new for them and they didn't understand the opportunity. Which wasn't all bad, because many of our regular players got a good shot at winning some of the cash because they were in the know. =)

Comments about low traffic or missing games like Stud (which are in the works now as we've completed our stablility milestones) are welcome comments to us, because we're able to address them when we're ready. Right now though, we're simply trying to insure that people who play tons of poker are happy with our rewards and features. And, we're having fun getting to know our guests.

Doug

[Pokeraddict]

Doug,

I've given your poker room several shots and the players are friendly and I can certainly see how the promos would be something a novice would enjoy. As mentioned the software could use some tweaks, especially the lack of a waitlist.

Keep up the good work in the forums, your involvement in the forums help you more then you can know, especially since you're willing to take such hard criticism in stride.

[Grummin]

[ QUOTE ]
Doug,

I've given your poker room several shots and the players are friendly and I can certainly see how the promos would be something a novice would enjoy. As mentioned the software could use some tweaks, especially the lack of a waitlist.

Keep up the good work in the forums, your involvement in the forums help you more then you can know, especially since you're willing to take such hard criticism in stride.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks PA,

I've been here for over a year both lurking and contributing. I've asked a ton of questions and gotten some damn good feedback.

Two features we have on Cake I attribute directly to comments and threads here on 2+2:

Data-mining Safeguards Stand alone sites like ours won't survive if sharks kill our casual players. Pokertracker is a great tool for your own play, but long-term tracking of opponent's data is simply not fair (especially since that data can be shared by sites like poker-edge). Useful or not, it's simply not good business for any online site these days to not take steps to offer players protection against this. This is why we designed our entire system on Cake to allow players to change their nickname every 7 days.

Web-shareable Hand Histories: Every single hand that's played on Cake can be turned into a Webpage with just two button clicks. Clicking Last Hand, players can see a graphical hand history, or GHH. Inside this, players can click on Create Shareable Webpage and they will get a webpage like the following:

http://cakepoker.com/HandHistory/?Ha...zYjFxMfAwMY%3d

Players can only see one hand at a time via this method, but it's a great way to pass along a bad beat or a great hand. The data comes straight from our database, so there's no fudging the facts.

This Web Hand History has proven extremely useful in proving our random number generator and shuffling algorythm is accurate as well. I recently had a different forum user complain that we were dealing too many suited flops for his taste.

Understandibly, I know that when players are having a tough run, some go looking for answers other than just luck or their play. There's COUNTLESS threads about this here on 2+2. So we decided to put our money where our mouth is and allow ANYONE to post direct proof of their theories with these GHH links.

For that poster, I went back and pulled up the last 300 hands he'd been dealt (which he could also see via his HH files on the pc). I showed him the 16 hands where the flop was suited over those 300 hands, which was within the expected 5% range of odds of that happened. I even showed him where 2% of them had players with flopped flush, again, in the expected range. I posted links to each hand and asked him to post any more HH where the flop was suited in those 300 hands, to which he had to admit there were none. This was done for his benefit to calm his concerns as well as let everyone else know in the forum we take our work very seriously. In the age where forum comments can indeed sway public opinion about a site, more transparancy is required from poker sites and I've pushed hard to make sure we do this.

Doug

[Scorcho]

What ring games currently have the most traffic right now?

[Ron Burgundy]

Doug,

Does your site offer, or have plans to offer rakeback?

[Grummin]

[ QUOTE ]
Doug,

Does your site offer, or have plans to offer rakeback?

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Ron,

That's a damn good question. Thanks for asking it…(takes deep breath)

Cake's been built by us from scratch (pun intended). The very same team that built the game is also running the day-to-day operations. We're not affiliated with some sports book (legal collective sigh there) or casino, so all our operating revenue comes from the site itself.

As I've participated in discussions over the past year here at 2+2, I've paid very close attention to the anger and frustration that players have voiced to poker sites over spending thousands a month on rake and getting [censored] support or a t-shirt for their troubles. Affiliates saw this anger as well and starting to offer players some of their commissions back to players in order to have an incentive. Which would have been fine, except the bigger affiliates who made bigger commissions could offer bigger rakeback and so on.

With the introduction of WSEX’s rake-free site (which they hope gets you sports betting or casino betting against the house), the discussion about rakeback has gone to its logical end. Those looking for rakeback play at this site and will be hard pressed to find Cake enticing if that’s truly their only requirement. But before you write-off Cake as a non-rakeback site, you might want to take a closer look at what we’re really offering.

I’m a game designer by trade and I’ve shipped over 5 PC titles in the past 8 years for companies like Atari, Disney and THQ. My first task when being asked to create a new poker site was to study ALL the other engines out there, which I did. From the defunct sites like Zero Rake, Tropics Poker and Stacks Poker to the newest sites like PKR and Mansion. I found one thing lacking on each and every site: fun.

There’s an impression in the poker world that most Americans who play poker are in it for the money only, while the Europeans are mainly in it for the gamble. I suggest that all players who plop their butt in a chair for 2-10 hours a day at a computer are all the same: they want to win and be entertained. Like it or not, if you put a video camera on the side of someone’s computer playing Party or playing World of Warcraft (without seeing the screen), you couldn’t tell the difference. Players watch the screen and hope for something incredible to happen in both situations.

So, to please BOTH the rakeback crowd looking for rewards and the casual players looking for fun, we created the Gold Card and Cake Slice programs. Both of these promotions are linked to the amount of play and rake you generate for a site, with the Cake Slice program being predictable and the Gold Card program being more random and fun in nature.

Gold Cards are awarded at each table when a certain amount of rake is accumulated. Some are more common (like the 2’s) and not worth as much, while some (like the Aces) are worth a lot because there are not as many of them. Every single day, Cake offers up Cash for a Gold Card(s) and if you have the card, you get the cash. It’s that simple. Each week, we also have Gold Card buy-in tournaments where if you have a certain card, you can buy-in to a Giveaway tournament for cash. We also have Giveaway tournaments for Cake Slices each week, including a $1,000 Giveaway for just 5 Cake Slices.

Whoever earns all 52 of the Gold Cards will win $52,000 and if no one claims it when we run out of Gold Cards, we’ll still award it to the player who has the most unique Gold Cards in their collection.

And if that’s not enough, last month we launched the $10,000 Gold Card 500, a promotion where players who earned Gold Cards also got Miles in the Gold Card 500 race. We paid out $2,500 to first place, $2,000 for 2nd place and so on for the top ten players. I did a study on SxCAnGeL (our 2nd place winner) and she more than tripled what would have been her rakeback by getting 2nd place PLUS she has redeemed 15+ Gold Cards for over $160 in cash and she still has 50+ Gold Cards and 150 Cake Slices. Her highest Gold Card during the race was a Jack and it put her into the pack early on.

I can’t speak for her, but I’d suggest she’s very happy with her return on Cake so far.

Our Cake Slices basically are frequent player points, but with a twist. You earn one of our Cake Slices when you earn 120 Cake Points. But from that point on, the number of Cake Points to earn another Cake Slice diminishes, all the way down to 70 Cake Points. Get to that in a calendar month and you not only receive a Bonus Free Cake Slice, you can continue to earn Cake Slices at 70 Cake Points until the end of the month. Cake Slices will get you items in our Cake Shop (opening in the next day or so), but most players use them for the buy-in to tournaments.

Now, for the hard core poker player, this may all seem gimmicky, but the rewards are there for the taking. The player in 11th place in our current Gold Card 500 has over 30 Gold Cards and even if he doesn’t get into the top ten by Monday, he’ll still have all the Gold Cards left over to cash in for the Daily Lotteries. And that’s the true nature of what Cake is all about: Giving back to the players, even when they aren’t playing. Gold Cards can come to you at a ring game table even when you’ve FOLDED your hand pre-flop without contributing to the pot, you can win Daily Lottery prizes even if you’ve not played in months and all the Gold Cards/Cake Slices stay in your account without requirements of play on your part.

Casual players have already found us and they seem to be having a blast with these promos. But if we offered rakeback, not only would we have trouble funding these promos and our bills, we’d quiet possibly be opening the door for much stronger players to bleed our weaker players dry. This is also why we implemented the data-mining security feature which allows players to change their nickname every 7 days.

Apologies for the lengthy reply, but Cake’s a very new site and as such, it takes a little explaining.

On sites that offer little else than frequent player points, I too would be asking for rakeback and there's nothing wrong with that. We proudly offer our promos and welcome comments or suggestions from anyone who feel they are not up to snuff.

Doug

[Grummin]

[ QUOTE ]
What ring games currently have the most traffic right now?

[/ QUOTE ]

As of today at 8pm ET, I see two $.10/.20 NL and two $.25/$.50 NL games going. We generally see a $1/2 and $3/6 FL game most nights and have seen a $5/10 and $10/20 (short handed) fire up off and on.

Many players are sort of waiting in the wings right now, waiting for Monday night at 8pm ET to compete in the next Gold Card 500 race. Since we've changed the race to be only for 7 days and now players don't have to collect 500 miles in order to win part of the $2,500 each week, I've been told they're lurking until that begins.

We went nuts for the first 6 days of the first Gold Card 500 race and had 8-10 tables full, but when 1st and second place got nailed, it sorta took the wind from folk's sails. Everyone wants to be in 1st, even though 3rd place paid $1,500 dollars just for playing at ring games. Nutty.

[orentha]

I personally like the name, and like how you've started the site. I like your promotions so far too, very inventive... maybe not for the standard 8tabling pro, but the gold card race and gold cards in general are a very cool idea...

as for the low traffic, i wasn't taking a shot at the site or anything, it's just true, the bonus clears horribly at the limits that run on the site. that's just the way it is... so clearing a $500 bonus there is very very hard to do...

also, I've emailed support more than a couple times, about some problems and technical things, and they haven't been fixed as far a I can tell...
Mucked cards at showdown are not shown in the hand historys... they used to be, and then one day then weren't. And haven't been shown for a while now.

All I got from support was "we're looking into it"
and that's fine, but that was easily a month ago... ???

[Grummin]

[ QUOTE ]
I personally like the name, and like how you've started the site. I like your promotions so far too, very inventive... maybe not for the standard 8tabling pro, but the gold card race and gold cards in general are a very cool idea...

as for the low traffic, i wasn't taking a shot at the site or anything, it's just true, the bonus clears horribly at the limits that run on the site. that's just the way it is... so clearing a $500 bonus there is very very hard to do...

also, I've emailed support more than a couple times, about some problems and technical things, and they haven't been fixed as far a I can tell...
Mucked cards at showdown are not shown in the hand historys... they used to be, and then one day then weren't. And haven't been shown for a while now.

All I got from support was "we're looking into it"
and that's fine, but that was easily a month ago... ???

[/ QUOTE ]

Didn't feel it was a shot at all. It's a solid fact and you are correct stating it. It will be harder for someone who wants to simply jump in and give'r on a $5/$10 FL game to clear a bonus, since they have to wait for one to hit.

As for the mucked hands, are you speaking about the GHH (Graphical Hand History that you get when you click Last Hand) or the hand history file on the PC? We fixed an issue with the GHH about 3 weeks ago and I've not heard about another issue. Hit me with it and I'll have it checked into.

Doug

[orentha]

[ QUOTE ]
As for the mucked hands, are you speaking about the GHH (Graphical Hand History that you get when you click Last Hand) or the hand history file on the PC? We fixed an issue with the GHH about 3 weeks ago and I've not heard about another issue. Hit me with it and I'll have it checked into.

[/ QUOTE ]

well, i just verified that this isn't fixed yet ???
and I am talking about the GHH

i just emailed support about it...