Mr. Agent Smith

What if you build a rake-free Poker-site and nobody would come? Check out betraiser.com!

Mr. Agent Smith — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:26:21 +0000

Every (non-beginner) poker-player is complaining about rake and is chasing good rake-back-deals and perhaps even signing sponsorship-deals to minimize these costs. But wouldn’t you think that if you built a rake-free Poker-site that customers would lure in like crazy? Of course, the site would need to offer all the basic games and features, should be very stable and usability should not suck. Marketing and Sales efforts would be limited to posting this information in Social Media and Forums to get the ball rolling. Right? betraiser Poker is imho all of the above.

Betraiser operates since a reasonable amount of time (on 2+2 poker forum a thread about this site has been started beginning of 2008) but it is does not seem to be looking very good for them. First, to be precise it is not of course totally free of charge – they charge 10% fee upon withdrawal (but only for winnings you have made), which is still way less than any other Poker-site out there. The forum thread on 2+2 is particularly interesting as one aspect seems to surface even amongst avid online-poker experts. Trust. Should you trust such a site? It is licensed where? On the Netherland Antilles? They have Internet there? The list of questions goes on, but one factor is of course highlighting the catch-22 of launching a new Poker-Site: They have no players? Why? And this although they are rake-free?

But now, just quickly to my review which I want to keep short as the above points really overshadow any other aspects: The site is very basic, payment does not work directly but you have to have a moneybookers or neteller account, poker-software is not on par with other major players but nothing to completely push you away from rake-free poker and a minus for us Europeans is that tournament-schedules (freerolls) are optimized for U.S. customers. But all in all a solid site, considering the volume it gets.

I’ll be staying on this site (especially their freerolls and added-cash tourneys are heavily under-subscribed) and post any major findings. But I wonder how they can operate this poker-room much longer when revenues very likely have no chance of covering costs.

Marketing-guru Peter Drucker said that the purpose of a corporation is Marketing and Innovation – all the rest are costs. With regards to betraiser it seems they underestimated the importance of marketing (they perhaps believed the story will spread on its own, which is not completely unreasonable given the pricing model of the site) and it is questionable whether this new pricing model is innovation enough. Pricing can be an innovation in some instances (e.g. Google offering free point-to-point navigation, thereby making competition irrelevant) but Poker is different: The “cost” for players is on one hand rake and on the other – and more relevant – how much they lose or win against opponents.

Nuff said. Check it out for yourself: www.betraiser.com

First experience with Sportsbetting at Interwetten

Mr. Agent Smith — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:09:45 +0000

Considering the comparable low revenue Interwetten has, which means less resources for product development, the site and especially the sportsbetting-part of Interwetten is very comparable to the big guys in terms of product features. In terms of betting-offering and live-bets and live-streams of course they have less to offer as high quantities in these areas correlate more with the traffic resp. revenue a sportsbetting-site gets.

My first experience was short and a little bitter. I think what happened to me is a very typical thing and perhaps I (the consumer) should have know better, but then again I really believe that a company should serve and teach the customer of their offering and thus ensure no misunderstandings take place and if they do, the company who offers the service sorts out any misunderstandings.

Ok, what happened? Again, very typical I think. I place a bet on an Icehockey-Match that Team A would have 5 or more goals. Team A scored 5 goals, however 1 of these 5 goals was scored in overtime. You can see where this is going. The bet did not have a description outlining this (so I as a customer just have to know it) and Customer Services “kindly” referred me to the Terms and Conditions.

So, what should a company do in that case? Pay out the bet and lose 13 EUR or refer to the Terms and Conditions and keep the 13 EUR. I guess the answer is an easy one and very rational, but very often companies do not act very rational.

Bye bye Interwetten.

win2day.at / BOSS Media Poker Review

Mr. Agent Smith — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:18:27 +0000

I did play a short session of Poker yesterday on www.win2day.at (Austrian only site) and the BOSS Media Poker Client received a small update.

Here is a quick overview (this is of course specific to win2day, but might be deployed in similar fashion on other BOSS Media sites):

- Choose seat. Finally you can choose your seat on the table. What is confusing a bit though is that the icon for selecting the seat is right at the bottom, right seat which at first seemed like a feature specific for that seat. Anyways, it works.

- Blackjack Link. Like many other gambling-portals offering Poker and Casino (and perhaps more) there is now a permanent link to Blackjack. This could however have been done much better – currently it only links to a webpage. It really should launch Blackjack in a neat little Pop-up so you can play this game besides your poker-session.

- Fullscreen-Mode not as pixelated anymore. This is better than before, but because BOSS seems to be using scaled-images the quality of the zoomed image is never 100% clear. Anyways, much better than no change.

I guess there are more changes, but these were the few ones which were obvious after one short session. And in case you were wondering: I played on 0.25/0.50, bought in 50 and lost it all. Played the correct hands but got unlucky. Next time.

Partygaming Full Year Figures

Mr. Agent Smith — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:38:01 +0000

Partygaming has released their full year figures for the year 2009:

http://www.partygaming.com/prty/en/investors/ifinancialnews/fn_pressreleases?ref=260

Notable changes happened in Poker: minus 28% in revenue in that segment which to a certain amount can be attributed to a stronger US$ compared to the Pound and Euro. Why is this an issue? Well, PartyPoker’s customer base is in UK and Europe and PartyGaming is accounting in US$. So any change in conversion to US$ will affect the firms revenue positively or negatively. It can be argued however that over the long term changes in exchange rate should not affect the revenue as customers will shift up or down their blind-levels once they themselves realize this change in value but over the short-term this fact is not that obvious to the player base.

Amazingly though is the fact that Partygaming has kept a stable EBITDA, which in turn automatically increased their EBITDA-margin from 28% to 30% which is a very good ratio for the online gambling industry.

Birth

Mr. Agent Smith — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:00:53 +0000

This is the birth-date of my blog. This blog will be about Online Gambling, Poker, Casino and Sportsbettting and will critically review all aspects of Gambling-Sites from an insider perspective (yes, really!). I have myself negotiated contracts with most of the important software vendors, I have worked in the industry for many years and have been involved in some serious Poker-Hands (hate those pocket Aces!). It is time to give some of my know-how back to the community to make a more informed decision of where one should place their precious money. I do appreciate feedback – I like good feedback, but really helpful is critical feedback. Hit me!

And yes, there will also be links to sites I strongly recommend because they are outstanding and have been given the quality seal of Mr. Agent Smith.