Back in America!
The trip was extremely successful but I'm happy to be around for the WSOP in person.
It's an exciting time for my team of pro's and for the entire poker community in general.
I will be playing some events as well since I got the wireless card for the laptop I can run off during breaks to do emails/phone calls : ) I'll do most of the work prior to the noon start times and mostly play weekend events to be realistic because there's so much on my mind and 100's of emails that come in each day it will be hard to focus but exciting to be around the action.
How can I truly know what poker players want if I dont get out there and be involved in the scene, is the way that I look at it. I've played the game consistently for a decade but it evolves so quickly that I have to continuously listen to the pro's on the team and be out there myself researching everything on & offline.
The London photoshoot was so cool. Most of the models from this video and the last one will be around before the Main Event. We're sponsoring a bunch of different events around town and will be apart of as many as possible 4th of July weekend right before the Main Event.
All of our videos & the model blogs can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/user/VictoryPokernet
The London Photoshoot had 2 themes.
1 was a "Strip Poker Game" where Sara Underwood, Emma Glover, Rosie Jones & Victoria Moore were playing vs. Antonio Esfandiari, Andrew "Good2cu" Robl & Keith Gipson. Most of the shots are of the girls losing but we also did some with the guys with no shirts on to cater to the female fans.
2nd scene was based on the idea that online poker players sit around there house all day in their underwear... So we did various scenes of the female magazine models laying around playing poker on their laptops in their underwear : )
Also did multiple individual photos which will continuosly be added to the victorypoker.net site as well as the fan page
http://www.facebook.com/victorypokerfan?ref=ts
The morning after the London shoot we flew to Prague for the I-Gaming Convention.
Victory had a cool corner booth there and I set it up like a mini tv studio to give a different type of effect. It worked out well since Sara Underwood/Emma Glover and the poker pro's were all there to greet the affiliates. As I said before, affiliates are the most critical part of growing the business because they bring the most consistent and valuable players to the site. I have 100's of affilates already which is what I can accredit some of the epic growth of the Everleaf Network too but there is still thousands to work with in all the countries around the world.
We went to Calvin Ayre's birthday party on the first night of the convention which was so crazy. He owns Bodog.com which is one of the largest gaming brands, ever.
He had everything from pigs to girls wrestling in chocolate...
The convention went WAY better then expected because we had an 8 page COVER STORY on the industry magazine that works with all 10,000 affiliates. So the 2,000 affiliates that walked in the door all received the magazine, which made things go much better since they were able to read our story and where I'm coming from on the industry.
The last night of the convention in Prague we went to dinner with Coinflip.com owners who are huge in the Scandinavian markets. I sat next to Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies which caused for quite an interesting dinner! We were making non-stop thinking bets at 1,000 euro per bet on some of the craziest things possible.
The game that many of you have heard of is called "Lodden Thinks"
Antonio was 2 seats away from me and was dying to be apart of the action, but there were just so many bets happening so quickly that he was only able to be apart of 3 of the 25 or so bets that Ziigmund & I ended up having.
Wildest Lodden Thinks questions were...
How many 5 year old children would it take to kill ziigmund in a UFC ring with no weapons involved. He's allowed to fight back and the door is open so there can be any amount that it takes, but what that number is.
The real number is irrelevant obviously because we'll never know, but we bet on what Sara thought.
Another one was how much we would have to pay the waiter to be arrested & taken to jail immediately for 6 months. He would not be harmed while in jail & it would not go on his record so he could get a job again when he was released.
Last example: How much his famous friend at the table would have to be paid to fly home that night & NOT sleep with his girlfriend of 3 years for a 90 day period without being able to explain the reasoning to her, ever...
This caused for an interesting discussion afterwards to say the least!
We then flew back a few days ago so that the pro's could prepare for the WSOP.
Sara Underwood is going to play multiple events as well, she's been training super hard so I hope something good happens for her.
I signed Odonkor1 and his highstakes friend Erik Backlund from Sweden last week bringing my total to over 20 signings after just 16 weeks.
There have been a ton of major pro's that have discussed signing with us since the WSOP started a few days ago but I'm trying to pick characters that fit and am more interested in International players at this point since I have the 3rd largest team of pro's in the industry already.
There are dozens of radio shows/magazines/websites/etc. that I'm sponsoring & advertising with over the course of the WSOP so I'm excited to see what happens with the brand and I hope that some of the crew can win some bracelets this summer!
I wish you all continued success in poker and in life.
Two Plus Two
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