Agreed on this. I think it would be cool to see the challenges listed in the lobby alongside the cash games. Like you could see that there's two $10 challenges in the queue and one $25, and maybe a placeholder for an empty queue.

Also, on a different topic, I hope that SkillBet really invests a lot in advertising. This is a really fun game of poker and given the legal environment right now, with sufficient advertising I think this could really take off. But I think that once the feds legalize poker that if Skillbet doesn't already have a critical mass that it will die out. With all the investors they should go full bore on ads: e.g., superbowl.

sup!

Agreed. I think they should create a new tab called "Winner Take All Challenges" and put it there instead of the button on the top right where it's currently located. It's also nice to know if there is queue of games.

That space could be used instead to advertise the refer a friend bonus.

The issue with trying to increase Challenge traffic is the concern that it might cannibalize Live game traffic.

Seems like Live games need good traffic more than Challenges.

Would you prefer traffic moving from Live to Challenges? (Of course we want more traffic for both!)

Note: I could certainly be wrong. Maybe this could sort of make the Challenges feel a bit more social (as you could see others playing them)

Is the AI different for real money vs. practice money?

Kinda agree. They are currently advertising heavily here on 2p2. Superbowl ads cost over a million for a 30 second spot, I think even if they had that type of advertising budget it would be much better spent on WPT, Poker After Dark, type shows that are very cheap and poker targeted.

The thing is 2p2ers know that you can still play poker from the US and, for all practical purposed, the act of playing online is and never was explicitly illegal. The conception of the general American public, however, is that it's now totally illegal. So if skillbet could hammer home the idea that poker is back, 100% legal, and you can use paypal again, I think that would be effective.

100% the same

Why does it matter to you guys if live games have more traffic than challenges? To me both are fun and I doubt it would "cannibalize" live game action.

As much as I would like to know my opponent for the challenges first, it gives the person going second (who knows who they are playing) a huge advantage. Therefore, I'm in favor of making them more visible but keeping the opponent unknown until after all 30 hands are played.

The reason I think Live traffic is more important is that you MUST have traffic for Live games (or you simply cannot play). You do not need traffic for Challenges.

I'm not saying Challenge traffic is unimportant -- just less important than Live games.

Care to elaborate on your strategy for beating the bots?

I would add that perhaps part of the game is playing in the opposite manner as your opponent.

If I may so bold as to categorize the different ways one is able to play a given hand as being on a scale of high to low variance then it will make my illustration more clear. A winning strategy for the skillbet cash game could be to play each hand in the opposite variance style as your opponent is playing. If your opponent is playing his hands hard then you can play your same hands slow and vice versa. Then the game could be played like a game of rock paper scissors were the one choosing the most exploitive style to play based on their opponents style and tendencies wins out.

Or perhaps because of the super low number of hands that are played per match the aforementioned strategy is not applicable? Thoughts?

^I've noticed that happen a little, although while there are no outright fish, for the most part people's strategy remains fairly static and unaffected by how you are playing.

To some extent you are correct though, if at hand 27 you have you opponent 2 buy-ins in make-up (i.e. they've maxed out their losses and only hope of not losing the max are to somehow pull ahead by 2 buy-ins) then it's pretty important to see what their strategy is to recoup that hole (shoving AIPF or trying to play post and build pots that way, or just not realizing they should be going wild) and play the same.

Under "normal" conditions the winner is still decided not by some leveling war vs. your opponents but simply by who knows how to beat the computer opponents best.

Do you not see the banners on 2+2? I see a lot more players on now than a month ago. Personally this seems a lot safer than a lot of other sites.

I got through 100 $1.50 + .28 challenges and below are some stats I accumulated and some observations/questions to the forum (yep - I'm a nerd and kept track of this stuff). Not sure if any of this is interesting but I'm posting anyway.

• Hands: 3,000 (duh)
• My "winrate" against the bots: 16.40 bb/100
• Opponent "winrate" against the bots: -53.55 bb/100
• My total tokens "won" (vs. the bots): 984.04
• Opponents total tokens "won" (vs the bots): -3213.25
• # of unique opponents: 37
  
• My win-loss: 53-47. Not good enough to beat the rake, but I was much improved the last 35-ish games as I started to get the hang of things.

A few observations: 3k hands and 100 challenge matches certainly are not "long term", but beating the rake at this level ain't easy (at least for me). And... while it doesn't take very long to play 30 hand challenges, it seems like it will take awhile to get to a sample size that matters.

What is everyone's thoughts on a) how many challenges make an accurate sample size, and b) does the winrate vs. bots even matter?

My thinking is that if I have a better winrate against the bots than my opponents do, over the longterm I'll be a winner so I've been focusing on improving my winrate and not worrying about how individual challenges turn out. Not sure if that is worthy logic or if I should focus on how best to beat the "typical" opponent vs. beating the bots.

Also - when trying to "multi-table", I've found that that a few times when I went to open up another challenge, I was not presented with a $1.50 challenge and inadvertantly played a $5.00 challenge. This should be changed - if skillbet doesn't want us to play a bunch of challenges at one level, they should still include the text for $1.50 and when you click on it say "no more available at this time" or something.

Wow, I love this! Just played a $3 matchup and got berated by my opponent because "all u do is fold" while he was playing every single hand. Please, please let this catch on with John Q. Fish.

Ok filled out sign up form and everything was checked yet no response when I hit continue.

What the heck.

^pm me or add my on skype (from my 2p2 profile info) I can try and help you sort it out.

Thanks Quinn! What's your user name? Maybe try again. I have not heard that issue before...

yeah... that's a great strategy on the site right now -- given how crazy most people play...

I have similar numbers to what you listed. I might be better off just getting blinded out :P

its tricky tho bc the computer opponents play so bad post flop its tempting to play a ton of hands

I just noticed this, honestly I've seen Lacey in her undies for weeks but never even noticed what the ads were for, might want to rethink that a bit. I mean I am female so I doubt I looked as closely as the guys did but still. I'm not saying get rid of Lacey in her undies but somehow make the purpose of the ads more obvious. Just my personal experience. I actually found the site through the threads and not the ads.

This does seem like an interesting concept though and I may have to look into it further. Do you allow player to player transfers, LOL just had to say that.

Not right now at least.

On a serious note, I see this being very appealing to rec players who are thrilled to make an extra $100 a month but is there any chance for someone to make any real money? I don't mean thousands like pre BF but say $500 to $1K a week on average?

Terrific Point!

This is something we've thought about a lot -- without coming to firm conclusions. We are developing several points of view:

(1) People like Lacey -- shocker
(2) "100% Legal Poker" sounds like all the illegal sites (ironically)
(3) "Legal in 28 States" sounds better (i.e., more believable and interests people in seeing if they are in those states)
(4) The "Challenge Your Friends to Win $10 Free" works well.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

I would add that saying it is 100% legal is a bit audacious and possibly even untrue unless there is a U.S. judge that agrees with you.

Former head of the US Department of Justice Internet Gaming Division agrees with us. He led the development of the DOJ's Interent gaming policy and enforced it. Having said that I'm not sure how much the "100% Legal" phrasing helps us -- since illegal operators say the same thing...