HERO POKER CEO’s AUG/SEPT 2011 PLAYER’S UPDATE
I’d like to first off apologize for the lateness of this CEO player’s update. While I’ve addressed this via some of my posts, Hero has spent August really preparing for the last quarter of 2011, and what that has entailed is a lot of meetings with a lot of potential casino and media partners. We’ve also secured our executive core staff at this point and I’m proud to introduce Dan Sing. He has a Master’s in Commercial Law and was at KPMG (another major accounting firm) for a couple of years. He has a wealth of poker experience as well as his strong accounting and business background. After a month trial he has accepted the position of Senior Marketing Manager and has been given a great deal of authority in the company to directly deal with customer service issues.
Moving forward, marketing@heropoker &
rewards@heropoker.com will be managed by both myself and Dan and will be designated as ‘Executive Support’.
A majority of our efforts was to shore up existing outstanding issues as well as do a number of feasibility trials for new market entry as well as continuing to restructure internally. The reality is that when we decided to make Hero the ‘premier boutique poker site’ we didn’t just tag on ‘World’s’ just for fun. So much of our progress has also to prepare Hero for taking on more of an independent position and autonomy in our operational scope.
Once again, I’d like to thank all our players for their patience as we still consider that we are still much learning as we go along, but again, we’ve got a strong professional team and we are pressing forward. In terms of additional hires, we’ve push this back for general community support and if you’ve already sent us your resume, just not that it is still on file and once we’re ready to launch our next phase of player community development/support you will be contacted.
1. EXISTING PROMOTIONAL UPDATES
1.1 Triumvirate hero $100 Daily US CANADA ONLY *NO CHANGES*
-Client Location: Tournaments: Scheduled: Special
-7pm PST, 10pm EST (21:00 Game Server Time)
-6 handed, 8min blinds (antes), 3,000 starting chips ,Top 3: $50, $30, $20, Registration: 1 hour before, no late registration; 300 Max Players
1.2 MTT hero $99 Daily US CANADA ONLY *NO CHANGES*
Tournament Details:
-Client Location: Tournaments: Scheduled: Special
-4pm PST, 7pm EST (18:00 Game Server Time)
-9 handed, 5 min blinds (antes), 5,000 starting chips; Top 9: $11 each
-Registration: 2 hours before, no late registration; 300 Max Players
1.3 Micro Hero NL, PLO, Horse $30 Guarantee
-Client Location: Tournaments: Scheduled: Special
-Buy in: 0.33 (0.30 cents plus .03 admin fee); -10 handed, 12 min levels, Top 10 payout; 5pm PST, 8pm EST (19:00 Game Server Time)
1.4 PLO hero ARENA $5 US CANADA ONLY
REVISED TO
$5 RAPID FREE PLO HERO ARENA *Country Restricted*
6 max, 18 start
*Revisions:
-6 max, 18 player start format kept,
-Simultaneous games increased from 3 to 4
-Blinds reduced from 10mins to 7mins
-Starting stack decrease from 3000 chips to 2500 chips
-Prize payout increased from 3 (50%/30%/20%) to 4 places (50%/25%/15%/10%)
Eligibility profile now to include the following:
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria & Switzerland
Location: Sit N Go: All : All (priority listing)
Essentially what we’ve been finding is that due to global nature of the site that it is not detrimental to open this format up to our other key markets as they are in different time zones and the promotion is not being maxed out during the North American time zone.
Due to player feedback, we recognized that a lot of players were just sitting out and waiting to get through the first few levels then started to play because the tournaments were too deep. We’ve corrected that by reducing the blinds to 7mins and the starting stack was reduced by 500 chips to 2500. What that means is that the tournaments should be about 50% faster (about 45 mins to a hour, rather than the 90 mins to 120 mins range). By increasing the number of simultaneous games from 3 to 4, we hope that when there is an overload of players during peak hours that with the shorter turn around time and the additional simultaneous game, it shouldn’t decrease player wait periods.
This will be reviewed by the week’s end to find an ongoing optimal format.
3. NEW MARKET PROMOTIONS – Australia & New Zealand
Starting from September 1st, there will be a $500 daily freeroll at 10pm New Zealand/8pm NSW&VIC/6pm Perth time (single daily tournament), which will pay out the top 10 players $50 each and will be capped at 500 players. So it is a pretty consistent value tournament for a freeroll.
The main purpose is obviously to diversify as well as extend the time zone of the player liquidity on Hero.
Hero Poker has always had the intention to take on more operational scope in a planned strategy, so this is our first step whereby Hero Poker has made a direct relationship with Moneybookers that they will be our only 3rd party payment processor for Australia.
In a move for further corporate transparency, all player balances from Australia will be segregated by being held in Moneybookers. So any player deposits will be always been held in Moneybookers and not moved to another interest bearing account; thus player funds will always be liquid and accessible. For the Australian market, we have moved to only a licensing software model with the network.
By October will be announcing our sponsorships of live tournaments in Australia.
4. NETWORK PROMOTIONS:*NO CHANGES*
4.1 SNG Leaderboard: 10k prizepool for top 25 network players & 2k for top 5 SNG streaks * please note the leaderboard charts on HeroPoker now are just for HeroPoker only and not for the network. This will be adjusted.
4.2 Tourney King: Combined 20k prizepool for top 250 high stakes ($20 + buy-in) tourney players and top 250 low stakes (less than $19.99 buy-in) players. Basically a coupon will be automatically issued for special freeroll tournament with your chip stack based on your points: the tournament will be the second Sunday of the next month.
4.3 100 Seats to the 100k Promotion: Earn 250 VIP points from Sunday morning to Saturday at 15:00 each week to qualify for a tournament on Saturday 15:00 (server time). The top 100 will win a $109 coupon for the Sunday $100k Guarantee at 15:00. *RB players have had their VIP points generation increased from 20% to 25% on Hero
5. GENERAL CEO THOUGHTS
Due to the delay in this update, I’ve put in my general thoughts in the introduction and throughout this update. So I’d like to share some thoughts as a conclusion.
Well, there is nothing to hide that Hero is going through some teething issues, in that I am always aware of a standard we are not maintaining and where we need to be. Key to this is always going to human resources, even though we are very securely funded, I’m not one to simply expand for the sake of expanding.
Generally a company will do so to capture market share, but really there isn’t much room to simply grow in this global market environment. While certain sites are no longer operational that hasn’t meant that suddenly there are a ton of new entrants. The bar has been set very high by sites like PS and this entire idea of a ‘smash and grab’ is clearly a fantasy. In fact the opposite is true whereby, just the like price of gold is skyrocketing to heights unheard of, when player confidence is low in the corporate management of sites, players will act in a conservative manner.
In many respect, much of the criticism that Hero may get for our managerial approach may be perplexing to many players. The reality aside from clearly stating our position, I don’t feel there is any benefit to get into a discussion on these points when our goals are very much long term and I do have a conservative style of management. I don’t care about short term gains, but much of our actions can be interpreted as such without taking into consideration what Hero’s true goals are. We are aiming to be the best in our position and dealing with the most sophisticated players and market is where we are going to learn the most and develop our own operations, process and ultimately our company’s reputation. Our players know poker, they know good service, and they have high expectations, even when the options are very limited. And the reality is, if the situation wasn’t what it is, Hero and many other sites wouldn’t be in the position that we are.
We honestly recognize that and appreciate the choices our players have made to be with us and the truth is, even with our current player base, we are still not servicing them the way we aspire to. So the real value has always been for Hero, establishing our reputation based on serving the most sophisticated market and learning from that to create a great solid foundation.
When I was gov’t negotiator for technology transfers/joint venture agreements, there is something called a ‘test bed’ market that was always a key consideration why certain companies want to work with Korea in commercial technology. So certain markets have early adopters or sophisticated market tastes for a particular product, for Korea it was telecommunication devices. But the general theory was, if you could successfully launch your product or technology in Korea in this field then you will have a hit global product.
In very much the same way, I look at what we have, with our player base in very much the same light. For the players we do have, if we can make it here with you, then we can make it in the world. The reality is that I want our existing players to feel special to know that they have the best management behind them and that we always appreciate them as individual players and as a community. You, our players, gave Hero a chance when we just entered the market and we will always appreciate and reciprocate that as we constantly learn from you as well. Rome wasn’t build in a day, and I don’t say that as any excuse, but just saying that is what we will achieve, just a question of when cause my life (and now Dan’s life haha) is dedicated to that.
Best Regards,
David Jung
Hero Poker CEO
*Outstanding Reporting issues for players: Progress on VIP system, Merchandise (Will addresses before end of September)
**Please follow us on Twitter @HeroPoker, Starting in September will we be actively tweeting daily!
Cliffs:
-General promotions & network promotions unchanged
-Summer PLO adjusted to on going ’$5 rapid free PLO sitngos’ with reduced game time (reduction in time for blind limits -7mins from 10mins and starting stake from 3000 to 2500 & additional simultaneous game from 3 to 4)
-$5 rapid free PLO sitngos player elibility extended to summer’s promotions elibility (Aus, Can, US, UK, NZ, Germany, Ireland etc.)
-Launching marketing promotions for Australia & New Zealand, typical Hero style: $500 daily freeroll, with top 10 getting $50.
-Hero is going independent for the Australian market with a direct relationship with 3rd party provider Moneybookers only and keeping player funds with Moneybookers for segregation and corporate transparency purposes.
CEO General thoughts:
-Not going to get into a debate about our business decisions that are more long term oriented and conservative, our focus is taking care of existing players first
-One point is that our biggest benefit from our player base is developing our reputation and foundation for the future which is what every new company should be focused on first, not just revenues or short term gains
-apologies for the overall reduced response times, we have confirmed a new full time executive, Dan Sing, who is senior marketing manager of Hero and will be jointly managing customer service issues a the highest level.