The reason they probably won't is that they probably can't - it splits liquidity between regular games and the variant. To do this, you'd have to ONLY have the variant, and that would put a lot of new players off.

I remember when NVG was fun, now it's just walls upon walls of text from SD.

Tbh I think all new sites will struggle to get significant numbers of players over to their web sites, and particularly as there appears to be more than one new one coming on stream. Amaya (Stars) obviously have many huge advantages in new player procurement and existing player retention.

When the Supernova Elite changes and rewards generally being cut "scandal" first hit, I posted in 2plus2 that the solution was for "all" players (e.g. a big chunk of regs, say ~2500 to 10000) to joint crowd fund the building of a competitor web site, and without typing all of the details here again, there were a multitude of related benefits of doing it this way, with the stand out one being that a huge block of regs could en masse move their main business literally over night to the new web site, and with this a lot of recreational players would then follow as the new site would be where the main games and bigger fields would now be. This I believe would have had a fantastic shot at crushing Amaya's dominant market position.

The thread I started got a mixed response, maybe 70% of people rubbishing the idea and 30% agreeing that what I was proposing was logical.

But this was me, the infamous his posts are too long and ignore a lot of what he says SageDonkey posting it, so fair enough, and justifiably, I have no standing or respect from the poker world, so why would people really listen.

Had something similar been posted by a player who does have these things, e.g. a Phil Galfond or a LuckyChewy, I think the idea may have come to fruition.

Instead we have various people building their own web sites and although they may well produce something that is good, attractive and more equitable for players to play on, they will not achieve the mass overnight move across from regs. They may get some of this effect but regs will still shop around and pick different MTTs and different cash games from varying sites on a case by case basis depending on which comp or cash game is more +EV, in other words exactly what players are already doing.

So Amaya are probably very pleased to hear that more than one new competitor will be arriving in the market place, because a few small to medium sized competitors is far less of a threat to them than one big competitor of many forces joining together.

I am not the best poker player, and I am certainly not as yet a very successful person generally (I have my moments), but I do know my strategy very well and what I proposed was by far the most logical method of challenging Amaya.

Once again, good luck to RIO, LuckyChewy and anyone else who is launching a new web site but I think it will be very difficult to achieve very fast growth of player numbers, even if the product is very good an innovative.

I post serious points, not garbage or superfluous criticism, and sometimes/often serious points take a lot of words to explain. You my friend are very typical of a weak poster in my opinion, one that comes across as immature.

I can and will change my view of this as and when you post something of value or interest.

Kind regards,

SageDonkey

If making up random #'s is a serious post, you definitely win the internet.

Whatever the faults of my posts may or may not be, what you are posting is incredibly silly. A small proportion of my posts have some random topics in them, as do most people's, but by and large I am posting serious points on the topics being discussed, such as the one I just posted.

You are just being plain disruptive with your critiques of me and should probably receive some kind of temporary ban to give you time to think about this, as what you are doing is deterring people from wanting to post if they then have to spend just as much time afterwards responding to and fending off trolls like you.

The nature of this and most forums is that a lot of "noise" is attracted, and you in this instance are the "noise", not me. Many people lurk and read forums without posting themselves, so a few people such as yourselves who claim to be an authority on what is and isn't a worthy post does not bother me. I will and do listen to people who post constructive points, arguments, debate and criticisms. You are not one of those people.

Adding standard variants will bring in more players.
If they offer stud/draw/mixed games this will attract more players that don't (or rarely/occasionally) play NLHE or PLO.
The NLHE & PLO players will still play their regular games and maybe dabble in the variants when/if they feel like it.
So I don't think it would simply split liquidity as you say. It would increase the player pool.
They don't even have to invent new variants as slowninja suggests (although that does sound fun), they can just offer the same stud/draw/mixed games as stars.

You have to spend money to acquire players. Given that you need quite a lot of players to get a game and stake to run, you can't afford to split that money unless you have A LOT, several million. That's what I mean by splitting liquidity, more than splitting the players you already have, though that will happen too.

Furthermore, there's no point spending a lot of development time on a game like draw where, if you capture 50% of online play, you only gain a tiny amount of revenue. There're easier improvements that you can make that will gain you the same revenue.

Oh, did you mean somehow splitting the advertising money to aquire players?
I don't think you have to advertise each game.
The development can't be that hard if SWC can do it.

It doesn't matter that you don't advertise, say, 5 card draw. What matters is that you get 10 new players today. Some go to draw, some go to NLHE. You need a minimum number of players in order for a game to run. This is why it's a problem.

I should mention that I'm head of poker at a fairly big site, so have good reason to think that developing a new game takes a long time. The problem is that changes to game mechanics touch on very central parts of your code, which means you have to be very careful making changes.

Perhaps SWC didn't have any other development priorities when they added other game types, or perhaps they just thought they were necessary to launch a site. I think the latter is a big mistake.

thx for reminding me this is possible

makes sense the look of Mr Chewy on the website. He's supposed to look like chewbacca? Ties in with the brand name. That's my perception as I know nothing about the man. Personally, I think keep the long hair and beard, but put a suit on! Needs to feel more high end... or needs a bit of vegas sparkle or something...

someone sit me hu im waiting

Epic!

This sites lobby looks like we are back in the beginning of online poker era. Not a good sign for this site I must say!

Anyone who chooses to ignore narratives that don't suit their narrow view of the world has very low EQ and is probably in for a tough time in life

Ooooo so many words. Some of them articulating the obvious negatives of the situation. Better put this guy on ignore


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Of his 3 posts on this page (as I have it set up - in any case his last 3 post ITT) 2.5 of them are just "discussing the discussion".

Also EQ isn't an actual thing - it's pseudoscience people talk about when they can't get people to agree with them by logic.

Nawww man. It's absolutely an actual thing. It's just not measurable like IQ {is supposed to be} Having strong EQ >> having strong IQ ....especially now


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But people like you are now illegal, when Hillary lost, right?

Where it's ever calculated its an aggregate of poorly correlated skills, which suggests there's no underlying thing being measured - hence the lack of correlation.

But in any case, I stand by what I say that imagined EQ is a crutch for those who lose arguments. If EQ was really what it is claimed to be, and SageDonkey had it, then he would be able to use his EQ to get through to us all. Another good example is the thread about "Real Poker Psychology" where Mason Malmuth uses logic to **** all over a bunch of conventionally thinking clones who then claim he doesn't understand their arguments because he lacks EQ.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/33...lmuth-1558911/

Why? In the computer age I would have thought that to be the opposite. The time for high levels of the skills included in EQ was the middle ages when it was important to be the one leading the witchfinders and not the one having them led to you.

Is there a special word for a derail from a derail?

http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/ente...-site-success/

It's not the computer age. More like the Web 2.0

that's cool
I agree.
You just list on your website what games are available, maybe make a couple of forum posts to let people know (e.g. we now offer X,Y & Z games).
That part would cost next to nothing and we would find it.

Suppose you only offered NLHE and nothing else. You get 10 new players in a day. (day #1)
The next day you now offer NLHE and PLO. You get 20 new players that day. (day #2)

The extra players you get on day #2: they came for the PLO, you would not have them otherwise.

Sure, some of the PLO players like playing NLHE (which adds to the NLHE pool). And some of them play NLHE occasionally/rarely/or not at all.
So far, you have an additional 10 players, and a potential increase in the NLHE player pool (& certainly not a decrease).
You get more players & you get to rake both games, fantastic
If you did not offer PLO, they simply would not go to your site. They can go anywhere else and play it.

Example: Let's say we have a PLO fanatic (ChicagoJoey ), he loves the great game. He loves PLO. He might even play the odd game of NLHE.
He goes to your website. He sees you don't even offer PLO, he leaves.
He goes and plays it somewhere else, on one of the many sites that offer it.

So I've used PLO as the example, obviously the same applies for stud/draw/mixed games.
If you offered draw games, I would deposit money and come and play on your site. You don't though, so I will stick with Pokerstars. You see?
If you did offer them, I would also stick around and play NLHE & PLO (thus increasing your player pools in each). But I can go to any site and play those.
Even if LuckyChewy offered super low rake, if he didn't offer draw games, I would still go back to Pokerstars to play draw games

thanks for reading, merry xmas

He's also one of the very few heads of poker who has made their site grow in 2016 so he deserves to be listened to.

(not that I always listen to him - I mean voting Victoria Justice over Margot Robbie wtf?)

Yes, though it should be said that there are degrees - for example a hypothetical site that was already running PLO, and wanted to run PLO8 could do a lot of cut and paste of code because the only relevant differences between the games are restricted to the showdown logic, whereas starting e.g. triple draw when they don't have any draw games at all is a lot more work.

I'm waiting for the shirt with LuckyChewy on it. Please someone tell me its available or on the way.