1. I'll have my loyalty manager run some numbers but I'm pretty sure that we're closer than you think to what we can pay there.

Part of the issue is that we pay taxes on the revenue before it goes back out in rake back. That's on top of the other fixed and variable (tied to gross revenue) costs of running the business.

2. We've thought about it. It's on the table for consideration for WSOP promos this year.

3. Not sure everyone would agree on that. Most players don't want their skill level being displayed and there are few guys making the highest levels in the Action Club and at least not breaking even (or close to it).

1. I assume when you say the $25K, you're in NJ? If so, that one has been very erratic. One week we crush it, the next week we've got a $3K or $5K overlay. And, as you probably know, crushing it by $5K one week and overlaying $5K the next week is not break even for us. We make $500 juice on the $5K crush but lose $5K real money on the overlay.

We do have something coming up to announce about that in the next week or so but can't disclose right now.

2. Most people were complaining it ran too late and they had to work the next day. That's the reason it runs fast.

I don't remember what the exact issue was last year about lammers. Either the Rio wasn't using them or something was a no-go from the regulatory side. Not sure but as we begin pulling together details on the event I'll bring up the lammer issue.

Maybe I am missing something here. You've met with me, our CIO, our head of VIP, our head of marketing, and I know everyone was pretty liberal with business cards. You've got our emails, phone numbers, etc. If you need the info again, PM me and I'll send it to you.

I have to agree with Bill about higher stake HU SNG's. These are not healthy for the ecosystem and show the rec player many of the more unpleasant aspects of online poker. From predatory behaviour to negative table talk, due to the extremely personal aspect of HU play.

I would like some method of adding Caesars comp dollars to my account from the software -- or even through an ad hoc request method by email.

It would be nice to make use of my Diamond status by hitting the lounge for some booze, playing some bj, etc.


Also, why was the Elite Chase promo so delayed in upgrading our status? There can't be more than 20 of us who completed the promo, shouldn't have been too difficult. Why piss off your literal highest rakers?

Ill certainly message you in hopes to talk directly with you but i still don't see how adding them would hurt anything. Why have you not atleast added them to try them out. Heads up sit and goes are 6 max or 9 handed sit and goes. It takes 1 person to open sit them and wait for the other to join. I am not asking you to add 5k heads up sit and goes but atleast 100s and 200s. I know many people would play them and enjoy them. I am not talking about players that currently are playing other games but rather players who aren't even on your site because of this.

You are making it out as if im asking for games outside the current games.5-10 no limit cash is much bigger. This game runs pretty often as well. Obviously its not constant but there is enough action to justify the table being there. 10-20 no limit and big limit holdem doesnt run but you offer those games for people who want them.

Yes, I am in NJ. What I'm saying is if once a month you replace the 25k with a 25k 200 R+A ring event, you will beat the GTD every time on that.

Talking the the TR guys on and off about what we can do together. I really don't have much more on that at the moment.

From what I understand, the person who was emailed the reports about who qualified and was to do the update had his HD go on his computer. He had to do a full recovery from scratch in order to get the update done.

I think that would greatly diminish the value of the ring.

We are planning on running 4 tourney series a year that award rings.

WSOP.com Winter Classic
WSOP.com Spring Poker Series
WSOP.om Online Championship
WSOP.com Fall Poker Festival

And in the next few days we should be announcing something else for the MTT crowd that I think people will like.

I just wanted to echo that I feel like there should be some extra incentive for getting Elite. I played all year to get it, and when I did in mid-Decemeber, nothing even really happened. There was no congrats e-mail, no extra perks (outside of a slight increase in rake) - my status didn't even change in the poker lobby for about a week. It all just felt a bit anti-climatic for what was a year-long pursuit. Obviously an Elite-only main event freeroll would be great but I've always thought a weekly or monthly freeroll alongside the other freerolls that run on Sunday would be great. I'm sure there are lots of good ideas but pretty much anything at all would feel pretty meaningful to me.

Also, it would be nice if there was some incentive for game starters. I'm the only person who will consistently start 5/10 (and 3/6 to a lesser extent) in NV and I'll sit alone for days at a time, a fish will join, the game will fill up in seconds and instantly break when the fish is gone. I know unfortunately that's a lot of what poker is today (esp at 5/10+) but I really think games would run more often at the "high stakes" tables if something like this existed.

Lastly, I know a lot of people would REALLY like some way to check their APP's earned per month without having to email support for that information each time.

Thanks for your time and glad to see you back here.

I've worked at Tilt, Party, and consulted for other poker businesses over the years and higher stakes HU SNGs just tend to be a high problem, low margin business.

And nobody has seemed to figure out a good solution to the predatory nature of the games. Even Stars still struggles.

And I don't think it's a good comparison to equate $5/$10 NLH cash games with HU SNG tournaments. I don't have to lose my full min buy-in ($500) to figure out I'm outclassed in that game.

Thanks for the update Bill. 4 ring events is nice. As long as there is something for us inbetween events of that level, I think we will all be very happy. Great to hear some things are in the pipeline.

Few quick questions:

1. Will WSOP.com start to offer more Freezeouts? Many people do not like playing R+A since people with larger pockets can rebuy as many times as they like and gamble more instead of playing actual poker. Take the $30 R+A as an example. Using BR management theory these should not be played unless your poker bankroll is more than 15k. (http://www.pocketfives.com/f7/sng-mu...-guide-378221/) . Quite simply with variance many people will be losing their rolls playing these. Will WSOP.com start to offer $20-$100 freezeouts?

2. What about tournaments? This tournament series seems to be very unoriginal. All of the tournaments are already offered on Saturdays or Sundays, you guys simply took the same tournaments and offered them on a different day. There was literally no thought or innovation in these tournaments. Very disappointing after a great December series.

3. Will WSOP.com offer more SNG variations? I'm sure you guys can take Borgata's SNG traffic if you simply offer more variations: DONS, Hypers, steps, 18 mans, 8 game, and other variants. I think many players got bored playing the same SNGS, thus decreased SNG volume.

I really think WSOP.com offers their players the best deals, but they are just lacking creativity and innovation in their product. Need to add new games and variants to increase traffic.

I usually don't back the poker sites but this time I gotta side with WSOP Bill.

The player pool of NJ online is tiny and comprise mostly of microstakes and small stakes players. This is a totally different market compared to live poker. With all the online regs flocking to NJ in the past year, just imagine how crappy the game will be if we incentivize mass multitabling?


It's all too easy to sit back and speculate about how A promotion would have been soooo successful if WSOP actually used it. Keep in mind that a lot of statistical analysis goes into analyzing the results after the conclusion of each promo.


EDIT: Back onto topic, will there be a reload bonus this January?

"just imagine how crappy the game will be if we incentivize mass multitabling?"

You do understand there are many drawbacks to multitabling to? Much harder to make correct decisions, harder to get reads on people, and must make very quick actions. If anything multi-tabling is good: it helps the games fill up quicker and an astute player can easily exploit a multi-tabler. You really have that much trouble at one table beating someone that plays around 10?

WsopBill,

You state that you don't want to run sattys to wsop events this early. Please explain why you didn't run any online sattys for both WSOPC series that took place here in Nevada within the last 4 months. Yes you ran sattys to the main event but how come you don't run them for the other ring events despite numerous requests from players? Clearly you wouldn't have had to deal with overlay for a mere $365 or $580 seat at the series.

It would help build your live entries as well as ancillary revs like hotel, food, etc. Many players asked for this on twitter and of course we heard no response. We really do feel like your company doesn't give a crap what its customers think. And it's pretty clear unless that mantra changes wsop.com will continue down the same road as UP.

No matter how bad you are, you're still gonna crush fish multitabling or not. Think of it like overfishing.

EDIT: Actually fishing quotas aren't a a good example. So let me try to explain this again.

There are two scenarios, broadly speaking, when you multi table:

A) You're a losing player - you begin to lose moeny at a much faster rate

B) You're a winning/B/E Player- you sacrifice a little winrate but end up winning more money per hour.

So what we see is that the disparity of winners and losers gets magnified. Weaker players go broke much faster.

More places paid in the micro - low stakes tourneys...

Chop / Table Share / Deal function....

Like I said a while back, i'm not expecting full seven star treatment, but the ability to go into the diamond lounge and eat for free whenever making a visit to a Caesars property doesn't seem like an unrealistic request. I don't know all the ins and outs of the Diamond Aspirations program, but us online players have no way to complete these levels to get the extra perks. So even though you are elite online you are just viewed as a basic diamond when you step in a casino. I'm not asking for the full seven star treatment and being flown anywhere in the country for two, but I think something as simple as that and some other basic integrations between the online and casino based side would be a positive for both sides.

I must admit I am a bit surprised at the lack of integration there seems to be between the two. You would think that the casinos would be looking to attract who they find to spend the most money online and give some basic offers to get them into the casinos and then contribute money whether its playing at the casino or shopping etc.

Now that issue was something I brought up because I didn't go for the more obvious which was the levels that are currently offered online. Just to reiterate, I don't think it's fair to offer a level that i'm sure after having its first full year of operation is shown to be impossible to achieve.

I haven't run advanced numbers to figure things out but there is definitely a "sweet spot" if you will that is a win win for both players and the site. With the way things are structured the top raking players will get to the 50k apps to get elite, then be in no man's land. No motivation to put in crazy volume as the next available level isn't achievable. There should really be a boost/reward for 100k apps. Super Elite being 250k is just too much, atleast for just a 5% rakeback increase.

There's many ways to go about this too, you could come up with an alternative instead of increased rakeback, such as a milestone bonus system similar to pokerstars. For example a $1,000 bonus for reaching 100k apps, $2k bonus for 200k etc. There's a multitude of ways to come up with creative and fun ways to push people. The way the system is structured currently, the majority of people will just reach that ceiling with plenty of time left in the year and just coast with nothing to shoot for.

Also remember, you don't want a system next year where people are hitting the top level they can get with nothing to play for. Then who knows maybe another competitive site finally opens and instead of players saying, well I'm 70% towards hitting this next huge level, i'm going to continue to grind here. They might say, well since theres nothing really left for me to gain by putting in volume here, I can now shift my volume to this other site. Just something to consider.

Overall, I believe this is the best site in NJ, but there are plenty of tweaks and adjustments that can be done that will not only help players make more money, but help sites generate more money as well. Those types of results are what everyone is looking for.

Even though the rest of us haven't necessarily met with you and the head of VIP and head of marketing, would it be possible for us to have some method of getting support that doesn't suck?

Also-- what does tier-matching mean if a diamond card earned online doesn't equal a diamond card in your land-based casinos?

Is WSOP Nevada thinking ahead at all about the soon-to-be time when they are just an 888-skin?

Also the rebuy/addon MTTs are way too deep IMO. I am all for lots of play and like deep tourneys. However, starting with 400bbs is just unnecessary. There is not much money at the top of most MTTs for how long they take. You could also run more MTTs in a night if they didn't take so long.

The schedule will not be barren the rest of the time. Those are just the series of online championships (SOCs) that we have on the calendar. They're sort of the anchor series.

Here's the problem with freeze outs, everybody wants them until we offer them. Overall attendance for freeze outs almost always is less than if we held the same or a similar tourney with R&A.

I'm not anti-freeze outs or anything. In fact, when I play I prefer freeze outs myself. But we have freeze outs in the current schedule, we also offer freeze outs in most of our tournament series, and the numbers don't support the adding of more freeze outs at the moment. When the numbers change, we'll add more but the demand is not as strong as a lot of people think it is.

Not sure there's really a question in there. Thanks for the feedback but not sure what kind of response I can give.

There are no plans to offer additional SNG variations at the moment.

Except for the fact that there's no real proof that more variety (especially with very limited liquidity) breeds more player participation.

We're looking at how to better integrate the WSOPC events but currently the operating casino will ask us for some qualifiers (typically for the ME).

One of the issues we do run into when running online sattys into live events - which we're working on coming up with better solutions for - is that the live venue has a lot more flexibility in changing the live events than we do changing the satellites.

For instance, let's say you want to run a live event on Valentine's Day next month. We want to start running satellites two weeks before the event. Another two weeks before that we have to submit all of the materials to the regulators. Promo copy, terms and conditions, tournament format, levels, etc, etc.

Plus, our legal, compliance, creative, copywriting, etc teams have a full pipe of stuff they're working on so there's about 2 weeks worth of work that goes into getting those materials ready.

So, we're locked in at least a month out. But the venue can change buy-in amounts, remove or replace events, etc all the way down to the about 2 weeks out.

As a result, we tend to stick with the tournaments least likely to change and where the live partner needs to most help putting butts in seats, which is usually the ME.

When you have run freeze outs within your series in NJ (i.e. the most recent DeepStack series), you have more than exceeded the guarantee. Why not make a small commitment by offering a freeze out with a guarantee on a couple weekdays, to augment the 2 you offer on Sunday?