I played exclusively Ongame for years and was following that pretty closely. This might be slightly off and is only from a playing standpoint (idk anything about the finances behind it), but the way I remember it: around the time I started in 07 Ongame was going strong. I can't remember how big they were compared to Stars, but they had a monthly 1k/1M guarantee tournament, their majors got 1000+ runners on Sundays, their daily 54 rebuys got way more runners than the 55r or 109r gets on Stars these days. I'd say they were around the size 888 is today maybe? Then they made a software update around 09 which was a disaster, it was super buggy and laggy and they started to lose traffic, it took them seriously like a year to get rid of the bugs. Everything got gradually smaller, and around the time Amaya bought it I would say it was roughly around the same size as Microgaming is now. From a playing standpoint it seemed to me like Amaya just pretty much did nothing to correct the course and they kept losing players at the same rate, and the end result is a total ghost town. I don't feel like they did anything particularly bad, just that they did nothing at all.

I thought you did a great podcast with DN and Ansky. Could you try to get more knowledgeable people who are vested in this issue on your podcast leading up to Jan. 1st. It would be good to hear more opinions.

Thx chuck

So it doesn't seem they totally smashed it up then. More they could not right a sinking ship

Here's a great tedtalk on the roots of addiction:




The doctor has written some really great [URL="http://www.amazon.com/Gabor-Mat%C3%A9/e/B001IO9TH2"]books[/URL ]that I'd highly recommend

OMG head exploding again. earth to thread.

Baazov flipped a company (ongame) in a year or so and bagged a something around 70million gain.

Hear on planet earth that is pretty smashing

All please stop with the ongame compare silliness .

Once amaya closed stars deal which many smart folks thought would be IMPOSSIBLE to close , ongame and crypto became irrelevant to them.

Do you have any idea how they actually made 70 million off that? Like I said, I have zero information about this apart from observing the tables virtually every day during the entire time period, and I could swear their prize pools just kept shrinking and shrinking since Amaya bought them. I don't have anything to back this up, and if you can dig up information to prove me wrong hats off to you, I don't have the time or energy to seek actual numbers. But I feel fairly sure that they did not manage to grow the player base or do literally anything to attract new customers. I can't remember a single promotion or new invention or anything. They even have the exact same MTT schedule as they had in 2009 with the exception that what used to be 20k GTD is now between no gtd and 400 gtd. I'd actually be pretty interested to hear how they made so much money off doing nothing, must be some serious sorcery.

Either way calling it "flipping the company" is a pretty liberal use of the word. The product is still worse than it was before Amaya and from a poker playing standpoint it is significantly worse than before for the consumer. So at best they managed to make money by escalating the demise of their product, which is pretty much the exact same thing they are doing with PokerStars now, and exactly the reason why we all are worried no? So I don't see how even if the +70M thing is true it would be a good thing, more like the opposite.

+1 too that, gabor mate is the **** when it comes down to addiction education.

mainstream pseduo-knowledge about this topic is flawed in so many ways. It's not the Substances/behaviors that are addictive. "In the realm of hungry ghost" by Gabor Maté is an awesome book to start with.

I can share this with you but can't understand it for you , but will try again.

If you want to know the exact amount of gains they realized from the sale of on game you'll need to read thru the notes on their financials. But it's in the range of what I mentioned .

All the stuff you mention is likely all true but totally irrelevant if your assertion is Baazov and team screw things up and you are using ongame as your shining example

When have I ever said anything like that? I'm pretty sure you are confusing me with another poster. I only answered to buffyslayer's question and it's a definite fact that for a player Ongame is a ghost town and it got worse during Amaya (although the downward spiral was initiated much earlier). I don't care how much money they made off that, just like I don't care how much money they make off PokerStars either. All I care for is a working poker ecosystem and so far they have a 100% failure rate at that with their earlier projects and it looks like they are going to exact same route with PokerStars. I have no doubt that they are good at milking the cash cow(s) though.

I will like to add something about drugs.

I had cancer and my doctor told to take morphine for the pain and go to psychotherapy for my mental problems. I asked her could I smoke weed instead...
She told me: "Yes weed will help for both !"

I was hooked on weed for the past 6 years (2 years chemotherapy).
I managed to stop weed before 3-4 months and I will like to say that being hooked to any kind of drug even weed is a terrible experience !

I hope you're healthy and happy these days.

Sry for mixup Sir, and as you word it there, one would have a hard time disagreeing with what you say.

I thought the other poster was using ongame to show some sort of incompetence on part of AYA management team which did not compute for me.

no such thing as being hooked on weed no offense, again with this ******ed prop bet talk about hardcore drugs it seems like Joey's only knowledge of drugs is just a little social usage of coke, some mdma & Ketamine and no real knowledge of addiction or of the any other street drugs, he has absolutely 0% percent chance of ever being able to do heroin for 30 days straight prop bet no matter how much money on the line, will power and prop bet god he is, 0% chance!

hmm, where do you guys think goes the line of how many days can someone do heroin and just quit straight after, no addiction. Surely someone can do once. Week? Two weeks?

Would like to hear from someone whos done heroin and gotten clean.

ya, there is. you can definitely have a psychological addiction to weed.

the terms of the bet need to be clarified to answer that correctly. what would be considered "getting clean"? ceasing use after 30 days? staying off heroin for a month after ceasing use? 6 months? 3 years?

addiction is a lifelong struggle.

Haven't watched the past few podcasts but from what I have read recently it looks like there's some sort of prop bet involving heroin, and i think it's absolutely ridiculous if this happens. I have to say I love the podcasts, I think you do a great job, but this seems extremely insensitive/moronic; and if this goes forward this will probably be where I stop tuning in. I think lots of drugs can be beneficial when used responsibly and in moderation, but to me this just seems to be glorifying the whole process of becoming addicted, which is very sad and hurts many more people than just the user. You seem like a smart guy to me, please don't go forward with this. It proves nothing, and I don't care what amount of money is on the line. Can't really put a price on wasted time/money and destroyed relationships. Just my two cents.

Some people will start develop a psychological dependence right away, others take longer. It depends on a lot of factors such as personality traits, strength of heroin, frequency of use, how much is being used, how it's being used, etc.

Wassup papi?

Whilst creating an unibet avatar, I did an impression of who I'd like to see on the podcast some time:

Gary busey?

Same here. Ongame used to be one of my favourites for mtt's. They used to have some seriously good gtd prizepools and wow it was always very soft. The place is a ghost town for mtts now though.

lol no one is gonna do a heroin prop bet, and in the last few podcasts i think it was talked about for all of 10 secs total

Great talk, thanks for posting

Get Baby Metalhead on the show

Ditto.

lol i thought this was an obvious 10 second joke but it looks like it wasn't from some of these recent comments



lol


Actually do appreciate this if It was something that was serious