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View Full Version : Poker Prophecky spamming


ds914
02-24-2005, 07:06 PM
I really had some hope for this program, but the nonstop spamming in chat has gotten ridiculous.

"TimTafter: Is the Player to your Left a Fish? Find out at www.pokerprophecy.com (http://www.pokerprophecy.com), complete win/loss records on all Party Poker Players!"

That message popped up on three different tables a few minutes ago. Any credibility they had is now completely gone. Resorting to means usually used by e-book salesmen and magic cheating devices? Pathetic.

AtticusFinch
02-24-2005, 07:43 PM
I agree that the spam is annoying, but can you think of a better (as in more effective, not less annoying) way to advertise this product? It really has no bearing on the product's usefulness.

lorinda
02-24-2005, 08:10 PM
I agree that the spam is annoying, but can you think of a better (as in more effective, not less annoying) way to advertise this product

You could go to a message board and post

[ QUOTE ]
I really had some hope for this program, but the nonstop spamming in chat has gotten ridiculous.

"TimTafter: Is the Player to your Left a Fish? Find out at www.pokerprophecy.com (http://www.pokerprophecy.com), complete win/loss records on all Party Poker Players!"

That message popped up on three different tables a few minutes ago. Any credibility they had is now completely gone. Resorting to means usually used by e-book salesmen and magic cheating devices? Pathetic

[/ QUOTE ]


Lori

EdgePort
02-24-2005, 08:45 PM
I agree. I will not give them any money while they contintue this act. There are better methods and I get enough porn spam that I have to spend my timer checking out as it is..

AtticusFinch
02-24-2005, 10:11 PM
That's the funniest post I've read in quite a while. (And true.) Thanks, Lori.

bball904
02-24-2005, 10:29 PM
The other factor is that their data has no reliability yet either. Not to say that it won't, but yesterday I looked at my stats and they had 211 tourneys with 29% wins. Since Jan 21, I've played 570 with 38% wins. They are no where near the data capture rate they claim and I'm very confused how they can be so far off on the win%. Oh well, at least I'm not 23% like Irieguy.

Edit: I haven't bought the crap, that was using my sample searches.

curtains
02-24-2005, 10:29 PM
Despite this their way of advertising is brilliant, and should help their overall cause.

AdamSchultz
02-24-2005, 11:26 PM
Hello,

I suppose its time for an official response.

Yes we do insert marketing messages into the tables. However, we get approximately 60 new customers from this a day, so I suppose its hard to ignore as we try to build a customer base. In the future, we will move away from guerilla marketing and into mainstream marketing.

I can say that we will be stopping in the future for two reasons: Party Poker makes it very, very difficult to insert messages into the text (despite what people think, they do make it hard, their last upgrade was all about stopping auto insertion of messages, its just that its nearly impossible to do without banning outside chat), and more importantly, it will come to a point where Party Poker and Poker Prophecy will need to be friendly to a certain degree.

As to the data comment, I have reported before that we are spending (and have spent) 1000's of dollars to improve this. We added extra capacity on the collection end, and just today we finally caught up on the server end. That's about all I have to say because words are cheap and I'll let our current system speak for itself now.

That said, you could just ignore the message : )

The Yugoslavian
02-24-2005, 11:45 PM
[ QUOTE ]
Hello,

I suppose its time for an official response.


[/ QUOTE ]

On how your product has fallen short of all your claims?

[ QUOTE ]

Yes we do insert marketing messages into the tables.


[/ QUOTE ]

Duh!!!

[ QUOTE ]

However, we get approximately 60 new customers from this a day,


[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, who all think your #s are more accurate than they really are. (Yes there have been improvements but not what you've been preaching).

[ QUOTE ]

so I suppose its hard to ignore as we try to build a customer base.


[/ QUOTE ]

No one is debating whether this is effective or not. It's just annoying as all f***ck.

[ QUOTE ]

In the future, we will move away from guerilla marketing and into mainstream marketing.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'd hope so. Not sure if you'll really get that big though.

[ QUOTE ]

I can say that we will be stopping in the future for two reasons: Party Poker makes it very, very difficult to insert messages into the text


[/ QUOTE ]

Good. They should be doing this.

[ QUOTE ]

(despite what people think, they do make it hard, their last upgrade was all about stopping auto insertion of messages, its just that its nearly impossible to do without banning outside chat),


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, it's obviously not that hard at all. I see like eight gillion messages a night.

[ QUOTE ]

and more importantly, it will come to a point where Party Poker and Poker Prophecy will need to be friendly to a certain degree.


[/ QUOTE ]

So why not rigbt now? If not now, why later? I don't see it.

[ QUOTE ]

As to the data comment, I have reported before that we are spending (and have spent) 1000's of dollars to improve this.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm glad you have thousands to spend on fixing them, b'c they're not very impressive so far.

[ QUOTE ]

We added extra capacity on the collection end, and just today we finally caught up on the server end. That's about all I have to say because words are cheap and I'll let our current system speak for itself now.


[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, so far your words have been cashing checks that your system isn't coming close to delivering. Thankfully for you, your main customer base (the fish) don't notice.

[ QUOTE ]

That said, you could just ignore the message : )

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd much rather just not buy your product that *sorta* works, isn't useful, and engages in marketing that directly pisses me (a hopeful customer) off.

Yugoslav

Mr_Gordon
02-24-2005, 11:52 PM
someone needs a hug

AdamSchultz
02-24-2005, 11:55 PM
Hello,

Well that wasn't very nice.

We have gone through some growing pains and have missed alot of data. I have acknowledged this in the past and changed our website accordingly.

However, from today forward I welcome anyone to post stating that we dont meet the claims on our website. And again we offer a full refund, so Yugoslovian, if you are in fact a customer (since you know so much about the product), I'll await your e-mail and gladly shoot you back your money.

Have a Nice day. Cheer up, it's not so bad.

stupidsucker
02-25-2005, 12:40 AM
I too am disappointed in the program, but i dont want my money back.


On the plus side
+It has potential
+The information is still good to see how often people play, and if they have a permanent level

The negative
-Well Yugaslavian covered just about everything anyone could say bad, and with spice.
-The main thing is you need to be a little more realistic in your claims of the amount of stats you have and how accurate they are.

In closing

They are in beta phase and people should give them some time to get things going. This does take time and money, so new customers must still be brought in.

The price is cheap for now which is a good way to go. They need to be a lot more honest with their customers on where they are at now, and where they will be in the next 3-6 months.

Make sure to extend the $ back till after beta phase ends. This will let peple stick it out with you and give you room to opperate. Its ok to be in beta, but you can't pretend its a finished product.

AdamSchultz
02-25-2005, 12:57 AM
Stupidsucker,

I agree that we were too agressive in our claims to begin the program. We didn't think about the fact that monitor 5000 games in a closed beta test is alot different then monitoring a million games in "the real world". I was also too slow in changing the claims of our website and took to long to be convinced that the product needed work (I should have listened to the first customer not the 20th).

As of about a week ago though I did change the website to more accurately reflect the reality of the situation. Under the Sample Search section (where new customers most likely go) it states that we will likely have 50% of the games dating back to January 21st, but are now catching approximately 80%.

Stating that we catch 90% of the games was a mistake and I take full blame for that and this is why I stress the money back thing. I don't want anyone to feel like they were tricked into buying the product because we over-estimated the results of a controlled beta. That and not to make excuses, but PP did change some things after we released.

We really are very solid right now though between what we claim on the website and reality, I just wish this was always the case.

The Yugoslavian
02-25-2005, 01:06 AM
[ QUOTE ]
someone needs a hug

[/ QUOTE ]

Awww thanks!

I don't see any reason to be 'nice' to Adam. Frankly I think he should heed most if not all of Atticus' advice in order to improve his product, PR and marketing.

But, it's a free country, I have no real problem with Adam or his software.

And for the record. I don't own it, /images/graemlins/smile.gif. But I know people who do. At some point there *is* a possibility I'd buy it but I'm not there yet as I don't see it as being useful at all. I doubt I'd really make the effort to use it at this point even if it was free.

However, it's an interesting endevor and I look forward to seeing it progress and/or regress as the case may be.

Yugoslav

eastbay
02-25-2005, 01:13 AM
[ QUOTE ]
over-estimated the results of a controlled beta.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe you can explain how you set up this so-called "controlled beta". Otherwise it sounds like a bunch of nonsense that you made up to cover the fact that you really had no idea how to measure how many of the games you were capturing, and just made up 90% because it sounded good.

eastbay

AdamSchultz
02-25-2005, 01:22 AM
Eastbay,

Sure that's easy. We only extracted a portion of the $200 SNG's while manually monitoring each table to compare the results. We achieved 90%, but we were only monitoring 5% of the tables.

I really have no reason to lie. Most of my customers are not twoplustwo members (they haven't even heard of twoplustwo). Most of the current twoplustwo members have already decided to buy it or not. I post here for personal reasons mostly and because I've had good phone conversations with many of the members of this site.

Well I don't want to turn this into an argument so I'm done posting on this topic because I have no interest in arguing. Believe me or don't its cool either way.

eastbay
02-26-2005, 03:40 AM
[ QUOTE ]
Eastbay,

Sure that's easy. We only extracted a portion of the $200 SNG's while manually monitoring each table to compare the results. We achieved 90%, but we were only monitoring 5% of the tables.

I really have no reason to lie. Most of my customers are not twoplustwo members (they haven't even heard of twoplustwo). Most of the current twoplustwo members have already decided to buy it or not. I post here for personal reasons mostly and because I've had good phone conversations with many of the members of this site.

Well I don't want to turn this into an argument so I'm done posting on this topic because I have no interest in arguing. Believe me or don't its cool either way.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh wow, new math! 90% of 5% is 90%.

I think I'll pay my taxes that way this year.

Seriously, though, that type of experiment isn't meaningful, as you found out. You'd have to have a perfectly scalable system to extrapolate from your one buy-in experiment with a small % of the games to all the games. Since there's plenty of reason to believe your system was not perfectly scalable, you probably should have tempered that claim until you'd done a more complete test, which you certainly could have done before going into production.

eastbay

AdamSchultz
02-26-2005, 04:21 AM
No arguments from me Eastbay, I'd say we messed up the test by not factoring in the greater degree of difficulty of having to sort through 20 times as much data.

My only statement is that we recognized the problems, spent money to fix them, and from what I have been told recently, have succeeded.

apd138
02-26-2005, 04:47 AM
Adam

I would be interested in knowing why you can't collect more detailed info? Such as average finish or # of 1st's, 2nd's, and 3rd's? In the $ data is ok but is kinda vague and with many small sample sizes it doesn't seem terribly relevent.

AdamSchultz
02-26-2005, 05:00 AM
Hi APD,

Its actually incredibly more difficult. Right now we pop in and out of tables. To get the top 3 places we'd actually have to watch a table until the game goes from 3 players to one. We could actually divide 3rd place finishes from 2nd, and 1st pretty easily, but I'm not sure of the value.

At any rate, I'm estimating 30 more computers, which would mean Version 3.0. Not posting a release date on that, but it won't be any time soon.

TheAmp
02-26-2005, 05:38 AM
[ QUOTE ]

That's about all I have to say because words are cheap and I'll let our current system speak for itself now.


[/ QUOTE ]

True, cheap. So is your marketing strategy. The product isn't worth much either.

Face it, you had a shot, but you blew it.

networkman
02-26-2005, 06:05 AM
It's quite simple to get more than 5 sample searchs so I've been checking my own stats for the past two weeks (since I heard of the product).

I have accounts at Party and Eurobet which I use for a couple hours daily, the first time I checked I was disapointed because the numbers were way off. In the two weeks since I started looking at my stats, I have played 150 games but the database shows the same numbers as 2 weeks ago (for both accounts).

I'm very unimpressed