Internet Poker Site on sale at EBAY - is this a good value?

[Kevin]

Like many of us, my investments have taken a tumble in the last year. I saw this site - Emerald Poker at Ebay and it looks like the foundation has been laid and all that is needed is a good marketing play/budget. Just wondered if it looked like a reasonable price for what you are getting for the money - e.g. is it worth the investment?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1788741175

Thanks,
Kevin

[richie]

"about 1000+ players". That's hilarious. Is that 1000 players, or 1000 play money accounts. Hehe, save your money. If all the work's been done, why are they bailing?

[Kevin]

Yeah, my thoughts were the same - unless they were just totally busted and the creditors were calling. The road is laden with sites that could not get the traffic to survive - just thought I would ask those who have put one up - if 195 was a good value for what they were providing.

Thanks again,
Kevin

[yct]

Price reduced! was $590,000 now $195,000. This will not last!!!

What a discount, eh? /forums/images/icons/wink.gif

[jamesburke]

that's what I thought, wish i had 190k laying around, i think it would be exciting to own a poker site and be the head huncho, so that I can see online poker from that perspective.

[GrannyMae]

Price reduced! was $590,000 now $195,000. This will not last!!!

they have the GOOD software if i recall (non-planet type)

if Granny puts a bid in, and renames it "Granny Mae's Poker Parlor", would you guys play there??

(serious answers welcomed amongst the flames)

[jamesburke]

Granny were both from CT, u want to split it?, it will do us better than waiting for the bridgeport casino which would be 10 mins from my house, but it's gonna take years to build!

[yct]

This could be a good way to use up your remaining balance in Paypal, since you've mentioned you've got quite a bit left in there. hehe... /forums/images/icons/wink.gif

If you buy it, I'm sure all the 2+2ers will come and join the party. Is it going to be rake free for 2+2ers?

[Shawn Keller]

Hilarious post Kevin, I didn't know that there was anything even close to that value on Ebay, I went and looked at the site, it is actually well designed but I didn't see anyone playing on there at the moment. Of course you have to wonder why it is up for auction in the first place.

[GrannyMae]

Granny were both from CT, u want to split it?

you got duckins'?


perhaps a 2+2 co-op.

10 people, 20k each or
5 people, 40k each

interested partys please email me
(serious people only, SERIOUSLY)

i'm sure the seller will take less if contacted, and i suspect there may be some business to be nabbed from EX party poker players


.

[jamesburke]

hey im in either way, 10 way is good for me, come up with 10 serioud people and we have our best site on the net!

The software is substandard. I ran it and got a runtime error in less than a minute. It never was able to connect to any table, which means it is not well designed to operate on the Internet. If they show you the software running from a LAN insist that you want to try it from the Internet.

What will you do after getting the software, if you do not have a way of correcting the bugs and adding new features.
They have not mentioned anything about how they are planning to support the software after the sale. More importantly they do not have tournaments without which you'll be outright losing 30% of the market reach.

They do not have any players. so the 1000+ players claim is wrong.

From which country they got the operating license & how much it takes to renew it? ( Important factor to enquire from them.)

3 servers are not sufficient to run Internet poker room. (You need to have backup machines for everything). Assume min of 6 are required.

If you are interested to get software license to run poker room check Boss Media, Cryptologic.

Finally its illegal for an American to own or run a Internet gambling operation. This will invite atleast 2 years of imprisonment and hefty fine.

Good luck!

Not to mention the price is a rip off. I could write the software required for half that price.

[GrannyMae]

thank you very much for this analysis anonymous.

also, i received quite a few emails, so we now have plenty of investors for any potential partnerships.

those of you who have been emailing back and forth with me, i ask that you give me until the time i stated in the LAST email i replied to you with.

the points that this poster raised about the software are semi-valid in this situation, and we are now exploring the cryptologic option as well.

i will be in touch by end of business on monday. we have made great progress in the last 24 hours at getting "our issues" addressed.

thx for your paitence.

What is your email???

What is your email?? I will give you have that price to write one, ok???

[GrannyMae]

pokergrannymae@aol.com


FYI..emails can be viewed by clicking on peoples names over the picture, but happy to provide it here.

as i stated, we are not looking for more investors, but would welcome to see your price to write one.

it must be fully functional and come with future updates.

eBay insists that online poker is too immoral for Paypal to service, but eBay sees NO problem in auctioning such a business itself for a hefty commission.

Think you can use paypal to pay for it ?

Can we pay with ACR bonus bucks ?

[GrannyMae]

hefty commission.

hefty, yes. but there is a cap on final value fees, and this is certainly not even close to the most expensive item ever offered.

now your question about being able to use paypal to pay for the transaction is brilliantly funny. (seriously)

[budman]

Granny,

Anonymous makes some excellent points. Computers are notoriously quirky and you would need an excellent programmer on hand to correct problems as they arise. Huge companies have problems with their websites from time to time and they have huge budgets and pools of talented computer people.

I am VP of sales for a medium sized company and my concern for you and your partners would be marketing. Do you think the market is so large that new websites can still penetrate and succeed? If not, or if the market is just getting to be saturated, then you will have to gain market share from existing competitors.

The only way to do this is with a successful marketing campaign. How do you plan to get the word out? Just letting many players on 2+2 know about it will not get you there. You will need to purchase advertising in a variety of places. Before you can do that you need to come up with an advertising campaign that appeals to consumers.

Paying a good advertising firm to create a well rounded campaign for you is expensive - it does not sound like this site's campaign has drawn a lot of interest. If you are able to tie in with a poker celebrity as a lot of the sites have you might have a good start. These are costs you will have to absorb before you even figure out where to buy advertising space (banners on 2+2, card player ads, etc.).

I would not be suprised if you will need as much money to market this site as to purchase it.

Once you get all of that in place, you need to make sure the site is run honestly and try to keep cheaters out. A little bit of bad press can outweigh a lot of good. We use a rule of thumb that one unhappy consumer will tell 10 people about their experience, while happy consumers might not tell anyone. You must have good plans in place to make sure you don't fall prey to any of the problems that other sites have experienced.

I would recommend putting together a business plan detailing everything you can foresee. Will you incorporate or run this as a limited partnership? What country is it registered in and what are the laws there? What are the liability laws?

This is a very complicated endeavor you are considering. That is not to say you should not go forward. After all, Michael Dell started his little company well after other mail order custom computer companies were already entrenched.

Good Luck.

[GrannyMae]

hi budman,

thanks for all the excellent comments and points.

fortunately, some of the first people to contact me have not only their chunk of the change, but amazing successes in the business world.

some of the concepts that have been brought up MORE than the actual money needed, is exactly what you are saying. i.e. business plans and the importance of marketing.

as far as the legalities of the issue, as long as Granny (or whomever the principal owner is) is willing to go tough it out in some scary place like aruba or wherever, the rest of the legal issues will be addressed as it becomes more relevant.

you raise the biggest issue of all however. that is the competition that would be faced, and an over saturated market.

the people that have expressed interest in this project are all 100 times more savvy than i am in these issues, and all think they can be overcome by a unique product. that would be, IMO, *not* something that is written to our specifications, but a turnkey that we could tweak from the marketing side.

i want to thank everyone that has emailed with offers of non-financial support if this dream could ever happen. your offers will most assuredly be accepted.

our idea is a room for the players, by the players. if this is feasible, then it will happen.

i am the biggest moron in the group of interested parties, and without breaking peoples confidences, i can confidently say that there are investors that know poker, investors that know money, investors that know technology, and investors that know marketing.

our hope would be to have strong players in all the key areas, and fortunately there seems to be interest everywhere.

my strength, as you all know, is smileys.
(but ssshhh, don't tell the others that it is ALL i know)

http://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/sad/eekyellow.gif

in all seriousness, thanks again for the excellent comments, and i welcome any others you may have. that goes for anyone.

flames will be appreciated to keep us grounded as well, so have at it!!
/forums/images/icons/wink.gif

Annie,
Are you in Granny's team or you have a different team?
Leave your email address. I'll get in touch with you.

BTW I am a different anonymous than the above /forums/images/icons/wink.gif

Granny,

Ever hear "Big Hat, No Cattle. Why are these big time, wealthy investors popping out of the woodwork, prompted by an eBay ad when there are whole borkerage businesses devoted to marketing poker sites and other gaming sites ?

Good luck, just be careful, especially before you see the color of their money.

I am not associated with Granny.
Contact: N_A_Weelnam@yahoo.co.uk

Buddy,
Give it some more time. Think about it may be when you become atleast 25 yr old and have half a million pounds to invest. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

Go and read Russ Boyd stories before you start.

[BBill]

If everybody is serious about a poker-site startup, I think we can do a lot better than Emerald. The Emerald software is lousy, it barely runs on my pc. When I did play there I remember players being able to sit out during the blinds and then joining and not having to post, among other things. For $195,000 we could lease the software that Wsex, Poker.com and Grandbay use, this is a stable, no-frills platform that we know works. If the servers that Emerald is selling are more that a year old, they are obsolete. Server hardware is very inexpensive these days and we could get a couple new Compaq or Dell servers running Windows 2000. Then, we rent a colo (co-location) which is a place to put the server in Costa-Rica or wherever. We get 2 T1 circuits to the Internet with diverse carriers (and AT&T and Woldcom for instance) this will prevent downtime if the is a carrier wide network outage of either co.
While working on neteller deposit/withdrawal options we run a 25.00 no-deposit bonus and run $1.00 or $2.00 tourneys every 2 hours (like Truepoker used to do, this was a great strategy to attract new real money players, I would not have ever made a poker site deposit if not for the those tourneys) This will be a good way for players to become familiar with the site, and there is a growing market for low-limit tourneys.
The higher stakes players will arrive with time, but with a competitive rake we will be in the running for that market share as well.
Of coures we will have to get approved by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (just kidding)

bbill

[GrannyMae]

Good luck, just be careful, especially before you see the color of their money.

hi cassandra,

thx for your comments and cautions.

in reality, the people we have put together can be counted on both hands. the parties that contacted me are known to me, and the investment (initial layout) is not so high that it is restrictive to alot of them.

the genesis of the "idea" started with the ebay offering, and has taken on a different spin. i think the idea is not just to buy emerald and join the other 30 sites that are out there, but to explore if there is a way to make a profitable site that is run by poker players FOR poker players.

there are people involved that would add value with their name recognition, putting the concept closer to the big sites with respects to named endorsement. if this were to be something that would simply be a "magic palace" type portal to an existing site, the investors would have no interest, nor would i.

so we are at the point where we are looking at software we can own (versus lease), and trying to determine if we can offer anything unique.

the emerald poker site is an option that allows us to have a fully functioning product, but the negatives associated with the emerald name will probably stop us from persuing that particular product.

i appreciate all the ideas etc. we are just exploring all of our options, and i can't think of a better place for varied opinions than a poker NG.

if "GrannyMaesPokerParlor" is to be molded like one of the new cookie cutter operations, it will never be done.

if we can't be different, then we don't want to even BE.

however, we all have dreams. those that don't try to make them happen are missing out on too much fun.

is the market oversaturated?? yep
can online poker support another room?? absolutely

35 years ago, they put a burger king next to mcdonalds in my hometown, and everyone said:
"you are nuts, you can't compete"

Granny and friends would like to sell whoppers, but just cuz big macs are available next door, does not mean we should not look at the price of hamburgers.

thx again

[MS Sunshine]

"Of coures we will have to get approved by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission "

PLEEASEE, let Lorinda handle this. hehe

MS Sunshine

[BBill]

PLEEASEE, let Lorinda handle this. hehe

Yes, Lorinda is much more prepared to deal with an issue of this magnitude http://www.plauder-smilies.de/laugh2.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/laugh2.gifhttp://www.plauder-smilies.de/laugh2.gif

bbill