Update on "O Doyle's Army"

[O Doyle Rules]

Hi All,

Just thought I would post an update on the current status of "O Doyle's Army". (Please note I have this in parenthesis to indicate that this was the name that was just suggested originally and would be likely to change if this proceeds. I just don't want to get sidetracked by the "army" debate again.)

I have had discussions with several sites. Some have expressed varying degrees of interest. Some have flat rejected it. Some have said they like the idea, but to administer such a program could be a problem for them at the moment. Some are still looking at it.

A new poker site that will be launching this fall is keenly interested in it and contacted me. My concern with a new site and I expressed it with them is that they would not have the traffic to support an "army" of high volume players coming to their site. The two solutions they saw to this problem would be to limit the number of participants and to offer a "safety net" to anyone that wanted to quit and opt out of the program for rakeback earned to that point. The rakeback would be a lower percentage of value in comparison to a WSOP package, but still highly competitive in the marketplace.

This new site did not only see this idea as a one time shot. They would hope to have a longterm relationship with a Team of High Volume Players. Their hope would be that this "Team" would continue to play at their site and go to several major poker events throughout the year representing their site. Pretty much like Full Tilt's team of pros, but instead a team of online high volume players.

I would like to hear from you all in regards to your concerns with trying such a venture with a new site.

If nothing immediately comes of this, I will not be disappointed. I do believe there are sites that will be announcing some "deals" to attract high volume players to their site and I would like to think that my orginal post (and all the interest it generated) had something to do with it. So from that standpoint, I would not declare this "experiment" a total failure as their maybe some indirect value coming to high volume players.

Once again, thanks for all the interest and support and would like to hear from any of you in regards to concerns, suggestions, etc.

[RollaJ]

The problem as I see it is this:
You are trying to get a bunch of high volume players, which mostly means fulltimers (pros). A pro does not have the liberty of giving up his earn rate to win a seat in a tourney.
You of all people know how hard it was to get a game at times on TruePoker.... a well established site. So much more so, it will be very hard to get a game at pokersite 8,892 on the web unless they are a skin

[TemetNosce]

Your efforts on this are appreciated. Would you be at liberty to divulge what sites flat rejected your proposal?

[MicroBob]

Obviously many of the players here are not going to be thrilled with sitting around and playing a ton of raked-hands with each other.

I propped briefly with Premier Props on a small site. It was kind of tough always running up against the same 2+2'ers....although I wasn't as good a player than and was getting frustrated by my losses there.
But that's the memory I have of 'playing on a smallish site against a bunch of other prop-type players'.

On top of that....there eventually issues with payment there (although I believe I was paid in full).

I do think something like this can work. But on a small site where you don't even know how successful they are going to be in the long-run AND you are going to be playing against fairly tough competition I'm not sure it would be worth it.



talked with a guy in Vegas who had qualified for the WSOP via FullTilt...they hadn't paid his entry when he arrived even though they said they did...promised they had wired the money...but the lady at the WSOP desk told him that she got the feeling FullTilt was having some sort of problem getting all the entry-money to them.
When there are issues with a site that is decently big such as FullTilt I shudder to think of the potential problems one could have with a start-up site.

I mean...if it's REALLY run well then everything can be just dandy.
Obviously your experience with TruePoker was a good one.
But there are definite drawbacks to playing on a smallish site...and any EV that one could gain out of chasing a huge prize by playing a ton of hands is counter-balanced by the possibility (perhaps slim...perhaps not) that you will NEVER actually get the prize even if you meet all the requirements (or that you will just have a huge hassle getting it when all is said and done).

Again....it might be great.
But one just has to consider the possibilities.



That said, I do hope it takes off and that everything works great.
I would perhaps consider doing this IF I could see that there are more players than JUST the high-volume 2+2'ers playing on the site and IF I felt truly confident that the site was trustworthy.

[ipp147]

[ QUOTE ]
Once again, thanks for all the interest and support and would like to hear from any of you in regards to concerns, suggestions, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi,

There was an article in a UK gaming publication about a scandinavian poker site skin that does something similar to your idea.

They however take the best tournament players from their site (leaderboard point stuff) and pay for them to travel and play in tournaments - the profits are split.

It was an interesting idea and while its concept is different from yours the profit sharing angle may help interest sites.

[pokerrookie]

It's a start. I look forward to hearing future details.

[Arnfinn Madsen]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Once again, thanks for all the interest and support and would like to hear from any of you in regards to concerns, suggestions, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi,

There was an article in a UK gaming publication about a scandinavian poker site skin that does something similar to your idea.

They however take the best tournament players from their site (leaderboard point stuff) and pay for them to travel and play in tournaments - the profits are split.

It was an interesting idea and while its concept is different from yours the profit sharing angle may help interest sites.

[/ QUOTE ]

One Norwegian guy won a seat this way. It resulted in a prize of almost $200k (which he had to share with the site).

[Randy_Refeld]

[ QUOTE ]
When there are issues with a site that is decently big such as FullTilt I shudder to think of the potential problems one could have with a start-up site.

[/ QUOTE ]

For a long time I had never had a problem with getting paid. This year I have had paymnet issues with 3 different sites. @ were very small sites that eventaully paid me. The third is a not so small site that was giving away $500 a week in a promo and they didn't put enough thougth into the promo so I won it easily every week so the 4th week of the month the elected not to pay me. This was particuarly disturbing because they are owned by a large well known sports book, I think the guy that came up with the promo was jsut upset that I was making more from the promo than they were.

[O Doyle Rules]

[ QUOTE ]

You of all people know how hard it was to get a game at times on TruePoker.... a well established site. So much more so, it will be very hard to get a game at pokersite 8,892 on the web unless they are a skin

[/ QUOTE ]

The only time I had trouble finding a game, (keep in mind I was always trying to 8 table at all times) was early in the morning. I think it was a Saturday morning when I ran into you at a $ 100 NL game. Now was all the 8 tables I was playing the exact games I would prefer to be in? No, but any new challenge for the "army" will hopefully be over a much longer time period, thus a person could be a lot more choosier at what games they are sitting than what I had to due to time constraints.

However, I do agree that a new site would have to be able to drive new players to their site rather quickly for this to work.

[O Doyle Rules]

[ QUOTE ]
Your efforts on this are appreciated. Would you be at liberty to divulge what sites flat rejected your proposal?

[/ QUOTE ]


You're welcome and thanks for the support.

I really don't think it serves any purpose to "name names". I am never one to completely close a door because I don't know when I might want to walk back through it one day.