peterbirks: (Default)
[personal profile] peterbirks
An interesting e-mail this morning from Party's marketing arm in the UK. Firstly, it assumes that the US cut-off is going ahead, but that doesn't mean it will. However, let's take that as read, and look at the Party plan.

In the first instance they are looking at casino, backgammon and sports betting shite. When they get onto the intersting poker stuff, Party says that the multi-lingual and multi-currency support (I wonder if I'll encounter the same problems that I had when Neteller moved over to multi-currency support, with an attempted "force" into my domestic currency? I hope not.)

However, my eye was drawn to this line:

"In order to attract customers from new markets, we will be reducing the minimum first deposit required in some markets from $50, which is prohibitive in some markets, to as low as $10."

Gawd. This is a worrying trend. $3-$6 was the biggest ring limit game on FTP yesterday afternoon US time. Stars is notable for having many play money and micro limit players, but it looks to me that if I wish to carry on playing limit, I will have to learn to play short-handed and accept the increased variance. The alternatives are to move over to No Limit completely (probably not a wise move given the fact that the non US players seem quite happy with Limit on at least some sites), to focus on tournaments for a while and see how they go, or to continue to play at the levels at which I am playing at the moment, but to play more tables.

The one thing about Party was that it offered high-level ring games, soimething which you could set as a target, on a roughly round-the-clock basis. It looks as if the new markets will be more micro-limit revenue generation.

For US players thinking that they might find some neat side-stepping manoeuvre, Party also said this:

" We will be introducing additional Qualifying Criteria for some categories of players (for instance, players whose accounts were funded through inter account transfers). This is to comply with anti-money-laundering guidelines and to automate the player evaluation process .

Not sure quite what that means, but it looks as if Party, if it continues with its current plan, is looking to cut off US players entirely.

Twats.

++++++++

On the Neteller side (up 21p today, damn, I could have made 50% on this copmpany, and I missed it) we have the following statement, issued today (some waffle removed)

As stated in an announcement of 2 October 2006, the Company continues to monitor the progress of the Act. The Company expects to have a clearer view of how financial services companies can comply and any possible resulting impact on its business as the regulations are drafted in the 270 days following the signing of the Act. In the meantime, the Company will continue to operate its business to minimise any potential adverse impact, maintaining existing customer and merchant support across all the markets it currently serves.

So, neteller chooses to "wait and see" a little bit longer. Given the extent to which they are pushing their new offerings and expansion elsewhere, I remain worried that it may quit the US market. But if it stays just for three to six months, and Party pulls out, this gives the casual player enough time to get used to Stars or Full Tilt. This is good news indeed.


Note that Neteller is now offering cash incentives for "Refer-A-Friend", so if anyone is thinking of opening a Neteller account, let me know, I'll refer you, and I'll split the difference of any cash awarded.

Date: 2006-10-12 05:07 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Interesting move by stars to put in 50-100 tables now, certainly seems a move to secure party defectors - maybe they won't be pulling out.

Money

Date: 2006-10-12 11:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gayparee.livejournal.com
Nothing to do with anything in particular, but do you know how much money the poker sites make in rakes relative to how much they make by re-investing their punters' deposits? Just curious.

Nick P.

Re: Money

Date: 2006-10-13 06:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
Hi Nick:

I don't know offhand; I could get a rough estimate from about a half-hour's work, but I don't think it's really worth it. Party's half-year figures should give some indication of the distribution.

Since Party doesn't segregate the accounts, it's harder to work out, but Barron's estimated about $190m of punter's money on deposit, which would earn about $8m on short-term rates.

If you average 6,000 real money players over 24 hours paying an average of 10 cents per minute per table, that gives you (about) $3,600 an hour or about $75,000 a day, That comes to about $30m a year.

So, at a guess, poker table earnings are about 4 times interest earnings.

PJ

Re: Money

Date: 2006-10-13 11:01 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Pete that looks way wrong to me, I think you're at least an order of magnitude out - unless I've misjudged what you're measuring. It's a quiet time on party there are 3x500, 6x200, 7x100, 25x$50 STTs running now which won't likely be there in 1 hours time. There's $3500 there.

Re: Money

Date: 2006-10-13 12:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] peterbirks.livejournal.com
That was why i said it would take half an hour to work out.

I can't be bothered to do a deep analysis. If you want the right number, I'm sure that it can be deduced from the released figures rather than by attempting to deduce it from looking at games.

I forgot about the fucking tournaments. OK? I was busy. It was early.

PJ

Re: Money

Date: 2006-10-13 01:08 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Or a simple guess at the p/e ratio.

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