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Copyright 2005 PokerNews.com
September 19, 2005
HEADLINE:
GIGSE '05: Online Poker the Star of the Show! Global
Internet gaming show reflects the growing importance of poker
BODY:
The older I get, the less I seem to know. The world gets
more complex, and the sum of human knowledge grows. It is communicated
at the speed of light to people who build on it to expand the
human view of the universe even more, and then communicate it
to others, who in turn use it, and so on, ad infinitum. It’s
hard to keep up. But, the more you learn, the more you know, and
the more you know, the more you grow, and when you stop growing,
you surely start dying. I do what I can to understand the universe
around me, no matter how futile the effort may sometimes seem.
When it comes to the world of e-commerce, whatever it was you
thought you learned this morning is often already obsolete by
dinner. I have been part of the world of Internet
poker since its beginnings, and I struggle to keep up with
its manifold evolutions and revolutions. In June, I was afforded
a spectacular opportunity to increase my knowledge by attending
the 10th-annual Global Internet Gaming Show and Exposition —
GIGSE (pronounced gig-see) ’05 — in Montreal. It was
sponsored by the River City Group, which is run by Sue Schneider
out of St. Louis, Missouri.
It was worth making the trip just to see Montreal, which, with
its French culture, architecture, and cuisine, is a little like
going to Europe while staying in North America. GIGSE will return
to Montreal in May 2006, so that it won’t conflict with
the World Series of Poker, as this show did. This reflects the
growing importance of poker in the online gaming world.
GIGSE has grown incredibly from its beginnings. The number of
exhibitors doubled from last year to nearly 100, and attendance
grew by more than half from 900 to more than 1,400 people from
47 countries and representing all aspects of the e-gaming industry.
The biggest participants were e-payment interests like NETeller,
Gateway, and Click2Play.
Dozens of affiliate organizations were there. Online sportsbooks,
the behemoth of Internet gaming, and online casinos were everywhere.
Law firms, accounting firms, software developers, publishers,
game designers, governmental jurisdictions that cater to online
interests, and more were represented. But the star of the show,
in my opinion, was the former redheaded stepsister who has grown
into a beauty queen: online poker. Everybody’s seeking to
take this girl to the prom.
PartyPoker sponsored the opening reception and, not surprisingly,
was the most visible poker presence. Bodog.com, a gigantic online
sportsbook that’s making a foray into Internet
poker, generated the most buzz. Bodog’s CEO, Canadian
Calvin Ayres, has a style reminiscent of Richard Branson from
the UK, of Virgin Air, Virgin Music, and so on. Ayres is the brand,
and the brand is hot. The most obvious thing about Ayres and Bodog
is that they’re not afraid to spend money to build their
business, and they’re dead serious about establishing their
place in online poker. Among other things, they hosted a major
online poker marketing show at Mandalay Bay during the World Series.
One of the most difficult things about the show was choosing
which seminars to attend over the four days. I opted for Know
Your Customer; Developing a Marketing Strategy; Protecting the
Poker Player; and Internet Poker. My buddy John attended Fraud
and Risk Management Solutions; Opportunities and Risks in the
Chinese Market; and The U.S. Legal Climate. Some of the other
topics available were Emerging Payment Concepts; Payment Processing
Challenges; Distributed Denial of Service Attacks; Technology
Outsourcing Deals; Affiliate Marketing Roundtable; Betting Exchanges;
Institutional Investing; Case Studies in Branding Strategies;
Skill Games; Jurisdictions; and Mobile Gaming. The seminar most
interesting to me was Internet Poker: Protecting the Player Experience,
by Andre Edelbrock and Andy Goetsch of Cryptologic. Preserving
the integrity of online poker is a subject about which I know
quite a bit, and I always want to learn more. The more you learn,
the more you grow.
One of the things I learned is that in this “Internet Age,”
people collect huge amounts of data and make it available in the
marketplace. One of the more impressive exhibitors was Hitwise
(www.hitwise.com), which measures Internet activity and refers
to itself as “the world’s leading online competitive
intelligent service.” Some Hitwise-collected data for the
week ending July 16, 2005, was: Visits to gambling websites account
for 0.55 percent of all U.S. visits to the Internet (by comparison,
search engines accounted for 7.03 percent and visits to adult
websites accounted for 16.92 percent); 23 percent of visitors
to gambling sites are 55+ years of age; CardPlayer.com was a fast-moving
gambling website during the week, jumping from No. 19 to No. 8;
PartyPoker was the most popular gambling website visited by U.S.
Internet users … the No. 2 site was FreeSlots.com and the
No. 3 site was PacificPoker.com. (Note that the data is for all
gambling sites, not just poker.)
Hitwise data indicates that the dominant demographic group visiting
gambling sites are men (51 percent), ages 35-44 (around 25 percent),
with household incomes of $30,000-$60,000. Also, there is significant
customer churn; around 20 percent of those who visit a gambling
website then go to another gambling website. Around 14 percent
of those who visit a gambling site are search-engine driven. (Actual
numbers vary from week to week.)
Part of the growing demand for data is the growing number of
magazine titles dealing with the industry. Probably a couple of
dozen publications had a presence at the show — not just
Card Player wannabes, but publications about casinos, sports betting,
and most particularly e-commerce in its infinite variety. Some
of the more impressive were Poker Biz, E-Gaming Review, I-Gaming
Business, and Online Gambler.
For me, one of the more exciting elements of the show was the
introduction of 3-D interfaces for poker sites. It is my long-held
belief that most sites underestimate the importance of their interfaces,
and don’t do enough to make them user-friendly. French software
developer Mekensleep (www.mekensleep.com) had a 3-D unit on display.
Bodog is scheduled to go live with a 3-D interface later this
year. I suspect that it won’t be long before 3-D interfaces
are the norm.
Those who follow this column know that the issue of integrity
and site security is one that I work with and care very much about.
Greg Pierson, the principal founder of UltimateBet, has a new
venture, Iovation, which develops new software not only to catch
cheaters, but to protect poker
site users against a variety of other evils, including phishers
and hackers. Pierson strikes me as one of the smarter people I
have ever met, and he somewhat reminds me of Microsoft co-founder
Paul Allen, one of those guys who has made a bundle but whose
mind demands that he continue innovating.
There was much discussion of networks of skins at the show. PartyPoker
is, of course, the biggest poker network, with its Empire skin
being bigger than most independent sites. When it comes to network
philosophy, there are two basic concepts: full-service networks
like Cryptologic, whose skins tend to be more expensive, and bare-bones
networks like PrimaNetwork, whose skins tend to be cheaper. The
full-service networks provide backroom support, including customer
service, deposits and withdrawals, security, and so on. According
to John Docherty, the man behind PrimaNetwork, you can get into
a bare-bones network skin these days for less than a hundred grand.
With around 40 rooms, PrimaNetwork has more operators than anybody
in the network marketplace. One of its premier rooms is Royal
Vegas, run by Lou Kelmanson. Ladbrokes uses Prima Network software,
but doesn’t participate in its network. Because skin owners
have to provide their own support and infrastructure, Docherty
qualifies them carefully, as each skin owner in a network needs
the other skin owners to do their marketing job or the concept
fails. PrimaNetwork sponsors a team of poker players, primarily
for European marketing: the Hendon Mob — Ram “Crazy
Horse” Vaswani, Barny Boatman, Joe “The Elegance”
Beevers, and “Rocky” Ross Boatman.
Besides promoting industry shows like GIGSE, River City has an
executive search division and a publishing division. This being
the 21st century and all, some of the publications are available
principally or only in electronic format. Of particular note is
“Internet Poker — The Real Deal,” a guide to
the online poker industry. A portion of this was excerpted as
an article by Mark Balestra in the spring ’05 edition of
industry periodical Poker Biz, (www.ggbmagazine.com), and it is
the best, most comprehensive discussion of the online poker industry
I have yet seen.
Besides GIGSE ’06 in Montreal, River City has upcoming
e-gaming shows in ’05 and ’06 in Nice, France; Macau;
New York; and the Bahamas. I’m scheduled to be a speaker
at the December show in Nassau — I-Gaming in Depth: Online
Poker. You can get more info on River City’s shows and publications
at www.rivercitygroup.com.
The growth of the Internet was driven first by adult sites and
then by gaming, two of the biggest e-commerce industries by dollar
volume and hits, even today. Poker has grown to be a significant
share of the e-gaming market, and that share will only grow. Shows
such as GIGSE are an important part of establishing a cohesive
industry that can grow even more by cooperation.
Roy Cooke played winning poker for more than 16 years. He
is a successful real estate broker/salesperson in Las Vegas. His
books are available at www.conjelco.com. His longtime collaborator,
John Bond, is a free-lance writer in South Florida. Roy may be
contacted at: RealtyAce@aol.com.
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