When you say "Why would anybody help their competitors in an industry which is tough enough as is" I think the irony in that comment is that Sky think along the same lines in that when high stakes HU regs smash the rolls out of recreational players in one hit and they never come back and they would look for a ways to stop that happening and make the recreational players experience last longer and be more enjoyable, but that's me guessing I don't know what's going on in managements minds as far as business strategy.
As far as giving back and free info on line, I think the days of good info online is well and truly over i think if you are not studying using solver based programs in today's games you will be left behind quickly, I know 1 of the guys I mentioned is heavily involved in that work so giving back to the comuinty and helping players out with individual questions is valuable to players on the forum and I see that as a way of giving back.
I hope the HU cash Regs can open a line of comncatiation with the Sky team and at least hear out the concerns of players as well as the Sky team making clear the intentions for the future and come to some kind of agreement.
Hi Gagginks, I think some of your comments are bit wide of the mark. Removing the highest stake heads up games is a trial and it is in no way our expectation that it will drive any volume to Spin Ups. Regs such as yourself won't move over to them and I believe recs that would have played them will either play lower stakes HU, 6 max or will simply play elsewhere if they really want to play 10/20 HU.
We can only work on a short term basis as we have been bought by Stars and so our future is still unclear. I do think it's unfair to say we don't understand the poker ecology though. We have ran many promotions over the last few years to try and acquire new players. For example, a few months ago we ran a £50k freeroll series to drive volume over from SkyBet etc. What isn't good for the poker ecology is a punter coming on and getting absolutely crushed HU by a pro, losing thousands in 1 session and then quitting the game for good.
You seem to be suggesting that the introduction of Spin Ups had some effect on people leaving the Sky Poker team which is very bizarre. FWIW the person who introduced them left the team before I joined so over 3 years ago.
Hi Gagginks, I think some of your comments are bit wide of the mark. Removing the highest stake heads up games is a trial and it is in no way our expectation that it will drive any volume to Spin Ups. Regs such as yourself won't move over to them and I believe recs that would have played them will either play lower stakes HU, 6 max or will simply play elsewhere if they really want to play 10/20 HU.
We can only work on a short term basis as we have been bought by Stars and so our future is still unclear. I do think it's unfair to say we don't understand the poker ecology though. We have ran many promotions over the last few years to try and acquire new players. For example, a few months ago we ran a £50k freeroll series to drive volume over from SkyBet etc. What isn't good for the poker ecology is a punter coming on and getting absolutely crushed HU by a pro, losing thousands in 1 session and then quitting the game for good.
You seem to be suggesting that the introduction of Spin Ups had some effect on people leaving the Sky Poker team which is very bizarre. FWIW the person who introduced them left the team before I joined so over 3 years ago.
Well how long have the hu tables been going and why make a decision to trial their demise now ?
Hi Gagginks, I think some of your comments are bit wide of the mark. Removing the highest stake heads up games is a trial and it is in no way our expectation that it will drive any volume to Spin Ups. Regs such as yourself won't move over to them and I believe recs that would have played them will either play lower stakes HU, 6 max or will simply play elsewhere if they really want to play 10/20 HU.
We can only work on a short term basis as we have been bought by Stars and so our future is still unclear. I do think it's unfair to say we don't understand the poker ecology though. We have ran many promotions over the last few years to try and acquire new players. For example, a few months ago we ran a £50k freeroll series to drive volume over from SkyBet etc. What isn't good for the poker ecology is a punter coming on and getting absolutely crushed HU by a pro, losing thousands in 1 session and then quitting the game for good.
You seem to be suggesting that the introduction of Spin Ups had some effect on people leaving the Sky Poker team which is very bizarre. FWIW the person who introduced them left the team before I joined so over 3 years ago.
Well how long have the hu tables been going and why make a decision to trial their demise now ?
Because jh won lots of money from one player a couple of weeks ago and the sky team would rather he lost his money in future on roulette and not his preferred game of choice. This player since losing has continued playing regular games and spin up so his loss hasnt affected the poker ecology in any way whatsoever which is the supposed reason for removing these tables.
Hi Gagginks, I think some of your comments are bit wide of the mark. Removing the highest stake heads up games is a trial and it is in no way our expectation that it will drive any volume to Spin Ups. Regs such as yourself won't move over to them and I believe recs that would have played them will either play lower stakes HU, 6 max or will simply play elsewhere if they really want to play 10/20 HU
This isn't really something I want to hear from a Sky Poker rep. The Sky Poker ecosystem losing money/players isn't a good thing at all yet your basically saying 'if they move, so what'.
What isn't good for the poker ecology is a punter coming on and getting absolutely crushed HU by a pro, losing thousands in 1 session and then quitting the game for good.
Wealth is all relative. Losing £5,000 to one person might be like losing £5 to another and vice versa.... Also being able to play at those higher stakes may give more enjoyment / a thrill to the 'punter' knowing the amounts likely mean something to the 'reg' sat at those stakes.
You seem to be suggesting that the introduction of Spin Ups had some effect on people leaving the Sky Poker team which is very bizarre. FWIW the person who introduced them left the team before I joined so over 3 years ago.
Regardless of who introduced them its the new teams job to get the site populated and retain users.
Since the introduction of Spin Ups the site has been in decline. You will have access to all this information. There is no way this isn't true.
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At the end of the day, removing options isn't going to make users join or stay... Its just going to limit the amount you can get.
The people who are using the high stakes heads up tables have to navigate to them. This means they WANT to play these tables for these stakes.
Hi Gagginks, I think some of your comments are bit wide of the mark. Removing the highest stake heads up games is a trial and it is in no way our expectation that it will drive any volume to Spin Ups. Regs such as yourself won't move over to them and I believe recs that would have played them will either play lower stakes HU, 6 max or will simply play elsewhere if they really want to play 10/20 HU.
We can only work on a short term basis as we have been bought by Stars and so our future is still unclear. I do think it's unfair to say we don't understand the poker ecology though. We have ran many promotions over the last few years to try and acquire new players. For example, a few months ago we ran a £50k freeroll series to drive volume over from SkyBet etc. What isn't good for the poker ecology is a punter coming on and getting absolutely crushed HU by a pro, losing thousands in 1 session and then quitting the game for good.
You seem to be suggesting that the introduction of Spin Ups had some effect on people leaving the Sky Poker team which is very bizarre. FWIW the person who introduced them left the team before I joined so over 3 years ago.
Well how long have the hu tables been going and why make a decision to trial their demise now ?
Because jh won lots of money from one player a couple of weeks ago and the sky team would rather he lost his money in future on roulette and not his preferred game of choice. This player since losing has continued playing regular games and spin up so his loss hasnt affected the poker ecology in any way whatsoever which is the supposed reason for removing these tables.
You really think they make a decision like this based on one incident? It may have been what prompted them to look into it further, but I'm sure they aren't as rash as that.
No one is going to take you seriously when you just come across so bitter and make assumptions like that.
You all seem to be saying that Spins are the cause of reduced traffic on the site... any evidence to support that?
Most sites have some sort of short stacked cash game these days.
don't you think its more to do with party's aggressive approach to customer acquisition? 888's traffic has dropped significantly for example, while party have crushed it.
You all seem to be saying that Spins are the cause of reduced traffic on the site... any evidence to support that?
Most sites have some sort of short stacked cash game these days.
don't you think its more to do with party's aggressive approach to customer acquisition? 888's traffic has dropped significantly for example, while party have crushed it.
completely agree with that, I would say 80% of my action is now over at Party for the reasons explained. its purely down to how far sites are willing to go for the clients.
You all seem to be saying that Spins are the cause of reduced traffic on the site... any evidence to support that?
Most sites have some sort of short stacked cash game these days.
don't you think its more to do with party's aggressive approach to customer acquisition? 888's traffic has dropped significantly for example, while party have crushed it.
888 and party will have similar demographics as they are both poker first and are therefore direct competitors.
Sky Poker on the other hand is a sort of spawn of Sky Bet and Sky Vegas... a big portion (if not the majority) of sky pokers traffic will be from people who were either using or interested in these things first.
As for spins having reduced traffic, the evidence I have is that I’ve seen everything first hand. I was here long before spins ups and was playing near daily for years.I saw the drop off first hand and the decline started with the introduction of spins.
spins introduction roughly coincides with Party's more aggressive change in tactics no? So if party was the cause then you would still be seeing the exact same thing.
888 holdings do not make most of their money from poker and both have casino/gambling businesses. You could even argue that gambling based customers would be attracted to a lottery style poker game without much skill.
I don't see how this is anything more than you guessing at what is going on - you have no idea where the customers come from and nor do I.
You all seem to be saying that Spins are the cause of reduced traffic on the site... any evidence to support that?
Most sites have some sort of short stacked cash game these days.
don't you think its more to do with party's aggressive approach to customer acquisition? 888's traffic has dropped significantly for example, while party have crushed it.
888 and party will have similar demographics as they are both poker first and are therefore direct competitors.
Sky Poker on the other hand is a sort of spawn of Sky Bet and Sky Vegas... a big portion (if not the majority) of sky pokers traffic will be from people who were either using or interested in these things first.
They're not poker first fwiw. 888 never have been. Party are just an arm of GVC group who are just like Amaya/Sky.
Any sane person can see that spin ups are just rake machines (which explains why they are highlighted at the top of the cash lobby to ensure they get the most traffic - and outnumber regular 6max games by about 10-1 some nights)
They are also counter-productive in terms of 6-max traffic as the recreational players will lose their money at lot faster - as they are losing 10bbs every few hands (particularly as most of them will have no idea about push/fold ranges for this stack depth) Whereas if they were on a normal 6-max game they would be losing the same amount of money over a much larger sample of hands, and would be going broke slower.
And this is why we are lucky to see one or two 100nl+ 6max games running these days, despite the fact we are constantly told Sky is seeing population growth quarter on quarter. I have been on this site long enough to remember 20+ games running at these stakes most evenings. There have been recent times where during the evening on *weekends* there are *no* games running at all. You would hope that this would give the Sky management team some pause for thought - and question their recent business decisions. Though with the recent stars buy-out I can't see them reversing this decision anytime soon as they no longer have much of an incentive to remain interested in the longevity of the site.
Edit - As for the players who turn up to 10/20 and lose a small fortune - it is very unlikely this person is dipping into their overdraft and trying their luck - they are insanely wealthy people who want to play high stakes for the thrill and the majority will simply go elsewhere if the games are not available to them.
The TV channel used to attract alot of people too, when that went there doesn't seem to have been much effort to replace it with a presence on any of the other platforms like twitch or youtube. They do have a YouTube channel but the last post was 2 years ago.
If some of the budget was spent on promotions to get people to create content on these platforms rather than rake races, maybe the site would attract some new customers. The current rake race heavy promotions just reward the high volume regs, making the games tougher to beat and less attractive to pay for everyone else in an attempt to get an instant return on their investment.
James has said that all they can do is work in the short term, because the don't know what is going to happen long term with the stars takeover. So maybe the site is destined to die slowly and eventually get swallowed by Stars. Maybe a more long term approach is needed to stop this from happening, despite not knowing if the rewards will be fully reaped?
My opinion is that this combined with Party's far more aggressive and longer term approach has lead to a decrease in traffic. I'd be surprised if spins have anything to do with it.
@GagginKs what would you like to see happen? Given all the facts explained in this thread such as the site has been bought out and most plans are short term solutions, safe garding recreational players from losing to much to quickly as to protect the re-deposits, I mean it doesn't leave to much room for any argument tbf given lack of control and time.
Spin ups would be better if you couldn't rathole. It means the table would inevitably get deeper. Regs who start spin ups often 'reset' the table and no one can buy in for anything but the 10bb again.
@GagginKs what would you like to see happen? Given all the facts explained in this thread such as the site has been bought out and most plans are short term solutions, safe garding recreational players from losing to much to quickly as to protect the re-deposits, I mean it doesn't leave to much room for any argument tbf given lack of control and time.
Sorry, didn't see this.
First of all - why would the site being bought out make every decision become a short term one unless specific instructions have been given from above - in that case why don't they just say that instead of saying 'our future is unclear'?
What would I like to see happen / what do I think is best for the protection of recs / the longevity + sustainability of the site? A couple of things off the top of my head:
1. Remove high variance high rake spin ups OR at the very least don't highlight these at the top of the lobbies and don't make them available in the 'regular' tab.
2. Have management focused on longevity and sustainability rather than the short term - even if the company has been brought out, the new owners would be foolish to close it down if it had a good business model, covered different demographics than its flagship product and filled a niche in the market (no 3rd party software / 200bb tables...etc).
I'm the same as UNLV in that I would be very happy to sit down with Sky and discuss this with them.
3 or 4 years ago 8pm there were over 4000 people on line playing every night now sky struggle to get 3000 and they play spins gl to them the mini d/h used to have a 2/12k garantee now 2k and some nights cant get 400 players in . i no this is away from the main topic but sadley sky poker is slowly dying
Comments
As far as giving back and free info on line, I think the days of good info online is well and truly over i think if you are not studying using solver based programs in today's games you will be left behind quickly, I know 1 of the guys I mentioned is heavily involved in that work so giving back to the comuinty and helping players out with individual questions is valuable to players on the forum and I see that as a way of giving back.
I hope the HU cash Regs can open a line of comncatiation with the Sky team and at least hear out the concerns of players as well as the Sky team making clear the intentions for the future and come to some kind of agreement.
We can only work on a short term basis as we have been bought by Stars and so our future is still unclear. I do think it's unfair to say we don't understand the poker ecology though. We have ran many promotions over the last few years to try and acquire new players. For example, a few months ago we ran a £50k freeroll series to drive volume over from SkyBet etc. What isn't good for the poker ecology is a punter coming on and getting absolutely crushed HU by a pro, losing thousands in 1 session and then quitting the game for good.
You seem to be suggesting that the introduction of Spin Ups had some effect on people leaving the Sky Poker team which is very bizarre. FWIW the person who introduced them left the team before I joined so over 3 years ago.
-- Wealth is all relative. Losing £5,000 to one person might be like losing £5 to another and vice versa.... Also being able to play at those higher stakes may give more enjoyment / a thrill to the 'punter' knowing the amounts likely mean something to the 'reg' sat at those stakes.
-- Regardless of who introduced them its the new teams job to get the site populated and retain users.
Since the introduction of Spin Ups the site has been in decline. You will have access to all this information. There is no way this isn't true.
---------------
At the end of the day, removing options isn't going to make users join or stay... Its just going to limit the amount you can get.
The people who are using the high stakes heads up tables have to navigate to them. This means they WANT to play these tables for these stakes.
No one is going to take you seriously when you just come across so bitter and make assumptions like that.
Most sites have some sort of short stacked cash game these days.
don't you think its more to do with party's aggressive approach to customer acquisition? 888's traffic has dropped significantly for example, while party have crushed it.
completely agree with that, I would say 80% of my action is now over at Party for the reasons explained. its purely down to how far sites are willing to go for the clients.
Sky Poker on the other hand is a sort of spawn of Sky Bet and Sky Vegas... a big portion (if not the majority) of sky pokers traffic will be from people who were either using or interested in these things first.
888 holdings do not make most of their money from poker and both have casino/gambling businesses. You could even argue that gambling based customers would be attracted to a lottery style poker game without much skill.
I don't see how this is anything more than you guessing at what is going on - you have no idea where the customers come from and nor do I.
They are also counter-productive in terms of 6-max traffic as the recreational players will lose their money at lot faster - as they are losing 10bbs every few hands (particularly as most of them will have no idea about push/fold ranges for this stack depth) Whereas if they were on a normal 6-max game they would be losing the same amount of money over a much larger sample of hands, and would be going broke slower.
And this is why we are lucky to see one or two 100nl+ 6max games running these days, despite the fact we are constantly told Sky is seeing population growth quarter on quarter. I have been on this site long enough to remember 20+ games running at these stakes most evenings. There have been recent times where during the evening on *weekends* there are *no* games running at all. You would hope that this would give the Sky management team some pause for thought - and question their recent business decisions. Though with the recent stars buy-out I can't see them reversing this decision anytime soon as they no longer have much of an incentive to remain interested in the longevity of the site.
Edit - As for the players who turn up to 10/20 and lose a small fortune - it is very unlikely this person is dipping into their overdraft and trying their luck - they are insanely wealthy people who want to play high stakes for the thrill and the majority will simply go elsewhere if the games are not available to them.
If some of the budget was spent on promotions to get people to create content on these platforms rather than rake races, maybe the site would attract some new customers. The current rake race heavy promotions just reward the high volume regs, making the games tougher to beat and less attractive to pay for everyone else in an attempt to get an instant return on their investment.
James has said that all they can do is work in the short term, because the don't know what is going to happen long term with the stars takeover. So maybe the site is destined to die slowly and eventually get swallowed by Stars. Maybe a more long term approach is needed to stop this from happening, despite not knowing if the rewards will be fully reaped?
My opinion is that this combined with Party's far more aggressive and longer term approach has lead to a decrease in traffic. I'd be surprised if spins have anything to do with it.
Not trying to push Spin Ups?
They are highlighted at the top of the Lobby and are even displayed in the 'Regular' tab. Since when has 10bb poker been 'Regular'?
Look how much traffic is being driven away from SUSTAINABLE REGULAR games.
First of all - why would the site being bought out make every decision become a short term one unless specific instructions have been given from above - in that case why don't they just say that instead of saying 'our future is unclear'?
What would I like to see happen / what do I think is best for the protection of recs / the longevity + sustainability of the site? A couple of things off the top of my head:
1. Remove high variance high rake spin ups OR at the very least don't highlight these at the top of the lobbies and don't make them available in the 'regular' tab.
2. Have management focused on longevity and sustainability rather than the short term - even if the company has been brought out, the new owners would be foolish to close it down if it had a good business model, covered different demographics than its flagship product and filled a niche in the market (no 3rd party software / 200bb tables...etc).
I'm the same as UNLV in that I would be very happy to sit down with Sky and discuss this with them.
sky poker is slowly dying