Tag Archives: online poker
Online Poker, The Leading Edge
As a gaming software developer, CyberArts is often asked about the future direction of online poker. Here are some of the more interesting developments we see on the horizon.
Online Gaming Software Grows Up The next generation of gaming software must be reliable and stable. The market and the high cost of player acquisition demand no less. Technology exists that provides the same kind of robustness and scalability found in numerous fail-safe platforms like mission-critical financial systems and air traffic control systems. Developing such platforms requires careful, rigorous design, implementation and testing, and takes years to complete, but what gaming company can settle for less?
Early online gaming software was PC-based, single-user games downloaded or on CD. Developers extended these games to support multiple players online. The popularity of online poker caught those developers by surprise. The underlying architecture was not designed to support thousands of simultaneous users, playing frequent large tournaments. Compounding these challenges were poor internet connections including modems.
As online poker took off, leading sites attracted more players than the designers had anticipated. The early systems failed and crashed spectacularly sometimes taking down gaming sites for hours every day, interrupting tournaments and alienating players. Gaming software developers reacted by re-architecting with countless patches and fixes, forcing time-consuming client downloads.
Many do not realize that poker software is still not as stable as the industry requires and nowhere close to the stability of online stock trading applications. As recently as last year, two of the top five sites suffered damaging multi-day outages. Most networks crash or experience unacceptable lag every few days. MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) is a measure of how often you can expect your online poker room to crash. Ask vendors to document in writing their historical MTBF.
Poker and Social Networking Gaming has always been about entertainment. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook have attracted tens of millions of users, and their growth continues. The popularity is based on the simple fact that people like to congregate, share interests and “play together.”
Poker software developers have started to build social networking concepts into their platforms allowing players, for example, to congregate in private rooms. This functionality may be superseded, though, by a parallel trend. Spurred by Facebook “opening up” their platform to allow embedded applications, poker operators have created versions of their games that can be played right “inside” Facebook pages. CyberArts recently created such an application for its licensee PurePlay, which operates highly successful online poker tournaments in a U.S-legal subscription model.
The PurePlay Facebook client is downloadable from within any users Facebook page, and users can invite friends and acquaintances to play. A Flash-based version of the client will allow game play within a Facebook page.
A page can be an individual Facebook profile, or can be a special page created for a group or organization. This capability will give rise to informal groups and teams. Players can organize tournaments around schools, football clubs, brands, hobbies the possibilities are limitless, and such groups can come together quickly and with little or no investment in software development.
Big Media and Advergaming Gaming is increasingly about branding and transmitting a marketing message to mass audiences of players. Weve recently seen a growing interest in online poker from “Big Media,” i.e., television, news and other print companies. They reason that free online poker is a good way to attract players to their sites, cementing brand loyalty and providing “eyeballs” for advertising. These companies require flexible interfaces where the cards, chips and especially the table felt may be branded to reflect an advertisers look and messages. CyberArts flexible interface allows ads to be embedded into the game on the game table, chips and cards. High definition interfaces are possible, freeing marketers from a me-too look and feel.
An example is shown above a free online poker game offered by CyberArts licensee The Score, which is Canadas leading sports television and radio network. Built into ScorePoker is sophisticated “advergaming server” software built by Toronto based Advertising Gaming Network. AGNs software displays ads intelligently. It draws data about players from The Scores member database say, the players geographic location, and sports interests and combines it with player history data. It then displays ads tailored to each player. A Vancouver player might see local ads, while a football fan whos won a big tournament might see a congratulatory banner from his favorite team and Molson Ale. Players see ads at the appropriate time during a game, for instance after a hand is folded or during a break. No player is going to click on an ad when they are thinking about whether to call a big raise. Why bother to show ads at times like that?
Games Beyond Poker Finally, the future of online poker will surely include other games that can be cross-sold to the same audience. Having built a profitable base of players that enjoy gaming, it makes sense to offer them allied products such as other games. Of course, a consistent look and feel, with single sign-on and shared wallet, is the only way to go. A universal gaming platform built to enterprise class standards of reliability should be part of the strategic plan for every successful operator.
The History of WSOP (World Series of Poker) 1990 2010.
WSOP 2011 is just a few days away and while looking forward and getting ready to the new series we would like to remember the history of this magnificent event to and see how it grew to become the most desirable and iconic live poker tournament. Having gone through the events between 1970 and 1989 we shall carry on the story.
Benny Binion the founder of World Series of Poker (WSOP) in1970 died on Christmas Day in 1989.
Jack Binion, his son, took over the empire and continued working on growing WSOP by attracting a lot of publicity attention, media interest around the world and improving player experience. His promotional work around the world certainly paid off and in 1990 Mansour Matloubi, an Iranian-born player from the UK, won the title. This was also the year that attracted the highest number of women and international players since the beginning of the Series. It was also the first time when WSOP became a four week event for the first time.
1991 was the first year when WSOP awarded the top winner the first prize of $1,000,000 and it was also the first time in history when the Main Event attracted more than 200 players. Brad Doherty, a professional poker player from Reno, Nevada won the top prize and the bracelet.
1992 Main Event attracted slightly less amount of players than the previous year, 201 compared to 215 a year before. The winner that year was Hamid Dastmalchi, an Iranian born American player, who won $1,000,000 top prize.
In 1993 the Main Event attendance was on the up again, with 220 players taking part. One of the most interesting facts of that year was that for the first time over half of the players qualified through various satellite events. Jim Betchell was the winner of $1 million first prize.
1994 was a special year for WSOP, which celebrated its 25th anniversary. To commemorate this Jack Binion offered the winners weight in silver in addition to the $1 million top prize. When the final table was assembled it did not look too bad for Binion as most of the players were slim, apart of Ross Hamilton, who weighed over 330 pounds and carried on enjoying hamburgers and chips through out the day. At the end his efforts were generously rewarded with $30,000 worth of silver bars on top of the first prize.
WSOP 1995 had a record 273 Main Event entrants and Dan Harrington picked up the $1,000,000 prize. The following year it was Huck Seed who came first with exactly the same hand of 9d, 8d as Harrington the year before.
1997 WSOP was the only time when the Main Event was held outdoors on a huge stage on Fremont Street, as Horseshoe casino could not fit a massive increase in the number of players. Stu Ungar was the winner that year and like Johny Moss became three times world champion. Scotty Nguyen came first the following year.
Following a decline of the Horseshoe Casino business and a break up in the Binion family, Jack Binion left WSOP operation and the Series seemed to loose their appeal to many professional players who stayed away between 1999 and 2002. However WSOP 2001 held a record 512 players in the main event and for the first time a $1,500,000 top prize. Chris Ferguson was the champion that year. Coincidently he was the last professional poker player to win the Series for many years to come.
2002 Championship started again with record braking figures, when 631 participants joined the Main event with $2,000,000 top prize and $1,000,000 for the runner up. Robert Varkonye, an amateur newcomer from New York, was such an expected winner, that Phill Helmuth said that hed shave his head if Varkonye won.
In 2003 the critics started to think that the Series were at their end and no longer were capable to attract the poker players, since World Poker Tour (WPT) became a competitor. They however were to eat their words when 839 players took part in the main event. And when Chris Moneymaker won a record $2,500,000 first prize, he changed everything for the future of poker. To start with he was the first WSOP winner who won his place through live poker tournaments qualifiers online. This fact alone showed people around the world that $10,000 buy-in was no longer an issue and an entry ticket can be obtained in an online poker room through a series of online poker promotions. Also Chris was an extremely likable ordinary guy with who everyday poker players could identify and see themselves in his place. He was the perfect face for the new poker era.
In 2004 both the number of participants 2,576 players, most of who qualified through series of online poker promotions, and the prize money hit through the roof. If only one year earlier the top prize was a record breaking, at the time, $2,5 million the top prize that year was a staggering $5,000,000 and the top five finalists eared over $1 million each. The second place was paid with $3,5 million. Greg Raymer, a patent lawyer, won the Championship that year. Once again he got his place in the Series through online poker promotions. 2004 was also the year when WSOP operation was sold and Harrahs Entertainments secured the property rights to WSOP.
In 2005 The Series moved into their new home RIO All-Suits Casino and Hotel. The numbers soared once again and became truly astronomical. The Main Event alone attracted 5,619 players! As the year before that most players joined the series through various online poker promotions held by an online poker room throughout the year. The prize pool was unbelievable with the top nine places earning over $1 million. The winner, Joe Hachem, cashed $7,500,000 and the runner up, Steve Dannenmann, won $4.25 million.
2006 once again broke all the previous records. 8,733 participants, $12 million top prize at the Main Event, which is higher than Wimbledon, The Masters and The Kentucky Derby top prizes put together, and $82 million total prize pool. The winner that year was Jamie Gold, a television producer from Australia, once again an unknown amateur player, who decided to play at the last minute. This was also the first year when a $50,000 buy-in High-roller event was introduced.
With introduction of UIEGA in 2006, there were universal concerns about the future of the big live poker tournaments as many online poker rooms, now major source of players for live poker events, moved out of the USA market and those rooms who stayed had to find the ways of getting players funds into the sites. In some ways such concerns were justified as 2007 was the only year of decline in history with “only” 6,358 players taking part and $8,250,000 top prize, which was won by Jerry Yang.
In 2008 the numbers were on the rise again with 6,844 players in the main event and $9,152,416 top prize, won by Peter Eastgate. 2009 Main Event saw 6,494 participants and $8,547,042 top prize for Joe Cada, an online poker player from Michigan. In 2010 the numbers continued to increase to 7,319 entrants into the Main Event and $68,798,600 total prize pool with a $8,944,138 top prize for Jonathan Duhamel, the first Canadian player to capture the title.
If you have not secured your place in Las Vegas this year yet, dont worry, there is still time to qualify online to live poker events WSOP 2011 with Unleashed Poker as well as many other online poker promotions running now. And maybe, who knows it will be you crowned as a champion and making it into history in 2011.