ok so for some reason im tryin to start a session with table ninja and it wont register to any of the sngs. It worked fine last night but for some reason today it wont register. It will error if im not in the sng lobby and acts like its registering to games but it doesnt register on stars? any ideas?
Hero Poker Mainstream marketingby HeroPoker-CEO, April 11
READY FOR TAKE OFF
I have spent the last two weeks preparing for the Hero Poker's mainstream marketing launch. I wanted to update this blog sooner, but the feedback from LP.net as well as from another community site and my two months in the rakeback market wilderness has truly 'enlightened' me. In the last couple of months since launching Hero Poker, I feel that my path to 'poker start-up' enlightenment has been earned from getting my butt kicked every which way and how. I'm not going to hide the fact that I've always worked for big industry monster companies which had dominate market share and basically could put the best face forward to the customer by manhandling their business partners. It was in this paradise of corporate power did I fancy myself this uber business strategist and I, like some noble knight in shining armour decided that I could face the dragon alone. Needless to say, I'm gotten the beat down and while my expectations were fairly realistic in that this would be sick business challenge, I thought I would have worked things out by now, but I'm only just starting to understand what needs to be done.
GO BIG OR GO HOME
Now this may not sound very confident from a CEO from a new site, but I'm being honest and realistic about the process in that my goal/challenge isn't really that realistic. Hero Poker is a fitting name for a site that really does want to break into the top ten in three years, and we have basically 2 groups of tag lines associate with Hero Poker. One is: Be Epic. For that means to me, go big or go home. And then we have three quotes that really embody the site's player image.
"Nothing is impossible to him who will try"
Alexander the Great
"A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new"
Albert Einstein
"Glory is Fleeting, but obscurity is forever"
Napoleon Bonaparte
I envisioned for what it means in relation to our 'brand':
1. No matter the challenge, go for it,
2. no matter how difficult it is, you can figure it out, and
3. it's worth it, even if it hurts/pains like a sonuvabitch.
In many respects, that's exactly how I feel about this company as well. I mean, I could simply turn my budget into a rakeback sponsoring budget, clear a certain amount and make a happy company based on the cash flow. Now is this a sustainable situation? Probably not for those skins starting now (likely sustainable for those who have been around for a few years now) but for the immediate future it's as sure as you're going to get.
GOING MAINSTREAM
So, now, after these couple of months, I feel I'm actually ready to engage in the mainstream marketing of Hero Poker to a single market; so you may be asking, why then put yourself through the last couple of months if you were going to do mainstream marketing anyway? There is a couple of reasons for that, the first being that I wanted to understand everything there was to know about running a network site. No matter what assumptions I had about it, the reality proved to be far more complex and difficult to contend with. Also a part of that was giving myself time to adjust myself to running a 'start-up'. To just come in guns blazing and firing on all marketing cylinders and spending like crazy would have been counter productive, because the 'realities' of running a network site, which is limited by liquidity and to be frank, the product itself. So, lets say I did manage to get 10,000 people to check out and sign up on Hero Poker in one month, and that is definitely possible when you have the right marketing channels. How many are really going to stay?
MAKE A STAND
The second point was really being able to say that I know what Hero Poker really represents and whether or not people can at least understand where we stand in comparison to other sites. It's one thing to go out there and say, 'yes, we represent THIS to poker players' and its an entirely different thing for player to actually acknowledge or agree with that. If you read back through my blog, I take a stand that I want to be the best boutique service site out there, that yes, the player can speak with the CEO and the CEO is going to be as honest and out there as possible. Not cause I want to be Dana White and have the spotlight (although personally I think he does very deliberately act the way he does because he is trying to be real-and while not always agreeable- he has done an exceptional job), it's because I remember when I did run a live card room in Macau and while it was an absolutely beautiful and wonderful room, it was not in a high traffic area. And by force of will alone, we kept that room alive, until the point where I was able to move it where it is now as one of the grandest rooms in Macau and I'd say Asia. There were days where I just wouldn't leave and sometimes there was a great cash game going on and I just wanted to stay to make sure that these few players that we had were happy.
NEVER WORK FOR 2nd PLACE
But the time we moved location, I simply knew what we needed to do at our live poker room to make it simply the best-because even when we where the most down at the first place, I never thought my product wasn't good enough or that it was good enough just to survive. I felt as though, I'm here, and if I'm going to be here, then damn it, it's going to work some way or how. Ironically, we did leave when I had figured out all the things we needed to do to really be successful because of the experience of running the room when only the effective/efficient things would work. After all, we didn't have growth or huge foot traffic to gloss over whatever wasn't really contributing to our success and I wouldn't have had the guts to move the room to the new location if I didn't think I knew how to really run the room.
In the same way, I've been preparing this mainstream launch now for the last couple of weeks, but it wasn't until last week where each and every component started to make sense in how they all work together because all mainstream marketing does is bring lots of people to your site and in this regards I am a class A grade monster. I don't need any lessons in how to make an advertisement, the copy, where my SEO (search engine optimization) is lacking, or negotiating agreements with casinos or marketing channels. Hell, I was one of the primary people that legalized poker in Macau and started the poker boom in Asia and I never failed because I wouldn't let my projects fail. But for all the bravado and all the past accomplishments and glory, how applicable were my skills for a new network site which wasn't the biggest poker site in the world?
GETTING STARTED CORPORATE STYLE
Now, I didn't decide one day I'm going to resign from my old job and start a network site, the opportunity came through the new industry that I was 'trying' to get involved with and I realized that I did enjoy the poker industry and while this wasn't the most highest profile challenge, it was the biggest challenge for me on so many levels. And so when I got the initial ok to do this project, I researched and I have to say, I love Merge Network. I thought they have every potential to make it and I think the management and staff are really top-notch and I thought, this is a network that I can grow with. Now of course, that is only from a business management point of view, in terms of where the business is at, well, it is what it is, for now. But, it was obvious that for me to simply do as I did at my previous industry role wasn't going to cut it and the thing is, there isn't any silver bullet that is going to turn a site like Hero Poker into a top 10 site in year or two.
GOOD TO GREAT FTW
There is this seminal industry business book called , 'Good to Great'; every single top CEO and management consultant has read this book and I've probably read it about 4 times cover to cover and have two copies in my home and I have bought this book for nearly every one of my junior executive staff (the ones that had potential lol). I won't get into the details, but it filled with seemingly simple concepts, but was extremely ground breaking when it came out. I'd venture to say, if you don't have a lot of business experience, you simply won't get the impact of it. But to get to the point, the author, Jim Collins, talks about these micro steps that eventually bring a company to a point where there is a critical turning point of growth or development. To the competing companies, it seems as though the choice made by the 'subject company' was extremely radical and game changing. But internally, the turning point/critical decision was simply an undeniable fact/action that needed to be taken, because they had taken these small but constant and deliberate steps to really fully understand their business and competitive position. In the end, no matter how difficult the decision seemed to be, it was clear it was the only obvious step to take because they had already exhausted every point of progress up to that point.
In the same way, I've been taking a lot of small steps, and I wouldn't say baby steps. I had made the decision to launch at the Aussie Millions this past year, not because we were ready for mainstream marketing or that I had figured things out, but that I needed to ensure people knew that we weren't going to just another skin on a rakeback network, that we has aspirations for more, but also that I needed our marketing to hit above our weight class. So getting my pros to Melbourne and getting a film crew down there and just participating in the Aussie Millions, well it was helluva expensive and it was expensive because it wasn't used as a PR marketing ploy to generate awareness of our site and sign ups, but rather to set the tone of company. For the short term, very negative EV, the money spent there, damn, I could have really had a freeroll on P5s that would have been legendary in it's proportions. But as an investment in where our company stands, a really essential business move. And some people in the industry expected me to follow that up with some other massive spends and suddenly have my pros fly into every major tournament and negotiate for my players to play on High Stakes poker as I was fielding calls from poker player agencies. But instead I joined two poker communities to blog. In many respects, wanted to get some 'street cred' and I knew if I could earn it from some regs, then I thought I'd be at least pointed in the right direction. What had bothered me after the Aussie Millions was that I didn't have a clear path in my head, and it wasn't because I hadn't tried to figure it out, it's just that I couldn't figure it out. I just didn't have the experience or the exposure to separate my assumptions from what really would work with Hero Poker.
STRATEGY ANYONE?
When you're a management consultant, you're expected to be an expert in any new industry in about 5 days, enough to have an intelligent conversation with the CEO. So you end up talking with some managers who have been in the industry for the last 20 years and they look at you as if you're some kind of joke, after all, 'how the hell is this kid gonna tell me how things work in this industry?' The first thing is that we still have no idea what is really going on until we do the site visit, when the experience of that career manager, links the associations between everything we've learned and flushes out the key drivers and core/essential factors and allows the consultant this clear picture of what is really going on. Then we turn around and (if we aren't hacks) and we focus our energies to then think of ways to manage the growth of the company or maximize gains or side step the competition. The reason why we can do this is because were aren't focused on the business operation on how things actually get done, rather, we're focused on the strategy of where the company is going and how to get there. We just need to know the industry well enough to know what are the key drivers that can be adjusted and in what order of process and effect. Strategy isn't something that is reset or dealt with every day, it actually has a very limited and specific role in any organization or activity, you generally don't make strategy on the fly or as a middle manager ever really deal with it at any significant level.
I don't need to actually make a rakeback affiliate network to really understand how my company can grow into being a mainstream network site. I don't need to put my site on every single rakeback affiliate out there, but I did need to really understand why and how it works and what that really signifies for a network based site. But thanks to LP.net and the other community site, I can see what needs to be done, when and in what order. Now I'm not going to share that on this blog entry, the knowledge and insight gained has been paid with a lot of sleepless nights. But as Rekrul, tends to say, I'm ready to Monster it.
Our first promotion on Liquid Poker is going to be called 'Zero to Hero: The Road to Greatness' and I'm just finishing it up and it's going to be my main promotional contribution to LP.net moving forward and if you are a new player ready take your bankroll to the next level, it will 'be epic'. Or else I'm really gonna have to go back to the drawing board here.
But, from the 'free roll thread' on LP, I've definitely learn quite a bit and hope to show that quite soon. At this point, it is clear that a freeroll isn't going to be attractive for many of you, but I'm going to make a new format and lets hope the twist on it will make it something special.
Thanks LP.net for being real, I'm just trying to walk the walk.
Cheers,
David
Hero Poker CEO
SUMMARY
-Going to Start Mainstream Marketing
-Why I didn't before is that I needed to establish the core values and services of the brand
-Also, even if I can monster the Mainstream Marketing, what would be the rate of retention
-Once I figured out where my company stood in terms of how the toughest consumers would see it as
-Then I am now ready to go into the mainstream market and start unloading my marketing dollars
2nd blogpost entry for this month...
Well decided i wont continue to grind on stars this month.
Tried it but simply its no fun atm in my current situation.
Played only 4 days so far and results are shit and motivation is close to non existent.
today was kinda good till hand 1030 into the session and i was up a nice 3,5BI ... just to let everything turn to complete shit within 50 hands losing 7 BI ...
down ~ 8,5 BI this month so far
Well the main reason is that compared to last month where i was very motivated i simply dont have fun grinding this month.
I play like 300 hands and i allready feel bored and annoyed and shit...
Besides poker my life is pretty awesome right now. (Which probably is the main reason i am not motivated to grind 6max)
I got close with an awesome girl and she stayed with me for ~ 50h last week and we had a fun time.
We basically agreed that we both dont want a realtionship but just have a fun time whenever we both feel like to do so.
We kinda play a "relationship game" since beside sleeping with each other we also do stuff like taking a walk together in the sunshine, cooking meels for each other , staying at each others rooms for a few days , do lots of talking about our lives , kiss frequently when seeing each other , watch movies together and all that stuff u would normaly do in a relationship too.
Only difference is we can press the "exit" button everytime we feel like doing so and there will be absolutely no bad consequences and nobody is angry
Our motto for this is that Just try and have fun -> everything can happen when the moment is right and nothing ever has to happen since we both totally dont have any responsibility for each other at all
That is totally awesome imo.
MMA
i am also motivated to catch up in skill with my fellow teammates after i was slacking a bit the last months.
I had a to cancel my fight on 26.3 due to bronchitis which made me unable to train for 2 weeks straight. ( Also a reason i was motivated for poker since i was too sick to train MMA , too sick to meet girls and so i just had poker to have fun)
Some of my teammates have made pretty nice progress and one of them whith whom i am close friends will get a training month in SanDiego together with PeterSobotta
He also won his recent fight at Respect5 this Saturday http://i.imgur.com/Oicns.jpg
pretty proud of him and at the same time i am motivated to put more effort into MMA again.
http://i.imgur.com/juzIo.jpg
hiere is a photo with part of our MMA team
me on the right and the guy in pic above next to me
pretty fun times we have
I will transfer money from stars to betmost again and play mostly 1-2 table Nl20€ HU
thats way less boring than grinding 8 tables of 6max
Just grinding 50NL on PS atm, up a little, but still making some bad calls. Working with d_zoo, and its going pretty well. Have done 3 sessions so far, and really learning a lot.
Thanks a bunch to d_zoo and sheldon for the help.
Total for the year: 9555 pieces sold, $106,062.68 sales (yay 6 figure milestone)
Our margins are very good . Holidays included, hopefully we can hit a million this year. We hit a little rough patch the first few months because of constant shortage in stock and getting design done. You can see there's a big increase in sales month to month, and that's because we were selling a small portion of our inventory until recently (needed to wait for a design + takes a lot of work to put up the way we do it). There's also the issue of operating out of our tiny 3 bedroom apartment.
Sorry for not having blogged or posted about poker in a while, but I've been really busy and I might also be visiting Korea this month. I was thinking about just splurging on playing some heads up since Teng's already up like $1600 and I'm totally going to lose the bet (I haven't played so I'm actually still DOWN lol).
Warrior is an upcoming action drama film about mixed martial arts set to be released on September 9, 2011 by Lionsgate. The film will star Nick Nolte, Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, Justin Berg, Jennifer Morrison and Pro Wrestler Kurt Angle. The movie will be directed by Gavin O'Connor and produced by Greg O'Connor.
"A former boxer (Nolte), whose alcoholism tore apart his family, welcomes back his youngest son (Hardy) and trains him to compete in a mixed martial arts tournament – a path that puts the son on a collision course with his older brother (Edgerton)."
A few weeks ago I went to a Detroit Red Wings vs Chicago Blackhawks game and I just recently got around to uploading my pics to my comp and they turned out pretty nice. So I thought I would write up a blog post about my experience.
I have not been to a Red Wings game since I was a little kid /w my dad. They were playing Chicago so I knew it was going to be a tight game. Good old original 6 match up.
I actaully felt a little star struck being that close to these guys it was weird lol. It was a great game too but sadly my Wings lost in OT 3-2. I had a blast though and cant wait to go to another game.
Looks like the Wings got Phoenix first round in the playoffs which Im not to thrilled about considering Phoenix took the Wings to game 7 last year. But Im not THAT worried :D Wings in 5!
I am hneaz and I play NL10. I am currently a senior at University of Illinois and friends with fellow LP members such as edzwoo, Jas0n, acckerman, k40cheddar, and TilICollapse, whom I met all at the Illini Poker Club.
I have been at N L10 since July 2010. I realize that I was leaking a lot and mass tabling way too much thus losing about 20+ buy ins in the last 7 months. My mindset was achieve Silverstar and earn Stellar Rewards as well as cash bonuses and I would be ok. I was still rolled for NL10 from playing NL50 HU shortstacked and cashing out at the Sunday Million (I was staked by a high stakes friend and kept $100). I almost called it quits and just focus on school but i realized that you can never quit poker. I am studying statistics so I am always thinking about poker.
In order to improve, I decided that I should ask for help from TilICollapse. I was sweated before by some people and it helped a lot but I decided to be sweated by TilICollapse because of his insane win rate at NL 400. I played 6 tables during the sweat and I was able to concentrate very well than when I used to 12-16 table before.
I went up 2 buy ins in less than 500 hands and I was playing more aggressively by 3 betting more, using position, stealing blinds and just playing smart poker. One thing that really helped was reasoning out my moves such as why I am doing this and what I am trying to accomplish. 6 tabling NL10 is really awesome because I am not playing like a robot.
Below is my graph in the last 3 days. I played looser after the sweat just to experiment the new style I am adopting. I used to play 12/10 before and I know I am still leaking somewhere and I hope to improve my game. My goal is not only beat NL 10 but be a disciplined player who can take bad beats like a man and understand why I am making moves in different situations. I think that discipline is key in becoming a bette player.
My stats. This is a very small sample size so dont judge by VPIP and PFR stats. I hope that my VPIP, PFR and 3 bet% will fall in the future. I was playing to see what worked and what did not work.
I haven't been able to put in the volume that I would like to with all the jobs I have. Ultimately, I've started playing HU SNG's, and I definitely have an edge. Most people don't know how to play HU, and I feel like that is my niche.
However, in my quest to make money without doing anything (relatively), I've decided to start on some online sports betting. Is oddsmaker.com a good site? Are there any other sites you suggest?
I feel that being an avid baseball fan gives me an edge. I also think that being a writer gives me somewhat of an inside scoop as I'm always trying to read and learn more about the sport. I understand all of the little things that can affect the outcome of a game.
The system that I want to use is basically a $1-$10 system. Pick the games that I am confident a certain team will win, and judge how confident I am on a scale of 1 to 10, and that would be the bet I would make. I would stay away from games I am not too confident in (for example I don't plan on making $1 bets on a lot of games. Only bet the games that are probably going to be one sided).
Thanks for reading. If you have any advice on what site I could use, let me know!!!
some movies i forgot to review...inc what to avoidby whamm!, April 10
"fair game" - naomi watts, sean penn (true to life story) politics iraq conspiracy blah blah --- very solid movie though
"It's a kind of funny story"(off-comedy) - distressed teen thinks hes nuts checks himself into mental facility blah blah, good acting, heartwarming juno-ish, humor smartass kid meets odd fellow played by zach(hangover slob guy is here) nuff said
"the reef" - aussie sharkuuuuuh movie, been awhile since there's been a remotely decent one, so i guess this is a must when you're bored. decent thriller, from the makers of that aussie croc movie. believe me
the trailer does not do it justice - its not horrible at all, and the trailer is not the movie and its strange they picked such a horrible trailer with scenes that aren't even in the movie at all - strange.
"van diemens land" - creepy movie, based on aussie prison camp escape in some wilderness, resort to eating each other, slow paced movie, "the way back" meets "ravenous" without the funny shit.
"wake wood" - eerie horror movie about a couple who moves to a small town to forget the gruesome death of their kid, only to be told by the townsfolk that they can "help" them out, decent gem of a unknown flick.
"I hope they serve beer in hell" - i cant believe this movie did not receive any buzz?!? this movie is a solid dude movie, smart funny dialogue, good acting and solid characters, recommended.
avoid these torrent available deceptively decent movie crap:
"hobo with a shotgun" - even for a "bad movie" its bad
"human centipede" - crazy german doctor traps 3 people, 1 jap, two girls, surgically connect them mouth to ass, highlight of the movie - jap guy in front is fed and needs to shit so girl's mouth stitched to his ass obv eats shit lol
"london boulevard" - shit
"vanishing on 7th street" - shit
"the speed of light" - shit, dont use your metered bandwidth on thsi crap
OK...Terran preferably, since i'm high masters terran, taking point inflation into consideration, last season I probably would have ended at around 4k. I usually sit around top 600 in NA. I've been playing BW for about a decade. I am offering free coaching. The best ways to do this is through skype + streaming. I'll do an hour per person, the reason I'm doing this is to gain credibility through LP members who play SC2 and poker who are also winners at their respective stakes, because I would like to eventually trade sc2 coaching for poker coaching. I'm willing to invest quite a while of coaching to only gain credibility...so lemme know~
Does anyone have any input on what I should change by looking at my stats? It looks pretty nitty but I have been opening up my range quite a bit when I'm in good position. My experience with post-flop play is getting better and I'm getting the confidence to open up my range in good positions. Pretty obv stuff but it's clicking.
I think I will play about 1k more hands to hit 10k total and move up officially after that. The reason why my volume is so low is because Bodog only lets you open 4 tables at once. The pro about that is that I can concentrate on those four quite well and play better.
y did i ever stop playing huby Seobombisgay, April 09
I forgot how beatable husngs were every since I started focusing on 6max sngs. Well, gonna grind husngs to build a solid roll on heropoker and will probably throw in some 6maxs again.
Contact Users: 1405 Active, 2 Logged in - Time: 23:05
. Holidays included, hopefully we can hit a million this year. We hit a little rough patch the first few months because of constant shortage in stock and getting design done. You can see there's a big increase in sales month to month, and that's because we were selling a small portion of our inventory until recently (needed to wait for a design + takes a lot of work to put up the way we do it). There's also the issue of operating out of our tiny 3 bedroom apartment.
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