betonliamcasey

Category: Poker

  • EGR OP ED: Will ‘Stutter’ be Peter Jackson’s next blockbuster?

    @betonliamcasey

    (NOTE: This Op Ed was first published in EGR Intel. I’ve put interesting links & other opinions in from people, at the bottom of this piece).

    (I’m currently available for consulting or interesting work / jobs / projects – focused on Marketing, engagement, structures & culture & general business performance).

    “Deeds will no be less valiant, because they are unpraised.” JRR Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings.

    I loved Peter Jackson’s early work. The scale of the Lord of the Rings was truly epic – but is a Flutter / The Stars Group – a blockbuster too far? Or will US box-office be the new, new thing?

    This is the deal that puts the rest of the industry on the back foot.  The headlines we’re all used to seeing in terms of industry mega deals can summed up by “bigger is better & scale trumps all…”. But IS bigger better? And what happens to culture? I spoke to mid-senior people in both organisations and the general reaction was big picture positive, but followed with a biiiig sigh and observations around “more of the same battles to the death for people & teams.”

    There are some areas that I think are really interesting here.

    DOES SCALE & REACH SUPPORT POSITIVE CULTURE? The merger of (TSG & Flutter) cultures will be both a) fascinating and b) something that will drag on the culture for the next 2 years. Both companies have been there & done that (in terms of mergers) – but it’s the foot-soldiers / middle management that will both bear the brunt of the cuts and have to struggle through whilst “synergies” get negotiated. High level costs & targets will already be known (in terms of synergies / 140M) – but (I know from experience) that Steering Groups will be kicked off / egos will surface & Game of Thrones will have nothing on internal meetings over the next 12 months. Flutter is the boss here. Dublin is now the head office. Dublin has tended to be more of an historical (Full Tilt related) outlier for TSG, and they only introduced a site CEO this year. Scale & reach seems to be the new paradigm for the online gambling industry butthere is a big (unanswered) question – can positive culture or habits be scaled? Particularly in an industry that has struggled with negative newsflow + lots of M&A + uncertainty over the last few years.

    WHO MATTERS IN M&A? NOT THE END-USER: Speaking of Culture, IF “Culture =’s Brand” then this new organisation will be…diffuse. The reality is that 99% of consumers of Stutter brands will have no idea of any corporate change – or won’t care. This is a bigger news story in Ireland, due to Paddy Power’s brand heritage there – than it is in any other territory. The overall brand portfolio now stretches across Paddy Power, Betfair, Adjarabet, Pokerstars, Skybet, Full Tilt, BetEazy, FanDuel, Foxbet – as well as various sub-brands that sit within verticals in the brands. The best brands that I’ve worked on & with are aligned around a common purpose and mission to do XXX for the customer.

    The sheer scale, weight, technical & budget challenges (and overall integration) means that brand alignment & resource allocation will be a power game as to who can get what, based on their ability to navigate the organisational power structures in a way that puts their brand needs highest. My own experience is that when people are a) concerned for their jobs b) having to compete for shared resources and c) having to navigate new relationships and comms structures – that the focus gets taken off the customer. Only time will tell here – but you feel that there are opportunities for more agile, more aligned gambling brands to deliver greater customer focus (and results) in the short to medium term.

    RAFI WILL KILL IT AS COO: I first met Rafi when he was COO of Playtech. He was always viewed as the guy that would give you a straight answer, wouldn’t fuck around – and then deliver what he said he would. He knows gambling & the industry inside out, and there has always been a general feeling that if you were going to pick an industry COO – that he’d be #1.

    This is notin opposition to him being CEO of a large public firm – but a case of Rafi being most comfortable being down in the absolute detail of the days to day, and not having to be the “BIG VISION, BIG MISSION…” sprinkler of fairy dust on a large organisation. Richard Flint is a great example of someone who combined the ability to inspire (teams) internally, and have enough charisma and slickness to put an acceptable face on an industry that is struggling with reputational issues. My gut feeling is that Rafi will be more comfortable with an inward VS outward facing role. He’s one of the good ones. I don’t know Peter Jackson – but he’s already got a board (eg: Gary McCann) that has ‘been there/done that’ in terms of long term growth and debt management.

    I’m fascinated to see how Marketing gets apportioned out on a Group basis. Flutter moved to MD’s that were brand & territory focused. TSG’s (marketing structure) approach has been more vertically focused – both in terms of product & where the customer sits in the lifecycle. There has been a move from a general online POV, to break down the CMO role into complementary, but more technically focused areas. A Group CMO announcement? I wouldn’t be too sure about that.

    MARGIN MATTERS. WILL POKER MATTER? TSG’s debt weight has been a killer. TSG has consistently delivered some of the best margins in the industry, but over the last few years hasn’t been able to touch it – due to the requirement around  positive cashflow. The converse of this is that TSG’s marketing spend has been the lowest of its (industry) peers – as a % of its online revenue. The theory is that less drag of debt, deeper pockets (budgets) and rationalised Marketing overhead (people & partners) will allow an increase in the % of spend VS revenue – that can help drive top line revenues. However – it’s never as simple as this. I know Poker (for example), has tended to be at the bottom of the list of priorities for Flutter – as general category growth has tended to be focused on the Sports & Casino verticals. ‘Stars has always taken the lead in terms of category-widening (for Poker) – but my gut-feeling is that the Group focus may not allow this (for Poker) – and that x-sell will now be #1, 2 & 3 in terms of Poker focus.

    This probably creates even more of an opportunity for Partypoker (& GVC) in terms of building on the real authenticity that it’s built up in the Poker space over the 18 months or so.  Party’s challenge here – is to maintain Poker authenticity, whilst building more holistic and seamless Poker-driven gambling experiences  – for the more “recreational” type of player. Stars Rewards is a beast at doing this – very interested to see if their model and player experience with Stars Rewards gets used on a wider Stutter group basis.

    THE TERRITORY OPPORTUNITY: I think that this is where this deal gets most interesting. Industry people tend to forget that online sports betting is still a) nascent in many territories and b) has tended to be behind online poker in terms of (early) online adoption. Pokerstars was a truly global operator, before Paddy Power (for example) was of any significant size. If you look at the US as a territory – Poker has been the more “acceptable” face of online – and sportsbetting is only catching up. If you look at the territories below – I’d have a belief that Poker as an entry point – is going to be far easier to gain an (initial) toehold and expand from there. It’s where Flutter are probably most looking to growth – outside of the pure US story.

    THE US IS WHAT MATTERS. Fox Sports + Free To Play. Fanduel + Poker. A Pokerstars legacy that goes back to the early ‘Noughties. Even Full Tilt as a secondary brand? Boots on the ground already in key markets. An Exchange in New Jersey. US fantasy sports marketing experts as part of the Management team. There is very little not to like about where this positions Stutter in terms of the overall US opportunity.

    I’m familiar with the people from TSG that are over there. (Less so with the Flutter team). They are some of the smartest guys in the room & highly motivated to succeed. BUT – there is a question now, as part of an even bigger organisation that has an updated vision & mission – as to whether there will be organisational challenges that will slow up what they want to do. Decisions that have already been made in terms of budgets & resource allocations will be picked over again. Flutter will want to have some of Peter Jackson’s men up close & personal with everything that’s going on. Trust will have to be built up – at the same time that a 10 figure marketing spend is marching out the door in the pursuit of market share / land grab.

    There are still some outstanding questions over who owns what IP, that relates to sportsbetting business procesess (eg: cashout) due to how the USPTO treats IP versus the EU. Firms are circling that one, and it could prove expensive. Positive newsflow about the US will the petrol that will drive the engine of the share price here. It’ll be one to watch that’s for sure.

    SPORTBETTING PLATFORM FIGHT TO THE DEATH: Openbet. Skybet. Betstars. Betfair. Migrations. Integrations. Trading teams. Margin. Trying to see the wood for the trees in terms of technology / market fit – is as much of a political game, as it is in terms of the best technology and capability winning. I know that if was Skybet – I’d be concerned that my expertise was complementary to a core Paddy one. I know that the Trading overhead (in terms of headcount) at TSG. was punching well above its weight in terms of markets / scale per trader. Their challenge was market / platform fit due to TSG historically being a Poker business. Stutter have the luxury of choice, but that brings hard decisions around the big picture. Shoe-horning US sports and the required differences in exotics etc – is not an overnight job & that’ll be the focus in terms of core platform market development for the long term. If you have a “one territory, horse-racing focus” your horizons are…limited.

    FINALLY – the industry is a state of flux. Mega deals have become more the norm than not. If it’s a mega deal to simply acquire tech or skillsets (a la Uber, a la Google or Facebook), it makes sense – as those deals increase capabilities that serve the customer. The mega deals in the gambling industry are driven by “synergies, reduced marketing costs because we can scale more efficiently & greater brand access to territories we don’t currently serve…” – and the reality is that – whilst the drivers are real =====- the clear outcomes as a result, unproven, at scale.

    For example, performance marketing is not binary. Just because you own more brands, and have a smaller Marketing dept(s) doesn’t mean that your acquisition costs will go down. You are still competing against your own & competitor brands. Your (corporate) scale doesn’t mean anything to your end-users other than a greater ability to deliver hygiene factors around security and safety.

    New management + revised territory marketing plans, based on new priorities + decisions around technology + integrations + internal politics + lack of clarity around future structures + the challenge of owned or licensed IP (in the US) + responsible gambling focus + regulatory pressure – all at bigger scale – do not suddenly become easier problems to solve, just because you are the biggest. Unfortunately – creating scale, scales your challenges too.

    I’m looking forward to watching how Peter Jackson’s next epic unfolds. It’ll definitely be big box office – but will it be…good?

    I’m available for full-time work or consulting – details here.

    **********************************************************************************

    Other good articles & resources that are linked to this deal:

    Here is the Flutter-Entertainment-plc-and-The-Stars-Group-Inc – corporate-doc that gives an internal >> external rationale of the deal.

    Here is the investor presentation from Flutter – here.

    Here is the link to TSG’s last investor roadshow and set of strategic priorities – here.

    @brettsmiley breaks down greater specifics on Foxbet and Fanduel & the US opportunity – here.

    @gamblinglamb (Alun Bowden) gives his expert analyst take on his four pillars of risk – here.

    @DustinGouker looks at what it means for everyone else in the US – here.

    Here is where I break down the US IP piece that relates to Cashout – here.

  • Ten betting & gaming industry predictions for the next 3+ years.

    I wrote a post nearly 5 years ago that gave some predictions around some of the areas where there would be growth in the betting & gaming industry.

    The summary from 5 years ago?

    • Operators would need to focus on real-time delivery of a data-based customer experience.
    • That there would be a huge focus on Operators focusing on the addition of more & more markets.
    • That “branded” content would be key to the growth in the egaming space.
    • That there would a struggle to harness Social properly.

    I’ll let you, the reader decide if those predictions were on the money or not…comments welcome.

    So – what does the future hold?

    It’d be too easy to predict further super-mergers, or a loosening up of the regulatory regime in the USA, instead I’m going to focus on some more esoteric and/or short / medium & long term outcomes I predict.

    Short-term (12 months):

    • William Hill & Amaya deal to huff & puff for a relatively short period – but ultimately a deal that doesn’t get done. (Too much grey market exposure for WH. Kentucky lawsuit still hanging over Amaya. Technology integration being a barrier.)
    • PokerStars to announce that they are moving to NYX / OpenBet as their core sportsbetting platform.
    • Fortuna Entertainment Group to gobble up market share on the back of their Playtech deal. (Only if they have the in-house capability & experience to execute though…).

    Medium Term (12 – 36 months):

    • Trading floors (and direct trading of sports volume) to be wound down by many online gambling operators and customer volume to be run through managed trading solutions from 3rd parties. {Trading is a) volatile and material to bottom line results b) expensive & requires highly paid trading floors and c) pricing is getting commoditised as Operators compete with a race to the bottom around “Best Price Guaranteed”.} Offerings like 3ET to disrupt the market. (Ed note: I have done some consultancy work for 3ET.)
    • Skybet to IPO. Their recent results are a clear indication of that. And they are owned by a private equity firm (CVC) that will want to cash out.
    • Matchbook.com to emerge from “mid-tier” Exchange status and start to challenge market leaders via industry leading tech & customer experience (Ed note: I have done some consultancy work for Matchbook).
    • Companies that understand the importance of full vertical integration in the online gambling space will start to dominate across regional markets. (Vertical integration = own the traffic via owning affiliates, own the brands that you send the traffic to, own the software & IP that sits behind the brand, own the payment processing.) Optimizer Invest are probably the best example here.
    • Big national brands that have attempted to build regional profit centres around their core brand – will potentially move to more local facing brands. Paddy Power’s experience with Sportsbet is an excellent example. Betsson Group’s multi-brand strategy will pay off in the long term too.

    Long Term (36 months+):

    • Blockchain to directly contribute to regulation in the online gambling space. (Who needs regulators when you’ve got a globally recognised standard of financial record? There’s a good piece that explains it here.)
    • AI & chatbots to start doing much of the heavy-lifting around basic customer interactions in the betting & gaming space – this reducing pretty large cost-bases (and OPEX) from companies. It’ll take at least this long for current technology to transition to these capabilities.

    What do you think about these predictions? On track? Way off beam? What am I missing?

    If you need to know more about me – you can find out here.

  • Is social gaming the future of online gambling?

    I’m still waiting to see how the US shakes out with its ongoing struggle to work out what it wants to do with online gambling. It’ll happen.

    My take is that poker will be first and it’ll regulated on a state by state basis. It’ll be for US companies, and as each state regulates, the company will require infrastructure in each state that it gets a licence in. That’s going to put barriers up for companies that are undercapitalised or who can’t get some type of top-end deal with a regulated network provider. See ipoker.it or pokerstars.fr for what I’m talking about here.

    Online casino games will be next, following a similar path, with sportsbetting being a very distant last. Could be a long time before the NFL / NBA / etc are happy to see it happen.

    However, whatever the DOJ in the US thinks, there’s huge appetite for online games, that have gambling elements attached to them.

    The massive continued growth of Zynga et al, is showing that the social gaming experience is becoming part of the standard online experience for the average Joe. Social gaming companies are big fans of publicising growth metrics and stats, primarily because many are marching on VC money, with IPO being the ultimate aim. The better the numbers, the better the bottom line. It’s not quite the same as many of the online gambling behemoths that are still privately held – so hard & fast numbers are difficult to pin down there.

    Personally, I think that the low barrier to entry and trial for social games combined with their natural brand associations with social networks (and Facebook in particular), are introducing a casual segment of the market to a type of low cost competitive gambling.

    One of the drivers of gamblers in particular, is the belief that they’ve got a more informed or more valid opinion than you, or the house. Why else would you stake your hard-earned cash otherwise? Social gaming is pushing the commoditisation of the gaming transaction. I think this will ultimately lower some of the barriers that stand in the way of online gambling brands, in particular for the US, when regulation happens.

    If you want to get some decent flavour of what’s happening in the social space, there are some good sources worth checking out – and you can make up your own mind about whether social gaming could be the future of online gambling.

    It’s either that, or does someone want to buy my 5 million Zynga Poker credits?

    Here are some good sources to form your own opinion on what Social Gaming’s impact for online gambling may be:

    http://www.insidesocialgames.com/

    http://socialtimes.com/category/social-games

    http://blog.games.com/

    It’s also worth keeping an eye on what Bruce Everiss is talking about – he predated social gaming, but as the guy who took both Imagine and Codemasters to being #1 in the market, he knows his games marketing – check out his blog at: http://www.bruceongames.com/

  • Canadian media does in-depth profile on elusive Pokerstars founder

    The Canadian broadsheet “The Globe and Mail” has put together a piece on the founder of Pokerstars, Isai Scheinberg. It’s not particularly in-depth, but the the fact that they’ve managed to find out much at all, shows the level of mainstream media interest in the current Poker case.

    The Globe and Mail compares the Scheinberg family to the Bronfmans, a Montreal clan (Scheinberg is variously described as Canadian or Israeli-Canadian) who famously turned U.S. Prohibition laws into a billion-dollar business.

    Some of the interesting facts included were that Isai placed 25th at a Texas Hold’em tournament at the 1996 World Series of Poker, and that he was involved with IBM, where he helped develop the Unicode standard. (Probably a great background, for the network development side of Poker, I’d say.)

    The article notes that he founded Rational Entertainment in 2001, which is effectively the company that’s responsible for the network & software development for Pokerstars.

    One thing that tends not to be mentioned in a lot of these stories is how the online poker companies should be held up as marketing icons, in the way that they’ve built solid, global brands inside a decade (some even shorter) and that their ability to manage the consumer life-cycle is virtually unsurpassed. You don’t build billion dollar businesses by sitting on your ass, that’s for sure.

    Their EPT purchase was a great move in terms of shoring up the offline poker branding market, with high-end TV production values (thanks to John Duthie), and a structure which means that they can get events into profit, even before a frame is shot. (Just take a look at the number of online EPT event qualifiers that Pokerstars run, all at a low buy-in, but their liquidity ensures biiiiig numbers.)

    The media and the US legal system may be out to get a big piece of Mr. Scheinberg and his family, but I’d give plenty of kudos to a someone who’s harnessed the power of popular culture, networks, branding and good old-fashioned chutzpah.

    Full Globe and Mail piece here.

  • My take on the Full Tilt / PokerStars / Absolute Poker ban for US players.

    If Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker (in particular) weren’t so focused on world domination, and trying to one-up each other in terms of player volumes, I think that the events of Friday the 15th of April may not have happened.

    Why?

    In the race to keep maintaining player deposits from US customers, and given that credit cards are not an option, (particuarly for new customers), ACH transactions became much more important. ACH transactions are bank transfers where the player gives their bank details to the gaming company, and a transfer is inititiated through a payment processor, from the bank, to the player’s gaming account.

    Why was this important and how did it impact on Full Tilt, Pokerstars and Ultimate Bet?

    It became important because it allowed these companies to bypass credit card blocks, as the system that’s set up to monitor bank transfer payment types (in the ACH system) isn’t as robust as what the credit card companies have available. It’s also a system that requires a lot more monitoring, but is much more fragmented as (in the US) it is populated by the diaspora of small, local US banks.

    The banking system in itself in the US is a lot more fragmented than in other parts of the world. This means that  you’d need to have checks & balances in place, at a local level at every single bank that has the ability to send or receive funds from/to any 3rd party. Currently, the US banking system (and individual banks) conduct due diligence into the business of any merchant when the account is opened, but if the nature of that business changes (ie: from buying & selling coffee and having 1000’s of individual transactions from individuals buying coffee > overnight 10,000+ transactions which may or may not be related to online gaming) , the bank don’t necessarily have the resources (or the interest) to look deeper into it. Also, let’s face it, fees are now being generated on the 10,000+ transactions. Money talks.

    Now, if you are a big enough online gambling business, and have:

    a) enough cash at your disposal to buy a bank

    b) difficulty in getting payments from US players

    …why not buy a bank, where you can set up as many merchant accounts as you like – to process as many transactions as possible? Or, at least buy the companies/people that can do that for you?

    That’s what these guys did – and it came back to bite them on the ass. When one of their payment processors (a middle man) got caught, it looks like that in exchange for doing a deal with the DoJ in the New York – he reverse engineered a lot of the transactions and the money trail – thus allowing the DoJ to work out who was getting money from where, and where was it ending up.

    Read about Daniel Tzvetkoff’s story here.

    How does it impact on the companies indicted?

    If you combine that fact that it’s relatively easy to take a guess about the player volumes (and therefore revenues) that are being generated at these sites, because of poker aggregating sites like Poker Scout – and the feds could now reverse engineer the money trail due to Tzvetkoff. A perfect opportunity was presented to allow the DoJ to indict the owners of the largest online gambling companies out there. The Full Tilt owners (in particular) probably didn’t need to flaunt their market position so openly – three words. Red rag, bull.

    Personally, I think that it’s a perfect storm for these companies only. They’ve backed themselves into a corner with payment processing, market share and profile.

    My take?

    US players that have money on PS / FTP / UB are probably trying to get their EU based buddies to log into their accounts and chip dump to other EU accounts so that they can get their money out. Alternatively, if they want to get their cash, they’ll ned to relocate outside of the US. Otherwise, they are in for a long wait for their cash.

    Interesting times for the industry. I’d bet they’ll get more interesting.

    NB: it might slow up (in some cases) some recruitment – as people wait to see if there’s fallout (ie: good people) from the biggest companies in the space. It may actually accelerate it in other companies – as those at certain companies jump ship (wrongly) as a knee jerk reaction to this. My take? Wait and see. The sky’s not falling in, and in a month’s time, it’ll be business as usual for most people.

  • Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute Poker owners arrested & charged by feds

    Big news.

    On Friday, two (as yet unnamed) owners, out of 11, from PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker were arrested and  all 11 charged with violating U.S. anti-Internet gambling laws, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. One of the others is due to turn himself in later today.

    The domain names were also seized.

    Individuals named included Raymond Bitar, 39, of Full Tilt Poker, Isai Scheinberg, 64, of PokerStars and Brent Beckley, 31, and Scott Tom, 31 Absolute Poker. They were all were charged with violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and other laws.

    The charges outlined a scheme by the company owners and some of their employees to direct the gambling profits to online shell companies that would appear legitimate to banks processing payments.

    The story was breaking on Friday when I’m writing about this. But it’s telling that 2+2 has gone down, it wouldn’t surpise me if it’s gone from weight of news traffic.

    What’s going to happen on the short term?

    There’ll be a savage run on withdrawals, particularly from US players, and already overloaded processors are going to go wallop. It’ll have an knock on effect across any US facing sites too.

    Watch this space…

    UPDATE: Here’s the 2+2 thread if you want to see what the Poker community is saying.

    UPDATE 2: Better in-depth piece from Pokernews – here.

    UPDATE 3: Mainstream news stories from:

    ABC News,

    CBS News

    CNN.com

  • Back in the saddle of blogging. Some online gambling thoughts first.

    It’s been too long.

    Blogging about the business of internet gaming / marketing /  gambling has just felt like extra work – and god knows, I’ve got enough real work to be going on with.

    What’s happening on the day-to-day business of online gaming front for me?

    I’m overseeing 2 x casinos, 2 x poker rooms, 3 sets of fixed odds games, our overall Partner function as well as heading up our Business Development function. It means that my time gets split between current egaming partnerships, what may be future ones, general business development – and managing a team of people.

    I’m going to have to get my sh*t together and get down some thoughts on the business of online gaming and in particular, what are the industry trends and my thoughts on them.

    Social Media – Macro Trends:

    * Social media will still not be monetised properly this year by brands.

    * Advertising on Facebook will get more expensive but click through rates will drop, and marketers will still spend shed-loads of money there, for little or no return

    * Overall email engagement will continue to drop for brands looking to engage customers through that channel. There’s too much email clutter, and social networks are cutting out the commercials by allowing P2P communication.

    * Twitter will block a bunch of aggregators that are currently piggy-backing their content, put them out of business, and try to work out their own business model (it’s got to be sponsored tweets + brand pages at a premium).

    Gaming Industry – Macro Trends:
    * B2B infrastructure deals between operators (who are now taking on the role of platform partners) – what’s going to be successful?
    * Growth in regulated markets – what markets are going to open and how tough will they be to enter?
    * Poker revenues falling off a cliff (for multi-platform operators) – why? Is it terminal?
    * Super affiliates becoming Operators (particularly Poker & Bingo) – do they have a future?
    * Live Betting is THE growth area for Sportsbooks – what sports and where’s the incremental revenue?
    * The growth of financial betting platforms – do they have a future with multi-platform operators?

    One final thing. I’d be amazed if online poker doesn’t get legalised on a state by state basis within the next two years. That’s a bonanza for online marketers in the US. Gird your loins…

  • Blogiscpline – The discipline of Blogging

    Tipping point, friendquest, repurposing, and my current personal favourite – aquadextrous (the ability to turn off taps in the bath with both feet) may all be considered part of the current lexicon of buzzwords, to which I want to add my own – “blogiscpline”.

    It’s the discipline of blogging.

    I originally started this blog as a way to allow me to put down some thoughts on the area that I work in (online gaming), outside the headspace confines of what area of work that I have to think about today. Hmmmm, that was about 4 months ago, and I haven’t written anything since. Go figure.

    I’m either a) too indisciplined to keep up with what I started (this blog) b) too busy to get the headspace to do it c) not engaged enough by the idea of putting down my thoughts on paper d) none or all of the above :-).

    I think that different people have different ideas about what is the discipline required to maintain an active and engaging blog. Simply updating something every day, may be of benefit to allow an individual to feel like they are achieving something – but then you come up against the argument of quantity VS quality. Is something that’s updated regularly but only carries incrementally interesting updates – of more value than a blog that’s updated less regularly, but those updates are much more interesting or relevant to the reader?

    This is where blogiscpline becomes interesting. Is the discipline of blogging about focusing on regular, incremental updates – making sure to be disciplined about updating your blog or…

    …is it more important to be disciplined about the content of your blog? Should you hold off on blog updates for the sake of them VS updating when you’re sure that you’ve got something relevent and engaging to say?

    Maybe I should stop right now then…

    Gaming Tip: I think that PartyGaming are turning a corner. They’ve just bought a good Racebook, and it looks like to me that they’ve finally got a good enough product mix to compete on the same playing field as the “proper” multi-product gaming operators. I think that they are worth holding in the medium term – purely to see if UIGEA might open up an exemption for Poker.

    I’ve goto some more thoughts on what is the right product mix for online gaming operators, but I’m going to have to aplly some decent blogiscpline to share them with you.