We decided it was time to re-vamp the website.

It’s something we have been considering for a long time and January and February are usually fairly quiet months so we took the opportunity to spend a lot of time re-designing the whole look from front to back.

We decided we would be crazy to change the basic colour scheme as we are aware that our logo is very recognisable and the colouring is associated with this.

However we were also aware that it was maybe a little ‘too much’ for some delicate eyes and so it has been toned down a little.

It was then just the small matter of the content…..

It is always very difficult to know what is best.

Generally we ask ourselves what we would prefer and then use that as a template, but we have done that in the past and then get contacted by players telling us they have problems navigating the site.

Therefore we have decided to go with the idea that all players, existing or new, need certain basic information to help decide which deal is best.

How much is the rake back and deposit bonus?

What promotions are the site running and what extras are available by signing through us?

We also find that the Licensing arrangements of the poker sites are more and more important now to certain players and so that information needed to be easily viewed.

It’s then the question of finding a way to lay out the information in such a way that it is easily accessible to the viewer and he can see as much information as possible without needing to constantly be re-directed to different sections to find out what is included or not.

We like to think we have achieved this with the new site.

Take a look here and let us know what you think.

With 2012 just around the corner it’s always a time when we reflect back on the past year and look ahead to what coming.

We are delighted with the past year in terms of player numbers and are particularly pleased with the sharp increase in new players arriving as a result of being referred by existing customers.

We feel that this, above anything else, is a true indication that we are doing something right.

2011 saw us ‘re-design’ our website with a new style layout and easier to navigate pages of information.

We also saw our player base increase by approximately 25%, which is fantastic by any standard.

In order to continue this success we are looking for new ways to not only attract new customers, but also to keep existing players happy and try to improve the service and deals they already enjoy.

We are considering a number of innovations and would welcome feedback from our loyal customers.

Here are some of the things we are considering offering in the new year.

Free Hand History downloads for certain rake requirements.

Offers of free tuition, for high rakers, on the use of NoteCaddy on HoldemManager.

A regularly updated section dedicated to strategy and general poker tips for all levels of players.

These are just some of the thoughts we have had so keep checking our site to make sure you are first to see any new developments or offers.

Naturally, our existing players will be notified via our regular Newsletter.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our players for their continued support throughout 2011 and look forward to a very successful and prosperous New Year for each an every one of you.

The pressure is on sites more than ever now to attract as many ‘fish’ or losing players as they can.

The Ongame Network introduced their ‘Essence’ system which they felt would attract more ‘fish’ to the Network.

The idea was simple and, on the face of it, pretty straightforward.

Basically, players that are regular losers would be credited with more VIP points and the regular winners would be credited with less.

The VIP points were directly related to the returns that players received so it had the effect that regular winners now received lower than usual monthly returns and the losers were getting more returns than normal.

If you were to take a completely sanitised view of this then it seems the perfect model.

Losing players get bigger returns and so it takes longer to lose their money, plus they are more likely to re-load when they know their returns are higher than normal.

Word gets round that losing players should now move to Ongame because they get higher returns.

Ongame gets flooded with ’fish’ and the winning players don’t mind their monthly returns dropping because their win rates have increased from all the extra ’fish’ that they can play against and they are actually far better off.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple.

It became obvious that genuine ’fish’ really don’t care whether their monthly returns are increasing. By their very nature, these guys are likely to be predominantly recreational players who are just in it for the relaxation of playing some poker.

Getting a slightly higher return from their play each month is likely to be an insignificant amount to them and, to be perfectly honest, a huge proportion of these players have no idea what their monthly returns are anyway and any change would not even be noticed.

Therefore there was no influx of ’fish’ to the Network but the people that were most severely affected, the multi-tabling, high raking regs, left the Network because their win rates were the same but their monthly returns had taken a significant hit.

In our opinion, Essence does not work in attracting fish to the Network.

We have noticed some other innovations being introduced.

Until quite recently, something as simple as ‘re-sizeable tables’ were not even available on many sites.

This is something that adds to the whole player experience and is something that is much more likely, in our opinion, to actually attract new players.

The elusive ‘fish’ that they all want to attract, as we have suggested, is likely to be a recreational player and so he needs to have a pleasurable experience.

Some Networks promote some great innovations such as offering ‘anonymous tables’ so tracking software cannot be used. You have no idea who your opponent is.

Microgaming have introduced an interesting facility on their software that allows players, if they wish, to pre-set certain hands to auto-fold in certain positions.

You choose early, middle or late position and then you can set it to auto-fold any hands you know you will always fold.

It speeds up the game but also can help players to be more disciplined in their starting hand choices.

It can help new players improve but still means that you have to be able to play well ‘post-flop’

Ipoker, among others, allows you to set the preferences so that the software displays what the actual percentages each player is to win at showdown.

We feel these sorts of things are more likely to actually tempt a recreational player to try out different sites.

Along, of course, with some reasonably priced satellite tournaments, which are always popular.

If you have only ever played on one site, no matter which site it is, then we encourage you to try other sites to see whether you would enjoy your play more.

For want of a better name, we will call it a ‘Super Platform’.

This is basically a single site that offers players the chance to use a central cashier and then move their funds around sites on different Networks.

Players may remember that there were some Boss and Entraction sites that gave players the chance to switch funds between the two Networks and allow players to experience the different player pools.

This was mainly possible because the way the two Networks were run were very similar in terms of what they allowed for player rewards.

Both sites gave players 30% rakeback and deposit bonuses that cleared at the same rates.

This meant that even though players were able to switch from one Network to another, neither was likely to get significantly more action than the other as there was no great difference in the player rewards.

There was no risk of one Network ‘poaching’ players from the other.

Unfortunately, this also had the effect that players did not necessarily see the ‘double-platform’ as an advantage and preferred to find their own deal on each Network that was most lucrative to them and just switch funds themselves between the two.

Obviously there were delays if the player needed to wait for funds to withdraw from one before depositing on another but if the returns are significantly higher then it’s worth the trouble.

This collaboration between Boss and Entraction faded away but a new idea has now surfaced.

BluffGaming are a central website that will give players access to sites across more than one Network.

Register an account at BluffGaming and deposit your funds in the BluffGaming cashier.

Currently, on BluffGaming, you can play on an ENET site called BluffRoom and the next couple of months will see the addition of Bluffroom on Merge Network and there is also the possibility of a Microgaming option coming too.

A click of a button will see your funds deposited on to ENET where you can play on what is widely accepted as the fishiest Network there is.

Players who have considered ENET are probably aware of their policy on winning players and withdrawal limits.

Basically, players cannot withdraw more than they are generating in rake and, even then, there are daily, weekly and monthly withdrawal limits. (€2000 per month is the normal limit)

However, when you go to cashout from BluffRoom on ENET you transfer it to the central BluffGaming cashier (instantly) and then withdraw from there.

As you are not using the normal ENET cashier, there are NO restrictions.

You could literally deposit €11, play a tournament for €10 + €1, win €10,000 then just transfer it all back to the BluffGaming account and withdraw it all, in full.

Try doing that on any other ENET site!!

When the Merge and MG sites are added this will be an extremely popular site in the online poker market.

This will be particularly attractive for players as the deals on offer on the different Networks are wildly different.

ENET, officially, does not offer Rakeback, MG have a maximum 30% rake back policy and Merge run a VIP program that can return up to 45%.

If you fancy increasing your winrate you can deposit and play on ENET. If you are in the mood to do some heavy grinding then you may prefer to try Merge and then you may notice some fancy promotion being run on Microgaming and so switch your play there instead.

Remember, you have a single bankroll on BluffGaming and you move as much or as little of it as you like, onto the site that you want to play on.

Plus there is the added advantage for players that affiliates are likely to have improved deals on these ‘Super Platforms’ so players will be better off too.

It’s all a great innovation and the next few months will be very exciting. Especially for BluffGaming.

For those not familiar with it, it is speed poker, just like Rush Poker was on Full Tilt.

You get dealt cards and as soon as you fold you just move instantly to a new table, new opponents and new cards.

The result is that you can player 4 or 5 times as many hands per hour than on standard tables.

With us you get 30% rake back PLUS a non-deducted deposit bonus that adds another 40% on top.

That’s the plug out of the way………

What I really wanted to put out there, as a theory, is the idea that playing a few sessions on Terminal Poker can actually improve your game.

As an example, I used to take it personally when the same guy on the button would raise my Big Blind time after time and eventually I would make a stand with an extremely marginal hand, only to run into a monster.

That’s poker, of course, but the leak in my game was that I was letting the personal feelings affect my play. (Tilt, in other words.)

With Terminal Poker, that particular situation does not really arise.

There is a different player in that Button seat each time so you are less inclined to think that you are being targeted.

Another thing I noticed myself, and have had pointed out by other players, is that I am less likely to play marginal hands from any position.

A lot of players tell me that the great thing about Terminal is that they don’t get chance to get bored and play a hand just to relieve the monotony

They just keep clicking the ‘fold’ button until they see a hand that they are happy to play.

If a player is ‘happy’ to play every Ace-rag offsuit from under the gun, well that’s another problem entirely but for a normally solid player he will have the luxury of being able to fold his way through the majority of the rubbish until seeing a playable hand.

I remember reading a comment a few years ago by a particularly well known pro, who’s name escapes me, that basically said he likes to play some online Limit Holdem, rather than his usual No Limit, just to inject some discipline into his game if he felt it was needed.

I had a couple of sessions multi-tabling at regular NL recently and found exactly that.

It was as if I had conditioned myself to only play the right starting hands.

In the most part I ended the sessions happy that I had played some good poker, backed up by some mainly solid starting hands.

I am of the opinion that the stints I had on Terminal Poker had a beneficial effect when I reverted to my more usual game type.

That being said, I hope Terminal gets a large player base soon as I love the format and the players there are astonishingly bad.

It’s as if they are playing some sort of Hyper-Turbo Rebuy tournament, rather than regular cash.

I would urge you to give Terminal a try and see if it has the same effect on your game.

Just a couple of hundred hands should do it, which will take about 10 minutes…

We have been considering doing something like this for quite a while now and when RTR approached us with this offer then we absolutely jumped at the chance.

Once an affiliate site is established with a good reputation and high quality deals and service, the next logical step is to find ways to interact and stay in regular contact with an ever growing customer base.

A forum is the perfect solution.

It not only allows us to have another platform to advertise certain promotions and deals that we feel players will want to know about, but it has the added benefit of giving players a great opportunity to give feedback and comments on the information we provide.

We have always encouraged players to keep in touch with us via email or MSN about our deals, as that is the only real guide we have about what our players are experiencing with the various poker sites.

However, a forum takes the experience to a different level.

Players can compare their experiences with others, discuss the merits or downsides of the deals and give real accounts about how certain deals worked for their specific game.

We also took the opportunity to create a number of dedicated threads for certain sites, one of which is Terminal Poker.

This site is still in the relatively early stages of developing it’s brand and has fewer players than other sites.

What all this means is that it gives us a great chance to encourage players to sign up and then pass comment on the site, give suggestions for improvements and also to point out any software flaws.

We intend to pass on every single comment to the site manager who has also welcomed the opportunity to have the thoughts of many players being collected and passed to him.

It’s not often that players have a genuine opportunity to shape how a Poker site develops but this is certainly one of those chances and we would be foolish not to make the most of it.

The rest of the Raise the River Poker Forum is full of some pretty lively discussion on all things poker related as well as any other topic the members feel they want to discuss.

We urge you to check out the forum here and register to become a member.

We want to have as much activity on our own section as possible as we feel it can only have a positive effect on our quality of service and also the deals we could then offer.

I hope to be seeing many of our readers enjoying the banter and interaction.

Interpoker have been around since 2004 – same as Full Tilt – and as I see it we get an interesting view of what Full Tilt have done wrong and why Interpoker have been a steady household name without having to take the sort of risks FT have made and are paying for now, the same reason the Full Tilt Poker Download Now button is strictly Free Play only.

Both Interpoker and Full Tilt established themselves early as leaders in online poker –both companies seemed to grasp that poker would soon become a phenomenon and invested considerable time in promoting their brands (Interpoker’s Extreme Poker Series was one of the most memorable campaigns in online poker history) and making sure they were competitive. But the first big difference starts here.

Full Tilt spent hundreds of millions on sponsorship deals, gave away 100% Rakeback to their pro players, make sure their logos populated as many final tables as possible and pretty much paid above the going rate to ensure they got the airtime. Non-US players who tried to access the Full Tilt software to find that the Full Tilt problems were not restricted to the US know how irrelevant big name players are when it comes to actually playing poker online.

Interpoker didn’t go down this route, and in retrospect it was a wise decision. Interpoker understood that while having pro players endorse the site and getting big names on board was a good short-term strategy, the real value was in giving online players what they wanted and not depending on associations to acquire players. It is safe to say that while Full Tilt may be opening their doors again in the future – and have the arduous task of removing all the Full Tilt Server Down and Full Tilt Issues messages too – they will have lost the trust of a majority of their players – and most of them will just withdraw their funds when they get access to their accounts. So do players feel duped by FT?

Yes, and rightly so.

Having the biggest poker names on the site was meant to show that they were trusted enough to play safe-house to hundreds of millions of other people’s cash, but then what happened? Interpoker may not have invested their cash in getting their names on final tables, but where they have been spending their cash is far more worthwhile: E-cash – secure transactions that are genuinely safe and where players have peace of mind knowing their money is in reliable hands. Of course many people will also say the comparison is not legit because Interpoker doesn’t take US players. Well, yes, but what got FT in trouble in the first place?

Players going to their Full Tilt Login to discover the message that Full Tilt is down know what it’s like to find that the biggest site online is not necessarily the safest site. Interpoker, as one of the largest and oldest poker rooms, could have done what many sites did and navigate through various loopholes in the hope they would evade the law forever. But of course this isn’t the case, and Interpoker knew that the way to go was concentrate on legitimate markets. This means that they are not gambling with player funds, whereas Full Tilt were aware that at any time they could have to cease their operations and all player funds could be confiscated.

The Full Tilt payments team has not been very vocal in the past few weeks and there has not really been any reliable Full Tilt Update aside from hearsay. Interpoker is still going from strength to strength. It is one of few sites that will not bend to illegal deals in order to hoard traffic, and while this might seem illogical in light of today’s poker economy and ecology it will see them striving forward where other sites lag behind in the future the more they depend on smaller and more illegal margins via Rakeback and under-the-table agreements.

If you are looking for one of the few truly standup sites on the poker landscape, look at Interpoker.

Although we don’t have any direct evidence, we are led to believe by some very experienced online players that the Italian players may not be as tough to play against as a lot of other nationalities.

We are seeing that players are willing to sacrifice a few percent of rakeback in favour of a significantly increased winrate.

For this reason we are delighted to be able to offer a selection of deals which allow players to take advantage of this situation.

One is on the ENET Network, which is primarily for Italian players but software also allows players from other countries to register.

Although ENET do not allow rakeback to be offered, we still have some great deals including deposit bonuses.

Another option is a site called Piranha Poker which is actually on the Everleaf Network.

The great thing is that not only does it include all the normal Everleaf players, it is also the ONLY site on Everleaf to have a license that allows them to sign up Italian players.

These Italian players cannot play against players in the normal Everleaf player pool so the only way to share a table with them is to sign up through Piranha and you will then have access to all the tables where the Italian players are.

The fact is that Piranha has maybe double the normal number of tables running compared to the other sites on the Network and even some exclusive ‘4 seater’ tables.

You also get 35% rake back on this site, paid direct into your account each week.

Sites including Italian players really are extremely popular at the moment and we believe we have the very best options around.

Once you have a significant player base, the next dilemma for the affiliate is how to keep players actually playing.

With the industry being so competitive now, any affiliate that is serious about his job cannot afford to just sign up a player and assume he’ll just keep playing and generating commission for him.

You would hope that the player has chosen you at first because he felt that your deal and service were the best option for him at the time.

However, if your attitude, as the affiliate, is that your job is now done, then you are not going to be successful.

Just because you provided the best option 3 months ago does not mean that the player is not constantly looking around, just to make sure he can’t do better.

The duty of the affiliate is to make sure that he continues to offer the best deals and service for every single player.

You have to make sure that there is not another option out there that is clearly better than what you offer and, if there is, do whatever you can to ensure you provide a reasonable alternative for your players, just in case they start considering a change.

This is a full time job in itself.

It is very easy to spend time on a player that rakes $15k a month, bend over backwards for him, answer his emails before others and generally ‘go the extra mile’.

But the mark of the good affiliate is to do this for every single player.

The guy that played a few $1 MTT’s last month who is asking you about the VIP system on iPoker is just as important. He is asking you because he does not know and he sees you as the person to answer his questions.

As the affiliate, you must never lose site of what you are supposed to be doing.

You are offering a service to the players. This is not ‘rake dependent’ or ‘volume related’.

You cannot be successful if you don’t appreciate something as fundamental as ’best service for all customers’.

The guy that made you $0.03 in commission last month may just know somebody who grinds on PokerStars and rakes $10k a month.

If you spent hour after hour on MSN explaining how a VIP system worked or even just chatting to the guy that just moved house and was unable to play lately but was hoping to start again soon, who will they recommend when their $10k raker friend tells then they are thinking of moving from Stars because they can’t play any longer without some sort of rake back?

The nature of the industry is such that large scale advertising is not really cost effective for mid-sized affiliates like ourselves.

More new business is going to come from referrals and ‘word of mouth’ and, for that very reason, every single one of your players is equally important as the rest, regardless of whether they rake $10k a month or $0.

If you are doing your job well then you should notice a pattern….

Players who have not even played under you for maybe a year will still contact you to see if you can hook their friend up with a deal. Players that rake high amounts will contact you BEFORE they consider some other deal that apparently returns higher amounts.

It is like a show of loyalty for the good service. They are thinking of moving to a different deal but wanted to give you the chance to at least match it and keep their business.

If your service was not up to scratch then these players would move without saying a word.

The fact that they take the time to contact you first means that they appreciate the job you do for them and want to reward you.

The bottom line is that in order to keep players happy, you have to make sure you don’t get left behind.

A good example of this would be the recent move of Betfair to the Ongame Network.

This is going to lead to increased interest in Ongame sites and deals so we had to make sure that when players asked about Ongame, we have a deal that is likely to compare well with what is being offered by other affiliates.

The fact is that we did already have a perfect deal for that situation, but if that Betfair move had happened 2 months earlier, then we would not.

We would have had to make sure that we contacted as many Ongame sites as possible to negotiate the best possible deal available, ready for any enquiries we get.

And all of the time still contacting players, keeping them updated about developments that may interest them and generally making sure we have a list of happy customers.

I sincerely hope we achieve this but we also welcome any criticism that players may have.

We cannot hope to improve deals if we are not aware of the things that are wrong.

I am very proud to say that any negative feedback we get is almost exclusively related to problems that are down to the poker site, as opposed to our own service, but we still want to get involved and try to resolve any issues for the player as soon as possible.

It’s just another thing that an affiliate should want to do as part of providing the very best service possible.

I am sure that we would hear if we are doing it wrong………………..

Nik
(Tetleyboy)

I thought I’d devote a little time, on my first post, to a subject that comes up so much when I chat to players.

They want to know what it’s like and do I make good money?

My stock answer is that ‘’it’s hard work’’ and ‘’I do alright’’

Both of these statements are accurate but there is obviously much more to it than this.

I have never worked in an environment where the old adage ‘the more you put in, the more you get out’, has been more appropriate.

When I first started out I was a full time multi-tabling grinder who wondered if there was a little extra money to be made from referring players.

I noticed that it was extremely simple to actually register as an affiliate with any poker site I chose, but it was a whole different thing to actually have a deal that is likely to attract other players.

It didn’t take long to realise that getting a good deal is only a part of the battle.

The next obstacle to overcome was finding potential players and then you had to convince them to trust you.

As an avid user of forums such as Pocket Fives and Two Plus Two I was able message players that had stated that they were in the market for a new deal.

It didn’t take long before I realised that there is a massive amount of competition out there and you absolutely must have a website. Even if you have a player on the verge of signing up for a deal that you may offer, it is often the case that they will ask for your website so they can check it out for themselves. If you have to reply that you do not have one then there is a good chance that this player will start to have doubts.

Think about it……

If you had been contacted by two different people, both offering the same deal, would you prefer to use the person with or without the website?

I would never suggest that affiliates without website are not to be trusted and I would certainly not say that all affiliates with websites can be.

However, it’s an indication that if an affiliate had the inclination to spend the time and dedication required in devising and producing a website, surely there is a better chance that he will work well for you and get the best deal for you.

And here is the key to being a successful affiliate.

You have to realise that the customer is effectively employing your services and the better your service, the more customers you are likely to attract.

Unless you have a huge budget at your disposal for advertising, you have to rely mostly on referrals to bring in new business for you.

The hours are as long as you want them to be but the rewards can be there for the affiliates willing to put in the effort.

Being a GOOD affiliate is not just a matter of signing up a player then forgetting about him as he earns you commission.

You should make sure that you are there to answer any questions promptly and efficiently.

This may seem obvious but it is amazing how many players will come to me, complaining that their last affiliate was no good and the only reason was that ‘he never answered my emails’.

We don’t profess to be online 24 hours a day, and our customers do not expect this, but the fact that we are on MSN just about all day every day and including weekends, has given our players a sense of confidence that the affiliate is there for them if they need them.

I will reserve a different post on another day to give accounts of players contacting me telling me about their downswings, implying that I have set them up at a ’rigged site’.

Contact from players is not only, ‘my payment is late, can you chase it for me’.

Our players know that they can contact us on MSN or email about anything even remotely related to poker.

This leads to a very wide range of communication subjects and we would not have it any other way.

The bottom line is that we LOVE poker and LOVE to talk about poker and anything related to poker.

We spend up to 12 hours a day contacting poker sites, negotiating deals, finalising new promotions to advertise, processing player payments, following up on enquiries, updating websites, chatting to potential new players, explaining how VIP deals work, bonus release rates, etc….

But we wouldn’t want it any other way because that is what we LOVE doing and we hope this comes through in our quality of service.

It seems that this initial post to launch our Blog page has turned into self promotion but I’m not going to apologise for that.

We are proud of the job we do here and we feel confident that our players appreciate it.

Future posts will likely involve topics relating to all aspects of the poker industry but don’t be surprised if a little self-advertising slips in……..

I hope you have enjoyed reading this and that you will check back regularly to see what’s going on in the world of your favourite poker affiliate.

Good luck at the tables.

Nik
(Tetleyboy)