I recently had a conversation with a dealer friend of mine that works for stations casinos. The first thing that came up was Ultimate Poker and it’s lack of success. Initially he gave me the company line about Nevada being a small state and not having enough traffic. However after a little pressing we got down to the root of some of the problems and at the end of the day despite several different excuses, the fact is the site has made some major mistakes that have lead to it’s decline.
1. No all in Chat Disabled - Why do they not have this? IMO this is the most egregious mistake that they could have made simply because it opens them up to questions of cheating. Poker players will put up with a lot, but one thing that they do not want to put up with is issues of cheating. So many times at the final table of these tournaments I have had my money all - in while someone else was tanking. Meanwhile some Jerk off is busy chatting about what he just folded. This wouldn’t be allowed in a card room, so why should it be allowed online?
2. Tournament Structure - This is the part that I don’t understand, does it cost more money to make a good tournament? In my way of thinking if I had a online poker site I would like to run the best structured tournaments that I could. In fact I would have gone to 20 min levels instead of the standard 15 min that many online tournaments used. I mean why wouldn’t I it’s not like the players can play only one tournament at a time. Wouldn’t the site benefit more by having people playing longer in deeper structured tournaments?
3. More Tournaments - While we are on the subject of tournaments, why are there so few. Typically on Ultimate Poker the guarantee tournaments start at about 4:30 and then are spaced out throughout the night. Why don’t they just run consistent small guarantee tournaments throughout the day just to keep the action going, like they do on Sunday’s?
4. Heads Up Cash Games - You would think that a site that only has a little traffic could really benefit from having heads up cash tables, especially considering that it is a local site. Think of how many Who’s a Better Player arguments could be solved simply by logging onto the site and playing heads up for rolls.
5. Cage Sign ups - This one I still don’t understand, so your going to operate the first ever online site, and you need poker players to play on that site, but your not going to use the live poker rooms on you property? This makes absolutely no sense to me. What they should have done from the start is make the online sign ups available right in the poker room. Every player that wanted to make a deposit or cash out should have had to walk through that poker room. This would have been a perfect way to kill two birds. However they made it indistinguishable by lumping the online poker transaction in with every other transaction that the casino makes. I’m no expert, but I would think that more people visiting the poker room is a good thing.
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