Ultimatepoker New jersey out the door

[Nikki]

New Jersey Status: Notice to all players: We regret to inform you that Ultimate Gaming has terminated its agreement with Trump Taj Mahal Associates LLC. As a consequence we will be closing our Ultimate Casino (www.ucasino.com) & Ultimate Poker (www.ultimatepoker.com) businesses in New Jersey. We are no longer accepting new deposits and are planning to cease play in the near future. Please go to your account and withdraw any balances you may have by following the normal withdrawal procedures.We will update the website with new information as it becomes available. If you have any further inquiries please contact Player Care: Live chat (11AM – 3AM EST) | email. We thank you for your support and are very sorry that we are not able to continue to serve you in New Jersey

[Dan Druff]

New Jersey Status: Notice to all players: We regret to inform you that Ultimate Gaming has terminated its agreement with Trump Taj Mahal Associates LLC. As a consequence we will be closing our Ultimate Casino (www.ucasino.com) & Ultimate Poker (www.ultimatepoker.com) businesses in New Jersey. We are no longer accepting new deposits and are planning to cease play in the near future. Please go to your account and withdraw any balances you may have by following the normal withdrawal procedures.We will update the website with new information as it becomes available. If you have any further inquiries please contact Player Care: Live chat (11AM – 3AM EST) | email. We thank you for your support and are very sorry that we are not able to continue to serve you in New Jersey

Interesting.

At least they have their wildly successful Ultimate Poker Nevada room to bank on, with its 65 average cash players on the site.

[BeerAndPoker]

UP NJ was getting blown out of the water and never really got it's foot on the ground anyways. They were averaging around 30 players according to pokerscout which the info don't go back too far but I remember always seeing the site way down the list.

With only that many people playing poker you can bet the online casino games weren't making much either compared to Party NJ or WSOP NJ.

Off topic but Bodog/Bovada has now passed Full Tilt Poker on pokerscout too for the #5 room in the world.

[Dan Druff]

As much as I hate their anonymous games, I might redeposit back on Bovada and give their games another shot. The games get better during NFL season.

I was the biggest LHE winner there in 2010, but I haven't played there in a few years.

[BeerAndPoker]

As much as I hate their anonymous games, I might redeposit back on Bovada and give their games another shot. The games get better during NFL season.

I was the biggest LHE winner there in 2010, but I haven't played there in a few years.

Anon games suck especially for limit but any plans of attack people may think they have on you are wiped away too.


Bovada has at least two 30/60 limit games going at the moment that I can see and many nights I have seen over 4 running. I say "that I can see" because they hide all the full lobby's trying to not let sites like Pokerscout see them which is LOL.

I hate it more for the fact they don't have a waiting list option even if it just takes you to the first available table at the stake you want that would be better then forcing you to stare in the lobby for a table to appear with 5/6 players and then hopefully beat out others trying to grab that seat.

[pavoe]

Microgaming also has no waiting lists (and anon tables). Yes it can take away some attention off the tables you are already playing but overall it makes the games better IMO.
Not sure if there are scripts out there that could auto seat you as soon as a seat gets open but in most cases I have my screen filled up pretty quickly without such a script.

I like both, no waiting lists and anon tables (I am totally aware of the risks involved with anon tables).

[big dick]

As much as I hate their anonymous games, I might redeposit back on Bovada and give their games another shot. The games get better during NFL season.

I was the biggest LHE winner there in 2010, but I haven't played there in a few years.

what was your old screen name druff?

[Steve-O]

UP NJ was getting blown out of the water and never really got it's foot on the ground anyways. They were averaging around 30 players according to pokerscout which the info don't go back too far but I remember always seeing the site way down the list.

With only that many people playing poker you can bet the online casino games weren't making much either compared to Party NJ or WSOP NJ.

Off topic but Bodog/Bovada has now passed Full Tilt Poker on pokerscout too for the #5 room in the world.

Ultimate never averaged 30 players to my knowledge (maybe an outlier week here and there, but never consistently), they were consistently around 15-20 for the first few months and have been dipping ever since. from 16, to 12, to 10, to 8, and now they have been listed as 0.0 for a good 6-8 weeks.

Their rev. #'s were dropping as well, back in March they peaked with $100k GGR for poker, and that's dropped to $23k in August ($25k in July). Should also be noted that their online casino revenue was the worst in the market, but roughly on pace with Golden Nugget (trending upward) and Trump Plaza (closed). YTD they were the worst performing casino, and other than Betfair's poker room (which I'm not sure even really exists) they were the bottom in poker.

They were also hemorrhaging money on promotions and if I had to ballpark it I would bet New Jersey was a solid eight-figure misstep. Factor in that Trump Taj got a significant cut of any revenue as the license holder (probably somewhere between 15%-25% based on what I know of other arrangements in the market) and The Taj apparently stiffed them on their last 2 months payments as well and owes UG $1.5 million.

Quite frankly the best thing that ever happened to UG was Trump Ent/trump Taj going bankrupt, as it gave them a clean out in New Jersey.

Also, don't put too much stock into pokerscout's Bovada/Bodog numbers, it could be even higher or it could be lower, there is really know way to tell, I think they just go by tables open and punch it into an algorithm based on historical data. Bodog has said pokerscout's #'s for them are laughable -- but it should be noted Bodog and pokerscout hate each other

[BeerAndPoker]

^^^ - Pokerscout isn't perfect but one thing is for sure whether a site has 15 players or 30 in the online poker world that is super shitty.

[Dan Druff]

As much as I hate their anonymous games, I might redeposit back on Bovada and give their games another shot. The games get better during NFL season.

I was the biggest LHE winner there in 2010, but I haven't played there in a few years.

what was your old screen name druff?

I don't want to say publicly, but I will tell you privately if you PM me. (If you know, please don't post it.)

I was almost exclusively a 30/60 LHE player, and reliably won a lot there every month in 2010. Black Friday actually hurt a lot despite the fact that Bovada wasn't directly affected by it. A lot of good players from Stars/Tilt came over, and the games got much tougher. That, plus I ran worse, plus I didn't keep a big roll on there and it was hard to redeposit. I decreased play a lot, and left for good when the anon tables came.

I incurred the wrath of a lot of 5-10 NL players there because the etiquette at those games was far different than the limit games. At the limit games, bumhunting and seat-hopping was not only accepted, it was common practice for everyone. This wasn't just at Bodog, but in every LHE game everywhere since at least 2001. Apparently NL players frowned upon both of these things, so I immediately got on their bad side. I will say that I learned some things about NL cash play from those players, however. I was making limit-player-at-NL mistakes like always C-betting the flop, and the NL guys hated me so much that they made fun of me for those mistakes, and thus I learned. I didn't play NL all that much there, though -- usually only when I saw a fish sitting.

Who were you there? If you played 5-10 NL there, you probably hated me.

[Dan Druff]

Some of you might remember that I was close to working for UP, but it fell through.

In some ways, UP's failure has been surprising. They have a lot of intelligent people working there, including some veterans of online poker from both the player and employee standpoints. So what went wrong?

Yes, you can blame it on bad software, a saturated market, and better-recognizable competition, but it goes deeper than that.

I compare the UP team to a hastily-thrown-together NBA team of talented players. Individually, the team is full of talent and seems like it will crush. However, with poorly-defined roles, poor chemistry, and too many pieces with the same skill sets (and not enough with others), the team will underachieve.

I believe that occurred at Ultimate Poker. Individually they hired some great people, but it just didn't all come together properly. Priorities were wrong, communication with the community was poor, and worst yet, there was a complete lack of innovation when it came to providing the player base a reason to play at UP versus the "bigger guys". UP's basic model was to imitate Pokerstars and hope everything worked out, but that was the wrong approach for so many reasons.

They were never willing to step out of the box to set themselves apart. They were #2, but they didn't try harder.

And so they have mostly failed.

I'm not saying that I could have single-handedly brought them to the forefront of the industry, but I know I could have increased their traffic big time, had they put me in a management position and given me the ability to enact various changes.

I'm not bitter, by the way, nor am I happy to see their struggles. I have no probelm with UP, and I would still play there if they ever had LHE games going. I would have liked to have been given a shot to turn things around, but it was one of those things I didn't need, but would have been an interesting project/challenge to have been part of. Oh well.

[Steve-O]

Some of you might remember that I was close to working for UP, but it fell through.

In some ways, UP's failure has been surprising. They have a lot of intelligent people working there, including some veterans of online poker from both the player and employee standpoints. So what went wrong?

Yes, you can blame it on bad software, a saturated market, and better-recognizable competition, but it goes deeper than that.

I compare the UP team to a hastily-thrown-together NBA team of talented players. Individually, the team is full of talent and seems like it will crush. However, with poorly-defined roles, poor chemistry, and too many pieces with the same skill sets (and not enough with others), the team will underachieve.

I believe that occurred at Ultimate Poker. Individually they hired some great people, but it just didn't all come together properly. Priorities were wrong, communication with the community was poor, and worst yet, there was a complete lack of innovation when it came to providing the player base a reason to play at UP versus the "bigger guys". UP's basic model was to imitate Pokerstars and hope everything worked out, but that was the wrong approach for so many reasons.

They were never willing to step out of the box to set themselves apart. They were #2, but they didn't try harder.

And so they have mostly failed.

I'm not saying that I could have single-handedly brought them to the forefront of the industry, but I know I could have increased their traffic big time, had they put me in a management position and given me the ability to enact various changes.

I'm not bitter, by the way, nor am I happy to see their struggles. I have no probelm with UP, and I would still play there if they ever had LHE games going. I would have liked to have been given a shot to turn things around, but it was one of those things I didn't need, but would have been an interesting project/challenge to have been part of. Oh well.

Two things are basically indisputable at this point:

#1) The most important thing is good software
#2) The next most important thing is a strong brand

UP had/has neither of these, especially in NJ where they had no prior market presence and partnered with a failing casino that performed 0 marketing.

party and 888 both have superior software and both partnered with better casinos. Every scrap of data that has been collected since NJ launched forecasts a site like UP will fail in NJ, and it proved true. Not that I don't think you could effect positive change, but I don't think anything changes their performance in NJ.

And for the record I'm a big UP fan and still hope they pull it together

[herbertstemple]

Having the word Ultimate in their name not the best marketing idea for internet poker players.

[Brittney Griner's Clit]

As much as I hate their anonymous games, I might redeposit back on Bovada and give their games another shot. The games get better during NFL season.

I was the biggest LHE winner there in 2010, but I haven't played there in a few years.

what was your old screen name druff?

3

[SpewArtist]

Former site pro William Reynolds currently blowing up UP on twitter:

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 4m
All the best to @WSOPcom, @partypoker, & @PokerStars. We need quality platforms in the US to get online poker back to where it should be

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 13m
The 2005 http://pokerroom.com website that you could run thru your browser with out downloading is still more advanced than @UltimatePoker

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 15m
1 year ago I showcased all of flaws on @UltimatePoker client to entire software team-In next 2 months they changed decks from #blue to #red

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 1h
#LetThatLastTweetSinkIn #oversight #BreitlingIsntBright #RunItDown #MEvsUP #LaterUP

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 1h
The 1st legal regulated site in America @UltimatePoker was paying the former CEO of the largest poker scam site in history for his services

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 1h
When @UltimatePoker first launched they used services from @iovation who's owner Greg Pierson was CEO of Ultimate Bet #TheyDontKnowPoker

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 1h
When I left @UltimatePoker I had played more hands than anyone.. I won't have to play another hand to hold that record until the end of time

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 2h
No surprise to see @UltimatePoker pull out of NJ.. They care more about YouTube videos that @dustiniannotti buys fake views for than poker

[Dan Druff]

Some of you might remember that I was close to working for UP, but it fell through.

In some ways, UP's failure has been surprising. They have a lot of intelligent people working there, including some veterans of online poker from both the player and employee standpoints. So what went wrong?

Yes, you can blame it on bad software, a saturated market, and better-recognizable competition, but it goes deeper than that.

I compare the UP team to a hastily-thrown-together NBA team of talented players. Individually, the team is full of talent and seems like it will crush. However, with poorly-defined roles, poor chemistry, and too many pieces with the same skill sets (and not enough with others), the team will underachieve.

I believe that occurred at Ultimate Poker. Individually they hired some great people, but it just didn't all come together properly. Priorities were wrong, communication with the community was poor, and worst yet, there was a complete lack of innovation when it came to providing the player base a reason to play at UP versus the "bigger guys". UP's basic model was to imitate Pokerstars and hope everything worked out, but that was the wrong approach for so many reasons.

They were never willing to step out of the box to set themselves apart. They were #2, but they didn't try harder.

And so they have mostly failed.

I'm not saying that I could have single-handedly brought them to the forefront of the industry, but I know I could have increased their traffic big time, had they put me in a management position and given me the ability to enact various changes.

I'm not bitter, by the way, nor am I happy to see their struggles. I have no probelm with UP, and I would still play there if they ever had LHE games going. I would have liked to have been given a shot to turn things around, but it was one of those things I didn't need, but would have been an interesting project/challenge to have been part of. Oh well.

Two things are basically indisputable at this point:

#1) The most important thing is good software
#2) The next most important thing is a strong brand

UP had/has neither of these, especially in NJ where they had no prior market presence and partnered with a failing casino that performed 0 marketing.

party and 888 both have superior software and both partnered with better casinos. Every scrap of data that has been collected since NJ launched forecasts a site like UP will fail in NJ, and it proved true. Not that I don't think you could effect positive change, but I don't think anything changes their performance in NJ.

And for the record I'm a big UP fan and still hope they pull it together

You might be right. In fact, you are definitely right about the two most important factors listed above, and I agree that UP had neither.

However, there are workarounds to lacking in those important areas. Those involve good customer service (which UP had, for the most part), good community relations (they lacked here somewhat), and innovative promotions/rake structure in order to get people playing (they completely blew it here).

Basically UP missed the fact that poker sites are much like forums or chat rooms. You need activity to create activity. Why do so many people go to 2+2? Because Mason Malmuth is such a charismatic guy? Because the site looks so beautiful? No. People go there because it's the biggest poker forum, and thus your posts will be seen by the most eyeballs. Same thing goes for a poker site. You need loyal players starting games and playing them for long periods of time. UP did little to reward game-starters. The did little to reward grinders who always keep the games going. Admittedly, grinders are not important to the business model of highly successful sites, but they are extremely important to sites trying to get off the ground.

Prior to my getting banned on 2+2, I had posted about how I wasn't playing on UP partially because I was getting 30% rakeback on WSOP.com due to my Seven Stars status, so it wasn't worth it to me to start games on UP for inferior rakeback. I got a private message from one of their employees offering me 20% rakeback, but that I had to e-mail him when I was going to start playing and he would initiate it. Like, not only was he still offering me less than WSOP.com was giving (for inferior/inactive games), but also adding a level of complication to where I had to e-mail him beforehand. I told him thanks but no thanks. But this illustrated the problem. If I were in charge, I would have done everything I could to draw players like me to the site, even if I didn't make a direct profit off them. UP never got this. They were too busy trying to imitate Pokerstars.

I just always felt like UP never "got it" when it came to building a successful online poker room. Their priorities were all wrong, they had massive turnover in employment there, they weren't at all innovative with getting people loyal to the site.

When I was in discussions about working there, one of the higher-ups called me and we had a good conversation. He enlightened me about some of the regulatory challenges they faced, and the guy was surprisingly bright and in tune with UP's issues. I somewhat expected a dim bureaucratic type to call me, but this guy really impressed me and I thought that UP was likely on the verge of making some great decisions and turning things around. But it just didn't happen, and for all of this guy's clear vision of the problems, solutions didn't follow. I don't know why, but they didn't, and that can't all be blamed on the regulatory environment.

Honestly WSOP.com annoys me with poor customer support and haughty attitude of the poker room manager. I really wish that UP was the successful room, as I like the guys behind it. They just couldn't put it together.

BTW, if I were running an online room, one guy I would likely hire would be Steve-O, as he does seem to "get it" when it comes to the poker industry. We don't always agree, but I could see him being a valuable asset to a site.

[Dan Druff]

Regarding Reynolds' tweets, he has a personal ax to grind with UP, but he's mostly right, especially about this:

William A. Reynolds @ReynoldsXO · 15m
1 year ago I showcased all of flaws on @UltimatePoker client to entire software team-In next 2 months they changed decks from #blue to #red

I pretty much did the same thing when I communicated with UP, and I was assured the slowness in fixing flaws was the arduous regulatory process in getting new software versions approved.

Then a new version of the software was released, and nothing I had pointed out was fixed. That was when my palm firmly hit my face and I realized that UP was destined to be a failsite.

I will say that the hiring of Iovation (Greg Pierson's company) was boneheaded but not malicious, but UP employees had a flippant attitude for awhile when this was brought to their attention. Nobody there could understand that this was a huge middle finger to the online poker community, and the correct response should have been "Sorry, we didn't realize that. We will correct this immediately", and not "As long as they keep their regulatory license, we will keep using them", which was basically the initial answer. They did come around and drop Iovation, but it should have been immediate.

[Dan Druff]

Funny article on F5 Poker about this: http://f5poker.com/poker-news/2014/9...ir-money-fake/

Reynolds claimed that his tweets were still appearing on their homepage, but when I checked just now, they weren't. So I guess UP fixed it. Still pretty embarrassing.

[Steve-O]

Funny article on F5 Poker about this: http://f5poker.com/poker-news/2014/9...ir-money-fake/

Reynolds claimed that his tweets were still appearing on their homepage, but when I checked just now, they weren't. So I guess UP fixed it. Still pretty embarrassing.

He deleted them, that's why they aren't appearing

[BeerAndPoker]

Rumor has it Jason Somerville will be done with UP soon too.

http://f5poker.com/poker-news/2014/9...poker-sponsor/