Quote Originally Posted by Steve-O View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
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.