One thing that confuses me so much is how many people are actually winning at poker ‘professionally’?

I had a little think and I believe there is only 1 way to win from playing poker.

Have a system

I absolutely love systems, it’s part of my personality.

One of the very few poker players I respect a lot is Azimut. He built up a sytem of playing poker with volume so much that he can fairly accurately predict how much he will make in a year. He does not claim to be a great player but he is probably making a lot more money than players who are better than him.

I hate to see good players being staked. It just really doesn’t make sense to me. They are either just not that good, have a fear of losing or don’t have a system.

How can any good player not play with their own money? Where does the money go that is won? The money seems to leak away and the player can’t reinvest. They turn to a backer and end up in an endless circle because the majority of winnings go to the backer. You’re in debt and the backer owns your life. In my eyes this is not winning.

Players that get backed, try to be great at the game and rise through the stakes but never really win. Those with a system, do the same thing over and over and get consistent, predictable results.

Stop trying to be so fucking great at poker and get a system.

All of a sudden there has been a ridiculous amount of money being added to poker tournaments in the UK and very recently in Newcastle. It is a bit of a concern to me that this is going to have some long term problems.

I’ve always been in massive favour of having poker tournaments with guarantees instead of added money mainly because i’m thinking of the business side over the selfish poker player side.

To me, adding money to poker tournaments is very similar to a business just simply reducing prices in order to generate business. This is just a lazy, uncreative way of marketing a product and I believe has big negative effects on a business.

What I see happening now, in particular in Newcastle but also noticed in other cities where there are casinos competing is that they are simply adding more money then their competitors in order to get customers. This is the equivalent of undercutting competitors on price.

I’ve never really understood why poker tournaments have needed added money in order to succeed. Look at all the big tournaments and you’ll see that none of them add money usually just have a decent guarantee. They add a guarantee because they are confident that they are producing a good product that players will want to play in. Adding money is just an insecure way of promoting a product because a casino thinks they can’t provide anything else of value.

The UK seems to be the only place in the world that adds so much money to tournaments. Why?

The problem is that when there is short term success such a good turnout, they think that this is the solution and continuing to add money will produce the same results. Well yes it might continue to work but this is just false information.

I’m not a parent but I know that if you keep giving your child sweets all the time without any reason then that child is going to expect to get those sweets. Then you get spoilt children and no one wants spoilt children unless you are up your own arse.

The same can happen to a business. You can spoil your customers by charging too cheap prices which makes it impossible to raise your prices because that is beyond their expectation. You’re never going to buy a sofa when there isn’t a sale on.

This is what is happening to poker players. They are ridiculously spoilt customers for no reason whatsoever, in just a vain attempt to gain more business. In the end you just get poker players expecting added money or they won’t play. Casinos compete against each other so there is too much choice which dilutes the fields and starts losing money. Casinos can’t continue to add money so it stops and the problem is never solved.

I know people will disagree with me and give me the ‘add money and they will come’ crap. Good, because I want people to disagree with me and i’m interested in hearing other thoughts.

Since my last post criticising helping PokerStars’ search enginge marketing I could not be bothered to think of anything to write about or anything more original for the next stage so i’m going to delve into the marketing again.  Last time they wanted to rank for the keyword ‘poker’ and by the looks of it they have moved up in the rankings and are now on the first page (8th) in google.com and the 2nd page in google.co.uk. Looks like just the power of links alone is pretty much guaranteed to get you better rankings which is fairly obvious. Still wondering if varying the anchor text more would help but i’m not advanced enough to know this.

So the next phrase looks like PokerStars want to rank for the term online poker tournament in order to support their new mini site for the SCOOP series of online poker tournaments. This strategy confuses me since if they are really wanting to rank their mini site for this term I can’t believe that they would be able to rank high enough in such a short space of time. Yes it can be a long term thing for future years but people searching for this term in the future renders it pointless since it is only running for a short period of time. PokerStars already rank 2nd in Google for this term so why not just concentrate on trying to get this to number 1? That way you’ve got the long term power of that term and even the SCOOP pages ranks high i’m sure it will not stay there and probably drift back to page 3 like where it is now doing nothing.

Another thing that confuses me is that if they want to rank for a certain term, why the hell do they not have online poker tournament in their page title? Right now, they just have SCOOP – PokerStars which is about as useful as a chocolate toaster. Personally I would suggest a title something a long the lines of SCOOP – Online Poker Tournament Championship or even atleast the full name of the championship.

Now that my slight rant is out the way time for answers to the title. Yes I do think it is the best online poker tournament purely down to the estimated number of entrants for it giving it a huge prizepool and titles worth winning. Eventhough most of the events (in particular the low series) are just like any other poker tournament on PokerStars it’s somehow worth more when it has a fancy title attached to it.

I was disapponted to see that the structure for the lowest buy in main event is still only 200 starting bbs, 15 min levels and the standard high increase in levels like the Sunday Million. There is also no difference in structure between the main event and a regular $22 event which is a bit crazy. For it being such a big and special event I thought it would be great to give 20 minutes blind levels for the more affordable blind level giving chance for more players to play a better strucured tournament. Comparing it to the $70 FTOPS main event, I think is slightly better as you get 375 starting bbs a few more blind levels and also the blinds increase to 20 minutes at the end.

Anyhow, it’s still a great series and may play a couple eventhough I hate online poker and overall it probably is the best online poker tournament to win.

PokerStars has always been so far ahead of the competition because basically they get their marketing right and provide a better solution for online poker players. No matter what guarantee they put on for their tournaments, they are always smashed because they know what works and have so many players.

As an internet marketer myself I always try to look at what the big boys do and try to emulate some of the things they do in some of my own projects. One thing that has particularly sparked my attention is their WBCOOP which is basically a championship just for poker bloggers and there are a lot of them out there i’m so surprised no other site has caught onto this and atleast tried to copy it. What they do is make you add a link and banner for the event and then you get a free ticket to the tournaments. This gets PokerStars thousands of basically free links and also plenty of branding because of the banners.

I received an e-mail the other day (which is what has brought this article on) where they are now asking for bloggers to write an article containing the text which is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill with the poker being a link to their site. In exchange for this, bloggers get some goodies.

Now my question to the PokerStars marketing team is this. Why are you making bloggers write the same phrase for the text you are targeting? Does this not scream a paid text link to the search engines because all of a sudden you have hundreds of bloggers writing articles with the exact same link and surrounding text all being published at the same time. This means you will be penalised in the search engines if they detect this. Why don’t you just let the bloggers place the link themselves, then you have different surrounding text for every article? This will seem so much more natural.

When I checked the rankings for PokerStars.com in google.com I noticed you were on the first page but now you are on the 2nd page. It concerns me that you have already been penalised for this and your rankings have dropped with your top competitor Full Tilt Poker now ranking much higher than you. You are also on the 3rd page in google.co.uk which is worth practically nothing for such a competitive term.

Anyone that has played poker will have probably come across some sort of criticism even if you are a very good profitable player there’s always that arsehole who finds a reason to criticise one of your plays because they think they are better than you so they will try to put you down.

Here are some tips.

1. Agree.

The quickest way to get him to shut the fuck up is to agree with him even if you don’t.  He is obviously looking for a reaction from you, to argue and prove that he is right and the better player.  When you agree with him he will immediately be surprised and have nothing else to say.  If you say “Yeah you’re right I played that bad but got lucky” or something along those lines then he simply has no comeback as his needs are met.

2. Enjoy it.

Nobody likes to receive criticism but if you show that you aren’t bothered then he can’t continue as he’s not achieving anything.  It’s a bit like a bully who will attack those who are weak but if you show that it doesn’t bother you then they will get bored and stop.  Why should you even be bothered about what someone else thinks about your play?

Take the piss out of yourself for being stupid and this will show that you are a strong player and realise your actions.

3. There’s no right way to play.

This method works wonders and will probably get him on your side. It’s one I hear commonly used at the tables and often used by bad players who can’t explain their reasons but it is another way to not offer your opponent a comeback.    If you explain that there’s no right way to play a hand in poker because after all it’s mostly luck and if you do everything the ‘right’ way then people will know exactly how you play then they simply have to agree with you because they know this statement is true.

4. Think about an alternative.

As there’s no right way to play then you can think about an alternative play which will turn it into a discussion rather than an argument and discussions are cool.  Even if the alternative is the one your opponent suggested then say it which supports point 1.  Thank them for the advice.  People like to be thanked.

5. Thank

Following on from above, the simplest solution is to thank the player for the criticism.  Let them know you’re still learning the game and want to improve so you will go home, read some strategy articles and try not to do the same again.  Try not to be sarcastic about it though.

6. Ignore.

A popular choice amongst the shy ones and often very effective.  There’s no use in getting worked up over something stupid like something thinking they are better than you.  Some people are just bitter and angry or just plain idiots so there’s no need to give this person your attention.

The absolute worst thing you can do is argue back as this does yourself no favours.  He’s already made his decision so arguing is just going to make him try and prove his point further.

If you use any of these tips you may actually get the player to respect you as a player and that you are confident in your ability.  Once you have him respecting you then you can use this to your advantage.

If you have any other tips for handling criticism, please share your thoughts in the comments box.