Confidential

Confidential http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com benido 2008-11-21T20:08:15Z "Community" launches soon! http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/quot;Community_quot;_launches_soon! Finally! We're in the final phase before we publish our new feature set, called "The PokerStrategy.com Community". From our office, the final version with live data is already available, and our staff already fills up their profiles, founds groups – and of course still finds some glitches and minor bugs that need to be exterminated. For the first time, it really feels "good", because all those non-final version with their usability and performance problems tend to make you worried about the final result. Will it be good? Will the community accept will? Or will they say: "bah, what a crap! You'd rather have done something else!"? Now, I'm confident that this is just the right thing. Finally, we're able to send personal messages and chat with our friends in the community. We can have groups for common interests – and they are not even a competition for our allmighty forums, but an additive: groups can link to certain forums, making sure the new "community" and the forums interact well. Additionally, we're currently fine-tuning the last details of our christmas promotions: I hope you'll all be happy with our small presents. If you want to say "thanks", do it by filling up your profile and bring a little life into the new features upon release ;)  <img src="http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/gallery/11/previews-med/community_groups.png" alt="The PokerStrategy.comCommunity: Groups" width="550" height="284" align="middle" /> General 2008-11-21T12:50:51Z xantos Colourful Balls & Aching Muscles http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/Colourful_Balls_Aching_Muscles Yesterday I had the chance to play Paintball for the first time in my life. Ten guys & girls from our company battled it out internally and also against some other teams that were around. Even though – as most of the time <strike>I'm too lazy</strike> don't have the time for sports because I work so much – I got severe muscle ache, it was really great fun. Can just suggest to try it to anyone. And it doesn't hurt too much: even if your finger (without glove) gets hit directly twice, it does not fall off. I have to admit that I was not really amongst the best of us. My only great action was an artistic offensive run to catch the flag in a rush, but then we noticed the opposite team didn't hear the starting signal. And so I was wasted for no reason. As there are no automated statistics (it's no laser game), I can't be sure. But I'd guess that our two top guys were <img src="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/images/ranks/mini/admin.png" />Dami (responsible for the whole product development and our partner sites) and <img src="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/images/ranks/mini/admin.png" />Marcus (our puppet master for economic strings). But of course <img src="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/images/ranks/mini/admin.png" />Georgs/bahmrockks girfriend gets my respect as well for her great performance at a last 1on1 against a seemingly experienced paintballer. They were the last after an intense 6 minute 8on8 deatchmatch in the tourney range. The downside of course is that I've got to catch up with some reports today so you all won't have to suffer from our spare-time activities, but it's a great sunday in the office and the coffee tastes great. So I wish you all an enjoyable sunday (and maybe also a productive one, e.g. at the poker tables?)! Read you soon. General 2008-11-09T14:28:32Z xantos Soon, soon! http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/Soon,_soon! <img src="http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/gallery/11/sn-teaser.png" align="right" />Soon? Well, I won't give a precise date, because it always has been a bad omen. So just: soon we will launch our community feature module. Yesterday we made our internal launch, meaning that all our community managers and web developers can now actively use and test the system to find last bugs and check everything. We hope that you will enjoy the possibility to communicate with your friends on PokerStrategy.com through chat and personal messages. We also hope that you tell a little more about yourself: your interests, your favourite gametype, maybe a picture. Why? Because in the end, PokerStrategy.com is just you: without every single member, our community and poker school would be none. Through this new feature package we hope to give our users the relevance they ought to have!  By the way: after finishing that first release, we will immediately switch to re-designing the home page, the navigation and the video section - followed by relaunches of all important sections of our site. We've got a busy winter ahead of us - but in the end, spring 2009 will bear a by then complete rebirth of our website!  Confidential 2008-11-04T21:30:44Z xantos PokerStrategy Elephant – A Success Story? http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/PokerStrategy_Elephant_–_A_Success_Story <img src="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/software/9/screenshot/thumb" hspace="3" vspace="3" width="84" height="77" align="right" />I remember it well when we decided to start development of the <a href="http://www.pokerstrategy.com/software/9/">PokerStrategy.com Elephant</a> back in late 2007. Althought today it seems like a natural decision, we were hesitant to do so at first. For one, there already was a decent product – PokerTracker – which we back then offered to all our members that successfully gathered 2,000 StrategyPoints. Secondly, we did make the experience that offering a really good software was not easy: besides interesting, valuable features you always have to make sure the quality is good. A software that crashes or is hard to handle / hard to install will not be a product welcomed by the community. But still, there were some reasons to try: if we had development under our control, we could easier implement the community's favourite features – whereas convincing an indepentend partner to do so was really hard, even though we were their biggest customers. Additionally, with a software of our own, we can make sure people get their licenses quick and get a long-term support. So its easier for our members and less risk for us all. So we tried. And if I look at the Elephant today, we succeeded. After less than a year of development, it is a full-fledged tool with less and less weaknesses. I'm very much convinced it will be the #1 tool in all important areas in 2009. But of course not everything is too bright: to make sure we get the right amount of feedback to fuel our development and bug removal process, we decided to make an early alpha release. The following months were of course still full of not-working features, performance problems and annoying bugs. And as most people don't have too much time, they rightfully don't want to give a piece of software more than one or two chances. If it annoys them with bugs the first time they try to use it, they don't like it. And this opinion stays. So today, we have a much better product – but still a large bunch of members that had too bad experiences with the Elephant to try it again. To us, that means double effort: to convince them, we need to make the Elephant so good that new people using it talk in the highest tones of it. Only if we convince those using the programme, we will be able to get back the users lost to bugs.  General 2008-10-24T08:21:42Z xantos User Generated Assesment – and some Cake http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/User_Generated_Assesment_–_and_some_Cake Hundreds of freelancers work for PokerStrategy.com today. Each of them is an important part – they especially stand for the vivid side of our site, doing not only videos and articles, but interactive coachings, hand ratings, interviews and so on. All of these freelancers should get their fair share of appreciation, and usually they do: people give feedback, praise their work. Basically, this feedback is the best measure for the quality of their work. Because of that, we are currently in the first stages of a plan that would give a little power to our users. The idea is to make our community vote and give the best authors of the content pieces a premium. Why? Because the quality could improve! Doing great work, one could get not only extra attention and praise, but also a few extra bucks. And coming from the hearts of the community, these extra bucks would even feel better. What do you think about empowering our users to rate and evaluate authors, coaches and video producers? A chance? A risk? Too complicated? Last, but not least, I want to answer a question by BigStack83 in the comments: the title of this blog entry holds a good hint to our next partner! General 2008-10-17T23:34:34Z xantos 4,000 Miles... http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/4,000_Miles... ...between Gibraltar and Kentucky.  A few weeks ago, I already <a href="http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/Kentucky_Fried_Domains">wrote</a> about the dear judges in Kentucky, who try to seize domains like<a href="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/bonus/detail/424/"> PokerStars.com</a>. Funny of course, because Kentucky would need to think it owns or at least controls the Internet. But sad, if it would work. Yesterday, the responsible court "ruled" that the dozens of big gambling / poker sites on their list have to expell Kentucky residents – or face forfeiture of their domains. Still, I don't believe they could – but is Kentucky with its population of just 4.2M worthy enough as a customer base? Will they be worth going a 1% risk for big companies like PokerStars or <a href="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/bonus/detail/25/">Full Tilt Poker</a>? <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Kentucky_State_Seal.svg/134px-Kentucky_State_Seal.svg.png" width="134" height="134" align="left" /> It may seem wise for them to obey the court's decision, and we won't suffer too much, because Kentucky should be at best .5% of the world-wide poker market. But the signal could be bad! What if bigger states like Texas or California would follow their example? Let us not hope that the indian heritage for the name Kentucky, Ken-tah-ten, meaning "land of the future" will not mean a negative future for the poker world. <img src="http://resources.pokerstrategy.com/Editorial/News/Pics/gib.office.jpg" width="282" height="211" align="right" />  (Image: Wikipedia.org) To get past these thoughts and over the ocean, let's talk about tiny Gibraltar with its tiny 28,000-odd population. Other than Kentucky, Gibraltar is great for Poker, being home to companies like <a href="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/bonus/detail/23/">PartyGaming</a> or <a href="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/bonus/detail/571/">Mansion</a> – and us. If there's not a once-in-ten-years-storm like on last weekend, Gibraltar is a very nice place to live. Especially if you're used northern Germany, the 20°C plus sun we got here now in mid-october is nearly tropical. Here, we are planning for the next stages of your PokerStrategy.com experience: social networking features, new navigation, user-to-user-chat, new forum software – quickly followed by relaunches of all major parts of PokerStrategy.com (video section, coaching area, news hub etc.). And we will do even better once we move to our new office, where we will be able to fuel our development and improvements even better. A last few words: I know, I'm not the most active blogger amongst all, but that is mainly because I don't want to write nonsense, but only stuff that I guess might interest you. So vice-versa, if you could think of an interesting topic, I'll be more than happy to read your suggestions in the comments!  Poker Industry 2008-10-17T07:36:40Z xantos About Layout & Navigation http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/About_Layout_Navigation As our social networking module nears its completion, navigational & usability issues pop up. To integrate the new features without making your user experience more complicated we thought about many different ways and finally came up with two new navigational elements. 1. The Top Bar At the top of the browser screen, there will be a Top Bar. With that top bar, you can not only search quickly for people, groups and other things going on in the social network (and of course, we will also integrate a content search there in the future!), but also have quick access to the key features. The icons for chat and personal messages will change the moment you get a new message or one of your buddies wants to chat with you. 2. The Second Level Navigation You all know that our main horizontal navigation is full of interesting stuff, but a little cramped. It could not carry much more, and a consistent navigational structure is sometimes missed within the main sections of PokerStrategy.com. In the future, every main section (the ones having their own menu item in the primary navigation bar) will have a second level navigation in a consistent style. The most important things inside the section will be easily accessible from there. An example: in the coaching section, you will be able to switch between the coaching calendar, a coaching guide and informations about our coaches & private coaching in the second level navigation. To illustrate the changes a little, here's a sample: <img src="http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/gallery/11/site_teaser.png" /> Confidential 2008-09-26T15:00:53Z xantos The Great Chiliad http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/The_Great_Chiliad In about a week, our top players – the <img src="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/images/ranks/mini/black.png" width="17" height="12" />Black Members – will meet once again at a big party, this time in Berlin. It will be the fifth <a href="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/video/1710">Black Member Event</a>, and the group of our black elite grew to above 50. Besides that, we had our first live event in Moscow, with our Russian <img src="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/images/ranks/mini/diamond.png" width="17" height="12" />Diamonds meeting for the first time. The fifth Event will not only be a kind of jubilee, but also unique. This time, the event goes on for two consecutive days, and we got some special guests: the upper echelon of PartyGaming, the billion dollar company behind <a href="http://de.pokerstrategy.com/bonus/detail/23/">PartyPoker</a>, will honour us with their presence. We think that bringing together important people from the company that is still our players' favourite and our top players is a very good idea and will not only increase the bond, but also lead to important feedback given and new thoughts on how to improve. At such a time, it seemed right to have a look back and see who our Top Thousand are and what they achieved on PokerStrategy.com. The Top Thousand are in a way the long tail of the Black Members, as they are the Top50 within that Chiliad. Some facts about them: • 50% of them signed up after June 2006, the other half before. This shows that you can be all means achieve that within the first two years of your poker career. • They wrote a total of 866,306 forum posts • Only 41 of them did not write a single forum post • two-thirds of them still visit us daily – gives us the good feeling of staying attractive even to successful players! • 50% of them posted in the forums within the last two weeks. Compared with the online activity, this isn't even too high. I guess we should make our forums more attractive to our greatest? I hope, many of them will show up on October 4th in Berlin – since many of the Chiliad are Diamonds, who are very welcome to join the Blacks on their second night!  Statistics 2008-09-25T12:19:32Z xantos Kentucky Fried Domains http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/Kentucky_Fried_Domains If you ask me, I'd prefer to remember Kentucky for their Whiskey than for megalomania. But seemingly, they want to change the world, or at least the poker world. A court in this lovely US state just issued an order to seize 141 internet domains, all related to online gambling in general and specifically online poker. The list of domains includes the two world market leaders <a href="http://www.pokerstrategy.com/bonus/detail/424/">PokerStars</a> and <a href="http://www.pokerstrategy.com/bonus/detail/25/">Full Tilt Poker</a>, both favourites of our community. If they would succeed, it would of course not mean the end of online poker, but certainly it would be bad: especially rank-and-file players who tend to feed the industry (including our players and us) will probably miss the domains, and not all of them will be clever enough to find a navigational work-around. (Such as visiting other redirecting domains.)  But honestly: I bet they won't prevail! The Internet itself would be at risk as an idea if some random North American province could seize big and valuable domain because of violations of their law. I wonder what would be next? China seizing Wikipedia.com? Okay, they would have a harder time, as "the Internet" is more probably to be effectively controlled by US authorities than anyone else. But still, it would be a very bad signal, rendering even the Chinese effort to block thousands of sites with the Great Firewall of China comparably harmless.  I for myself will now, as a token of my solidarity, play some symbolic hands of cash game. On both Full Tilt and Stars. And pray for Obamas victory. Poker Industry 2008-09-23T21:20:28Z xantos Blog Comeback, Forum Comeback http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/Blog_Comeback,_Forum_Comeback Summer seems to be over, which means that people start to surf online more. Our community is not an exception here. The months from March to August sometimes can be frustrating: you improve things and still, statistical activity does not go up like you hoped. For the next months, the seasonality will work for us, again. You all will visit PokerStrategy.com more often – statistically. So before that naturally positive trend begins to make data fuzzy, I will take a last look into some summer numbers. How did our forums develop in the last six months? To make the charts look nice and easily understandable, I did not neither include DE (German) nor SV, FI and KO. The latter are comparably too small (yet) to be interesting in such a pie chart. Weekly post numbers: last week vs the week a half year ago.<img src="http://confidential.pokerstrategy.com/gallery/11/language_forums.png" /> The total number of posts in these 10 languages went up by 71%, which would nearly mean tripling on an annual basis. The best performers: PL (Polish) +131%, NL (Dutch) +127% and ES (Spanish) +124%. Your opinion: from which number of posts per week does a forum become attractive (i.e. worth a daily visit)? Of course this also depends on posting quality, but let's just assume the posting quality would be average.  Statistics 2008-09-06T17:46:10Z xantos