Search in the Now

May 17, 2009

I was just reading a little about Twitter via Techcrunch and got to thinking how this can effect the poker world.  I must admit I’ve done little outside of set up a profile and send a few texts to my twitter page, but it is intriguing nonetheless.

You can see it’s impact in a site like Pokerroad – where a large portion of the homepage is dedicated to this live stream of internet consciousness.

At this point I’m not totally convinced of the usefulness of this tool outside of celebrity stalking, but it does have the opportunity to direct traffic via the web.  And with the popularity of such outlets like US weekly and TMZ it should be no surprise that Twitter is being taken over by celebrity chatter.  I did read a cool post on Kanye West’s blog about how he doesn’t have a twitter, doesn’t want one, and thinks its a giant waste of time because he only blogs about 5% of what he’s up to, and the rest of the time is spent being creative.  I like his stance on this…but I digress.

The interesting thing about this trend is that the internet is evolving from a passive stream of consciousness (static pages, blogs, etc.) to a more real-time, ‘live’ mass of thought (twitter, digg, forums, desktop tickers, etc).  From a marketing perspective, these tools are  increasing the efficiency of ‘word of mouth’.  One could argue it’s the holy grail of ROI, and at the heart of any successful brand/product/idea or viral marketing concept.

Twitter allows groups of similiar thinking individuals to gather information simultaneously and ‘swarm’ about the web together.  Think about it like a group of bees, going to where the honey is, and leaving just as quick when the honey is gone.

We are clearly all a bunch of ridalin deprived ADD kids, and don’t want to invest time in searching, when we can be told where the latest and greatest is, happening now.  Real time = Now = Less Time spent finding what’s hot…

A site like Full Tilt could leverage this medium to ‘promote’ big games that are happening, as they are happening.  There are plenty of rail birds that log on to watch Durrrr and Ivey or Sigmund or whoever play nosebleed stakes – if they could communicate with that audience via a live stream of happenings then the swarm would know when to log on.

Although, what do I know, I just have a tiny lifestyle brand…but what I do know is that tomorrow will not look like today.

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Justin Shronk 1981-2009

April 21, 2009

One of the Pokerroad OG crew members passed away this weekend.  A funny and intelligent dude who supported the poker community in many capacities…RIP

http://www.pokerroad.com/justin_shronk_memorial/


Poker for the Holidays and Future Predictions

December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas to all the Degens out there…

A few things have happened in the poker world lately, that deserve an honorable mention:

Chino Rheem takes down the Bellagio $15k Five Diamond.  Good for him.  As he’s said in a few interviews when asked what to do about various annoyances… ‘now that I got money….’  Well GL Chino, don’t go spending it all in one place.  How’s he get his hat to stay on like that? 

Ultimate Bet is still rigged – Phil Hellmuth was pushed a pot with 1 pair vs. the other guy with trips in a 200/400NL game.  Nice christmas bonus Phil.

PokerRoad is still cool – The most recent poker road radio show, Mr. Sebok missed 2 of 5ish episodes due to various debaucheries…and Ali started talking about ‘what’s next’ for his career…just to do a little gossip starting…What are the odds the PRR crew endures through all on 2009?  

Advertising spending is down across all industries – the casino, gaming, and vegas hotel industries are all hurting (unless your Stars or Tilt in which case you are just laughing at your bank account continuing to magically grow).  Pokerroad is a ad supported business…whatever….09 is gonna be tough on a lot of businesses.  I think they do make some of the best media product out there, but it does require a lot of energy to do so, and if you are not being compensated properly, at the end of the day, enthusiasm will wain.  Vegas is going busto, along with everyone else.

Poker in 2009 – online will continue to grow, satellites will happen more often, games will continue to get tougher, live games will shrink, and poker rooms will go out of business as casinos lose their patience and replace them with one of two things – 1. automated poker tables or 2. slot machines.

PROP in 09 – you will have to wait and see – but there are a variety of stealth projects in the works – mostly consisting of extremely limited production type products.  Watch out.  For now, go snowboarding, get outside, and do something fun.

Merry christmas, happy new year.  See you in 09.


PROP Bet @ the Bike – Gavin Smith v Sabyl Cohen

August 26, 2008

G Smith just pulled a mississippi shuffle on Ms. Sabyl Cohen (of ESPN WSOP ME 200X whatever coverage fame).

The Wager – How much the 2008 attendance of WPT Legends of Poker at the Bike will decrease from 2007?

The Line – $1,000 on 25% decrease, and $1,000 on 20% decrease – two separate bets

Last Years Attendance – 485, making the 388 – G Smith would scoop both, 387-362 – they’d push, under 362 – G Smith would lose both.

This Years Attendance – 373 – woulda chopped the bet, but….on day 1, attendance was only 161 players, and day 2 energy got Sabyl a little nervous.  She offered to settle…picked a ludicrous number of $1700 buy out.  Gavin said he would have settled for $900.  So Gav got the $1700 winner on what should have been a chop.  Looks like things are turning around for the caveman.

Lesson of the day: Always go with your first instinct kiddies.

Thx pokerroad for the story.


Justin Shronk – Funny Mother F’er.

August 17, 2008

Here is a recent article from his Pokerazzi column on Pokerroad, to get full appreciation of this: go watch the most recent 2008 WSOP coverage ($1k rebuy that Banducci wins)…then read this:

…..So here we go, ESPN’s coverage of Event #5, the $1,000 with Rebuys.

NOTE: I’m going to try signing on AIM under the name ‘ShronkDaddy’ during the WSOP coverage in case anyone reading this wants to chat while watching. The real reason is that hopefully someone says something funny to me via AIM, and I can steal it for the blog.
5:00pm – I keep getting over-excited for the WSOP coverage. I remember ESPN filming a lot fewer events than it appears they actually did, so I keep thinking the $50k HORSE is going to be on.

5:01 – Note to ESPN: Do not start your coverage with the line, “You might not know any of their names… .” If you got unlucky and no “big name” pros are at the final table, you should do your best NOT to draw attention to that.

5:02 – I was thinking “Lyric” was a pretty cool screenname. Then I find out that it’s the kid’s real first name and it’s less cool…especially since the kid’s last name is Duveycover or something (actually turns out it’s Duveyoung).

5:03 – The guy’s reshove with A-Q is really weird. Him yelling “ACEY IN YOUR FACEY!” was creepy.

5:11 – The fact that it’s “your signature” doesn’t excuse you from wearing a women’s hat on national television. It does, however, make you a moron (Alan Jaffray).

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Poker Road – Thumbs Up!

December 11, 2007

We know you are all thirsty for some ‘pokertainment’ and it just so happens that Mr. Joe Sebok and company, aka Greenbok Productions (Also known as Barry ‘the Bear’ Greenstein and his son Sebok), are producing some highly entertaining content available on the web.  The site is called www.pokerroad.com.

Be sure to check out the radio show called Big Poker Sundays featuring the smart and unfiltered Harallabob and the quick wit of Scott Huff.  They talk about everything except poker strategy i.e. gossip, sports betting, random scuttle.

There are some interesting video interviews on ‘Inside the Poker Mind’ with Sebok’s girl, Amanda Leatherman (pretty cute, look out sebok we got some lookers on the PROP team and ain’t scurred) with Negreanu and JC Tran.

Nice work guys.  Making the poker world a more interesting place, one stupid joke at a time.