Anybody that follows the online gambling forums knows that Bodog has seen better days. Bodog was founded in 1994 and has never met such a challenging time in their entire existence.

Bodog has had several issues that go beyond the UIGEA. One is that they had their domains registered in the U.S. In September 2007 a judge awarded nearly $49,000,000 to 1^st Technology LLC. Bodog had few assets in the U.S. and so their prized domain names were awarded as collateral as a part of that suit. This left Bodog in a situation where players were unable to find their site. Bodog went with Newbodog.com and later that month settled with Bodoglife.com. It would prove to be very difficult for Bodog to have the massive marketing and internet presence they once had when their recognizable domains were lost.

Another issue is that Calvin Ayre, founder and former CEO, decided to antagonize U.S. law enforcement. He always had the vigilante “catch me if you can” attitude but he couldn’t keep a low profile. This gave the U.S. government an added incentive to pursue Bodog. Calvin Ayre has since turned over the North American operations (essentially just the U.S. since Bodog has never accepted Canadian players) to Morris Mohawk Gaming but that hasn’t turned the heat off.

It was reported late in July that over $24,000,000 was seized from a U.S. processor after a two year investigation into Bodog’s processing. The processor was making check payments to U.S. players on behalf of Bodog and several other U.S. facing gambling sites. After the seizure Bodog announced that this was not a direct asset seizure of Bodog. While this is true it certainly hurt in more than one way.

First Bodog’s share of the loss had to be substantial. Some in the forums have speculated it was around $15,000,000. Considering the slim margins this would be the profit on roughly $300,000,000 in sports wagers. While some say that Bodog can afford to take a hit like that it still has to hurt them financially. Another problem this brought out in the open was that Bodog and its processors are targets of a massive federal investigation. While there are plenty of processors willing to process payments to U.S. players there aren’t many that want to get involved with Bodog fearing they will become targets themselves. This has presented Bodog with many problems.

Players have been complaining constantly about Bodog’s cashout delays. They are among the longest in the industry. The only way to cash out of Bodog for U.S. players is by check. Right now it is taking about 2 months to receive a check. While players that don’t win will never notice the delays because they don’t cash out serious players have run out of patience and are leaving.

What does this mean to players and affiliates?

To players with some patience this is a great opportunity to play somewhere that has extremely soft games. The sharks are running for the doors but the fish are staying since they don’t know there are problems. With football season almost here the games will only get better. Also players outside the U.S. are not having any problems at all getting paid. Affiliates shouldn’t miss a beat either. It will take some patience but the checks will come. Affiliates promoting Bodog through PAS have nothing to worry about as you will get paid for Bodog at the same time you get paid for all of the other rooms you promote through us regardless of whether we have been paid yet. This is certainly not an ability to pay issue for Bodog, this is only a processing delay.

Bodog has also had issues in non gambling related ventures. Bodog’s Mixed Martial Arts venture was a failure and many feel the music venture will be a money pit as well. Combine this with reports of massive customer service layoffs in a Bodog division and things are really rocky right now.

There have been some rumors floating around that Bodog may leave the U.S. market very soon. Barring some really major news don’t expect that to happen. Even if it does happen it would be shocking to the industry if they left before this football season ended and that is 6 months down the road. Keep in mind that since the U.S. is Bodog’s biggest market leaving would be an absolute last resort. This is especially true since Bodog has been unable to get white-listed in the UK, doesn’t take Canadians and hasn’t been successful in attracting European players. For now expect the status quo.

Pokeraddict

Poker Trillion has been in a war with Boss Media for the last five months over being kicked off the International Poker Network (IPN) that Boss Media manages. There has been a lot of emotional mudslinging on the part of Poker Trillion. They have made several claims that have not been substantiated by the online gambling community and denied by Boss Media.

This all began earlier this year. Poker Trillion was offering players 30% rakeback in cash which is the cap on IPN. The trouble is that they were also giving players 50%-60% rakeback on tournament entries which is not allowed under network rules. Players can only receive 30% back and that is only if they rake $100 or more in a month. This made Boss Media and other skins unhappy.  Poker Trillion refused to honor the demands of Boss Media and the end result was the removal of Poker Trillion from IPN.

Poker Trillion came out and made this statement after filing an attempted lien on IPN’s assets:

““It is to be expected that if Boss Media follow the proper code of conduct then they will shortly make a full and complete disclosure to the Stockholm Stock Exchange on which they are listed; this invariably will have a catastrophic effect on their share price, and may even lead to the arrest by the authorities of certain members of their management team and the possible suspension of their shares.”

“This in turn would mean that players not in the Poker Trillion stable could find their funds that are held by other partners of Boss Media in serious jeopardy.”

In my opinion this is completely absurd. Poker Trillion, in the middle of a nasty legal battle threatens other players on IPN. The claim that players would lose their funds due to this legal battle is laughable. Let’s say Poker Trillion is right about all of this and sticks it to Boss Media. Why would shares being suspended affect player funds? They are held in trust by the LGA. Is Poker Trillion telling us that if they were somehow awarded the assets of the company that they would run off with player’s funds? Are they just trying to destroy IPN’s business by arguably defaming comments?

Poker Trillion then announces they have been awarded garnishes on bank accounts tied to Boss Media. While this was true it was reported by third parties this was only as a guarantee of player funds on any potential legal award. They were not actually awarded the bank accounts as Poker Trillion claimed. It’s still business as usual at IPN.

Now fast forward to this week. Poker Trillion announces they have been awarded the IPN servers and that Boss Media must close its doors.

POKERTRILLION.com Successful in its Application to Seize Boss Media Servers in Malta
Malta August 18, 2008 –The online poker site POKERTRILLION.com has announced that on 18th August 2008 at the First Hall Civil Court, Malta (Court record and Complaint Number 755-08), Judge Gino Camilleri issued a judgement authorising Trillion Ltd to enforce seizure of the Boss Media Malta Limited and Boss Media AB servers, and that these servers cease being used for any commercial activity as from 18th September 2008 with Boss Media not being allowed to appeal the court’s decision any further.

This judgement, which relates to Trillion Limited’s multi-million Euro law suit for breach of contract against Boss Media AB and their associated companies, comes off the back of a number of successful applications made to the courts in Malta by Trillion Ltd. POKERTRILLION.com C.E.O Andy Pyrah explains, “Today’s decision will in effect bring down Boss Media’s operation in their licensed jurisdiction of Malta on September 18, and any partner still on the Boss (IPN) Poker Network at this stage will see their service closed down too”.

The judge further ordered that the cosignatory which is now responsible for the equipment also provides full accounts of the revenues being generated from this equipment.

Pyrah comments further, “It should also be noted that despite appeals from Boss Media, we’ve been successful in every one of our applications that we’ve filed with the courts in Malta and this includes having our initial garnishee order increased from €5million to €20million earlier this month, this in turn means that there is now a €20million freezing order on all Boss Media’s assets within this jurisdiction, and in accordance with European law we will be applying for this to be executed all over Europe”.

This claim has been made by Poker Trillion but has not been backed up with court documents or third party confirmations. Boss Media denied the release in this statement:

Poker Trillion’s recent comments are a reckless attempt to support a legal action that is without merit and initiated as retribution for their dismissal from the Boss Media network. To be clear, player funds are not affected by the current proceedings. All players’ funds are held separately under the control of the Malta Lotteries and Gaming Authority and cannot be seized by any court.

Poker Trillion is a former customer of Boss Media who was terminated because of rake back violations. They have since then repeatedly tried to disrupt the Boss Media business through the dissemination of groundless rumors. In April 2008 Poker Trillion alleged in a press release a claim that among other things, Boss Media player funds where frozen. The allegations were false but typical of the type of tactics employed by Poker Trillion.

While there has been no hearing on the merits of the Poker Trillion suit, there have been preliminary hearings on the matter. Boss Media has assured that adequate security is provided in Malta in the event of an award of damages against it which we believe be to unlikely.

Boss Media is currently exploring various legal options regarding our Maltese assets and can assure that Boss Media has the requisite assets in place to ensure that our business will continue to operate with the highest standards. In the extremely unlikely event that any Malta operations would be affected, Boss Media have high-performance back-up systems in place to ensure continued service to all our customers and their players.

I find it difficult to believe an attorney was consulted before these releases were made.  There is simply too much misinformation and emotion in them.

So what should players, skin owners and affiliates think? To me the only thing this tells me is to not touch Poker Trillion. This was all very avoidable. If Poker Trillion had followed network rules or taken the threats seriously they would not be in this situation. Now they have shown themselves to be what I believe very childish in an industry that looks for leadership. All of their players were paid and Poker Trillion received all funds owed by Boss Media. Poker Trillion has moved on to the Everleaf Network and life should go on. It seems to me all they have done since being forced out of the IPN door is make a bunch of noise to damage the reputation of a company they obviously never respected to begin with. If they had put all of this effort into improving their own business instead of trying to publicly destroy another business they may have built a massive poker room.

Pokeraddict

Hello Everyone!

My name is Danielle and I am one of the Affiliate Managers for Chipleader, The Affiliate/Marketing program that represents two outstanding poker brands Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet. Chipleader has worked closely with Chris for quite some time now and we wanted to get the word out about our upcoming platform merge to Pokersolutions members first!

With that being said, We are pleased to announce the new launch of the CEREUS network, Absolute poker and Ultimate Bet’s new integrated software platform.  CEREUS is the result of more than 18 months development and delivers a secure, responsive, and flexible online poker gaming experience.

The development team has worked hand in hand with infrastructure architects to create a scalable environment with negligible downtime: ensuring that client software can be updated with very little impact on the end users.

CEREUS combines and enhances the best features from both the Absolute Poker and the UltimateBet client software. Poker fans will enjoy more tournaments, increased peak-time player volume, and expeditious customer service response.  Please keep in mind that the brands will still stay completely separate, they will just operate off the same system.

Here are just some of the advantages that you will get from this massive integration:

*Liquidity on both AP and UB will be instantly double
*BadBeat Jackpot will constantly hit $1M (largest in the world)
*Promotion offers, loyalty offerings and conversion rates will spike tremendously

We anticipate the launch to happen in the first week of August,  please feel free to contact the Chipleader crew with any questions or comemnts;  Danielle@chipleader.com, Marcela@chipleader.com, and Diego@chipleader.com.  We look forward to working with you!

Cheers,
Danielle / Chipleader Team/ AP/UB management

The last blog post was about a nightmare that can happen when adding a new room to PAS.  This post is the exact opposite in every aspect.

I recently added BetSafe to our offerings.  They are the third Cryptologic site offered on PAS.  As a whole Cryptologic affiliate departments go over and above expectations.  BetSafe was no different.

We were slow in adding them to our site as I was overwhelmed with other projects.  I finally got a chance to get BetSafe added to PAS.  When I add a new site I need to ask many questions to make sure the review is correct.  This is also done as a test.  If I don’t get timely responses from an affiliate department when I’m trying to add them to our site then how long will it take to get replies when a player does not get tracked?

David at BetSafe replied quickly, even on weekends.  I received detailed responses every time and I knew BetSafe would be a room that would be an excellent addition to the PAS brand.  In the end we even got a special promotion where players can get a free iPod for playing.   We also had a signup just hours after adding them.  We look forward to working with BetSafe.

Launching a new rakeback offer to our network may seem as easy as adding a link on Poker Affiliate Solutions.  There are, however, many other issues involved. 

Recently we were approached by a poker room on a U.S. friendly network.  I was a bit uneasy about adding this room.  They are related to a sportsbook that gets a very poor grade at Sportsbookreview.com.  After doing my research I was convinced the problems were due to sports bets, not poker, so I went ahead with the procedure. 

I sent their rep a list of questions.  I was satisfied that they met all of the conditions a PAS offer should have.  I made a detailed review, added them to our system and then sent the link to the rep for review.  He agreed it was correct and added it to our site.  We then made it available to our partners.

After a few weeks, conversions fell well below expectations and several players were not tracked.  I double checked with our rep and he said our link was correct.  The players were still not getting stats.  As I was compiling a list to send them, I received an email saying it was urgent that we discuss offering rakeback for their site.  According to them, we were not approved to offer rakeback for their room.  This contradicts the fact that PAS, a rakeback facilitator, was approached by them to offer rakeback for their poker room.  It also contradicted all of the email exchanges we had.

We immediately removed them from Poker Affiliate Solutions and from our publisher offers.  I then sent an email to their rep to see exactly where we went wrong.  I quoted previous exchanges.  At this point, I have not heard back from them.  I have wasted about two days worth of work gathering information, signing up for their affiliate program, writing reviews, and answering player support emails about a poker room that we will not be offering.

This is, of course, not how most poker rooms are.  Most times we get involved with affiliate programs and representatives we either know personally or know they will take care of our players and the players of our publisher partners.  We decided to take a chance with a smaller room and, thus far, it’s had a bad ending.