A new Dawn

1st of all forgot to say if anyone signed up for the 36% Rakeback deal with Hills on the last post drop me a mail and I'll check if you are set up ok.

The 'Dusk Till Dawn' crew were in St Kitts all decked out in their new branded clothing. For those who don't know DTD is a new poker club that is being built in Nottingham, it's owned by a bloke called Rob Yong. Rob decided a year or two ago that it would be great to build a 'proper' poker club in the UK, and boy does this look like a proper poker club. From looking at the floor plans it's going to be the biggest and the best in Europe. It's also the 1st club in the UK to jump through the hoops with the authorities and actually apply for a licence.

I've followed the progress of the club on the Blonde Forum for the past 12months or so. It's actually quite scary what they have put on the line in terms of the commercial venture. I'd encourage anyone who's not had a look already to take an hour out and read his diary on the Blonde forum it's obvious that Rob is building this club as a poker player for poker players with commercial considerations coming 2nd!



The club is looking to open in April and today sees the launch of the online element. DTD is joining Crypto and has some interesting offerings in terms of promotions aimed at the high end and pro online players. The DTD $$$ club offers a graduated Rakeback scheme for all players capped at a max of 30% gross rakeback for those earning 5000 MPPs on Crypto a month.... about 1k gross rake a month I think.. not the greatest % I know.. but within a month or two this will be as good as it gets on Cypto plus there is added value on two fronts. DTD also allow you to carve up your rakeback and use some of it to buy into major live events as part of the DTD team... now here comes the value....

1: If you cash in the event you will be bought into another event at £5k
2: If you final table you will get £20k of events
3: If you win you receive a £100k sponsorship package from DTD.

This means that any half serious online player will be eating/drinking and playing rake free while playing live at DTD.

Now the value for the tournaments is loaded at the backend I know, you have to cash to get something back... but for the decent players who can go deep its a shot at a great lifestyle... even for just nosing into the cash at one event you get the next one free. It also looks like there will be benefits associated with the club ( club membership benefits and live promos etc) for the big online players as well, it's a good example of the extra value the card rooms are going to have to offer once they all adopt the same rakeback payments for all players. The big plus about Betfair was the way they engaged their player community with Team Betfair etc... DTD looks like it could take this to a new level.

Take a look at the DTD siteand have a read... you can also get a little extra (either bonus or freerolls to be decided) when you enter the bonus code wonky when you download the new online card room from the DTD site.

RIP Rakeback?

Interesting moves are afoot in the online poker world. It would appear that the rooms have had enough of being squeezed and cutting each others throats with higher and higher rake back offers in attempts to lure (or hold onto) the big players. With players playing one room off against another to squeeze a few extra % the average rakeback deal has increased significantly over the past few years... a line in the sand was inevitable sooner or later.

Last week I had an e-mail sourced from the Prima Network, they are capping rakeback across the entire network at 30% gross for all players. Anyone caught offering more than this will be shot at dawn. Further more, affiliates are only allowed to mention rakeback to new signings after they have signed up for the site. So no more dangling carrots. Now I don't play on Prima so not really a problem until it becomes a trend across more networks...errrm....!

A little bird told me about a month ago that Crypto were planning to do a similar cap. Surely not I thought at the time! But it looks like it's going to happen. Apparently, all the Crypto managers had a meeting in St Kitts and it's been agreed that a 30% cap will be applied to all Crypto players early in 2007. From what I was told it's not a 100% done deal yet but looks very likely. For the casual player this is not too much of an issue but if you are raking £8k a month and have a half decent deal at mid 30s% then this is costing you 5K a year... not a massive amount to some high rakers... but it's a WSOP main event buy in and I'd rather have it in my pocket than someone elses.

I've highlighted the benefits of avoiding the rooms that use $ accounts previously , it will be interesting to see where the best value poker room is for UK players once the dust settles with some new poker rooms coming onto the market, the rake changes and the shake up to the US market. What with everyone on Crypto at the same rakeback and BF still struggling to come up with a site that does not give you a migraine and allows you to play more than 5 hands without a disconnect it will be interesting to see what everyone can come up with now to keep their noses ahead of the pack. All the value will be in the promotions the skins run, I'm not talking about $50 bonus, I mean added value in terms of £X rake for an EPT /WSOP package etc.

The deal a group of us did with Hills last month after we jumped from BF was all good value for the player at 36% gross, but may be short lived in light of the news, if anyone wants to get on for a few months before crypto cap it then feel free, clear your cookies and click HERE....