Consumer Publications

The AGEM Index rose 2.9 percent month-on-month in August, driven by share-price gains at Light & Wonder and Konami, although it remained below its level a year earlier. agbrief.com/news/world/08/…

Gaming supplier Zitro has secured a Gaming-Related Vendor License from the United Arab Emirates’ General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA), allowing it to supply products to licensed operators in the country. agbrief.com/news/uae/08/09…

It’s a long way to the top if you wanna build a successful business. Staying at the top can be even harder, because your competition will be only too eager to capitalize on your inertia. Bodog was a trailblazer in many areas but we were late in recognizing the 2004 online poker boom, leaving us playing catch-up in a market already dominated by a handful of major players. To claim our piece of this pie, we needed to do what other sites weren’t. To shorten our time to market, we bought an existing poker software firm, added our logo and off we went. It wasn’t exceptional, but our short-term goal wasn’t world domination, just keeping our customers from having to leave our ecosystem to play poker. Our ‘Poker 2.0’ added bells-and-whistles not yet in wide use. We beta-tested for months, watching players through one-way mirrors, seeing what worked and what didn’t. Our planning was great, our execution not so great. We spent months fixing bugs, and it was pretty humbling. But it didn’t stop Bodog from continually trying to innovate to give players a better experience. And they needed a better experience. ‘Heads-up displays’ (HUDs) that relied on scraped hand-histories to predict what other players would do in any given situation were becoming rampant. This phenomenon became known as ‘bum hunting’ because sharps would use these histories not only for advantage in game play, but also to avoid players with documented poker skills. For the market as a whole, this was like farmers eating their seed corn. Poker needed fresh supplies of new players, but new players’ experience was becoming so poor they gave it up after a few sessions. Even some pro players said the technology was killing the game. Around 2012, Bodog introduced ‘anonymous poker,’ which gave players new identities with zero history, robbing HUDs of their insights into gameplay. Bodog always catered to recreational sports bettors, not sharps, so this ‘recreational poker model’ was definitely on-brand. I’d long since given up any operational role in Bodog, but I supported the licensees who wanted to adopt this feature because it was player-focused, intended to bring fun back to the game, and to grow the market. Not everyone loved anonymous tables but it gave new players a better shot at sticking around longer. It also helped Bodog Poker stand out from the herd as a site willing to go against the grain, innovate and offer options other sites refused to implement. What advice would you give (or take) for staying ahead of your competition?