Alltheodds

As the industry of gaming continues to grow, so too does the competitive air within it.  that was made abundantly clear at the IGCE Conference (International Gaming Conference Expo) in Costa Rica recently (April 9-11) when AllTheOdds was introduced to those in attendance.  While there are other comparative odds services, most forgo abundant content, and rely on very few sports books to contribute to their odds, therefore limiting their services and requiring users to rely on multiple sources of data to complete their betting research.

All The Odds’ comparative odds service differentiates itself 1) by the number of books providing comparative odds, and 2) through its belief that content is paramount to the end users of such services. AllTheOdds has teamed up with the www.sportnetwork.com, The Sports Network, the leading real-time sports wire service in North America, to provide its new odds comparison service with rich content including money lines, numbers (point spreads), run line, fist half lines as well as quarters and periods, propositions and futures,

the absolute fastest and most accurate injury updates anywhere inclusive of urgent messaging and injury updates that occur during the course of a game.  Additionally, instant alerts have been expanded to incorporate anything at all, any item or news of note that can affect the particular contest of the sport to which it is related.  Scoring updates are of course speedy and accurate.

      Running box scores are updated continuously throughout games in the professional ranks, and there are previews and gaming match-ups inclusive of necessary and integral statistical components.  Line-ups for all games are also provided by The Sports Network.  Completing the package, users have access to statistics, trends, history and traditional matters of importance between teams, plus weather reports where applicable.
      “Most competing services are slow to update calendar changes for scheduled games,” a spokesperson for AllTheOdds pointed out, “AllTheOdds will update calendar changes instantly, as soon as changes have been announced, allowing our clients to close lines on canceled games sooner, and avoid customer service problems..

      “There is a basic need for those within the industry, or on the periphery of it, to be able to have fingertip, real-time access to the offerings and line changes of the offshore alongside the books in Nevada. That includes, of course, the sportsbooks themselves as well as the punters, players and handicappers that follow the game(s).”
      AllTheOdds is slated for complete introduction into the marketplace prior to the upcoming NFL football season, with precursory opportunity to utilize the service on a 30-day free trial basis during the month of May.

Inquiries for the service can be made via the “jump page” site of AllTheOdds at the following url:

www.sportsnetwork.com/alltheodds/index13.htlm with complete access planed by May 1st as of this writing.  It is truly a matter of “watch this space for further developments.”

Skill Gaming : The Skill Is In Making Money

Interview: Kevin dale – CEO Game Account

Kevin, Game Account is relaunching products.

Why did you feel this was necessary?

Ultimately, it comes down to why skill game gaming hasn’t made money to date.  In my opinion, it’s a combination of the wrong market, and that skill gaming has been pointing in the wrong direction.  I feel and there’s a type of product out there with a combined element of skill and chance that can change this.
      If you take skill gaming in the past, there was Tetris,  Bejeweled, and other similar games, which place for too much impetus on skill as opposed to chance.  With this as a consideration, coupled with minimal stake levels of 50p or £ 1, you unfortunately end up with no revenue per player and no retention.  What we’re doing is reorienting the company from mass market to gambling market, with a couple of exceptions.  We want to deliver products that players find compelling enough to spend a large amount of money on and play for long periods of time.

What is the price point, what’s the jump?

Even with poker’s continual booming, you still have $2 tournaments on offer, so for us to succeed we will also need price points of low stakes with high potential win, which means we need multiple players.  That’s where our tournaments come in.  you can have medium stakes and very high wins, such as $ 10 up to $ 250 with the chance of winning up to a million.
      You’ve also got head-to-head games where the ratio between your stake and your potential win isn’t great, but for those sorts of players, they need to be able to bet $ 50 to $ 500 with potential to double their money.  If you take your normal sportsbook betting as an example, you’ll have your punter who bets on a football match and puts on his normal $50 or $ 200 on the winner, but then he’ll have his fun punt which is more of a long shot.  For instance, with his $ 50 he’ll be looking to double up, but with his fun bet, which is a smaller stake, he’ll typically end up with a 10:1 or 300:1 shot.  So even in the sportbook model, it allows people the long shot bingo-type punt along side the more serious bet.  The result is that you turn over a greater amount of money.

      Poker has proven successful in mirroring this model.  In terms of skill gaming, why reinvent it the wheel?  We’re effectively covering all the levels.  We offer £ 500 player vs. player games along with 10,000 player’s tournaments where everyone pools their money through a buy-in of about $ 10, which can potentially generate between 200 and 5,000 times your stake value.
     

I think players bet to their comfort level and bankroll.  Of course, a player will have a limit of what they are prepared to risk in any context, but the more comfortable they are with the game, the higher the stakes they will risk.  You’ve got to remember this type of gaming is very different to sportsbook or casino gambling in that people do win and there are net winners out there, we’ve got some ‘pro’ level, the stake levels become irrelevant, as finding people to match you becomes the hard part.  When a player is just beginning, like in poker, they don’t learn on a $ 100 buy-in.  Beginners generally prefer to play for free, and then play low stakes, and then find a tournament level they feel comfortable with.
      With poker, people like the big tournaments with as big as possible wins, and where you can spend a long time playing with quite a low stake.  Generally, this isn’t good thing for us because we have to look at our product output in terms of dollars per minute per person.  Really, it’s as crude as that.  After all, why would a sports book want to send a person off to the skill gaming section of their site when they know casino games could be more profitable?  Of course, there are compelling reasons why sites would direct players to skill gaming, including increasing retention and creating a stronger community, but the numbers matter too.

Are your new games of skill or of chance?

They’re as much a game of skill as poker is a game of skill.

How are they defined by law?

You can define games of skill in different ways.  Backgammon’s a game of skill in one country, and it isn’t another.

Are you losing some of your advantages in advertising  a non-gaming product by introducing chance?

Currently no.  However, thanks to the Curacao licence for our games, we are covering our bases if regulation would be required by a particular country.

Can you advertise your backgammon product in the US?

Yes we can.  We can also advertise gin rummy.  However, blackjack is a tricky one.  You can watch people playing gin rummy and backgammon all over the US – privately and publicly but blackjack only exists in the US as a person vs. house game: there is no real P2P play, and the US doesn’t know how to pigeonhole our game model.

Can you buy ad words for these games?

We have to argue this stuff.  At the moment Google won’t take our games as they do not accept any skill gaming advertising – period.  It’s not a question of legality, it’s a question of whether a punter can spend money on a site and lose money regardless of skill or chance.

What will the future bring with Kevin Dale at the helm?

In terms of the future, I think that there is a long way to go for skill gaming, but its future relies heavily on community involvement.

Red Hot Affiliates
Redhotrummy.com

“We’re also launching a dedicated skill gaming affiliate network.  Again, this is very much a novelty in the industry.  Although it does exist in certain incarnation, we are one of the first skill gaming companies to launch our own, the Red hot Partners brand, which will handle GameAccount, redhotrummy.com and other future projects through our networks.  This is about building value into our company and promoting skill games in the way they deserve to be promoted.”

BANKING AND FINANCE

SECTION EDITOR

Anton Kaszubowski, Managing Director , Europe , The Fun Group +44(0)20 7868 2235.   Anton Kaszubowski is Managing Director  of FUN  Technologies plc and is responsible for the Company’s European operations.  Prior to joining the RUN group,

Anton worked as an adviser to The Gambling Consultancy Limited.  Before joining The Gambling Consultancy, Anton specialized in providing mergers and acquisitions and financing advice to communications, media and gambling companies.  Most recently he worked for a JP Morgan funded corporate finance advisory boutique, LongAcre Partners.  He also worked for both Robertson Stephens’ and JP Morgan Chase’s European media and telecom corporate finance department.