Serries Two Gold Cards on Cake?

You guys found something different with gold cards, you found something people really enjoyed. When the site first opened gold cards were a HUGE part of why people played there, they made the game more fun... poker with a twist

Now the cards are more or less nonexistent to low level players, if you play 10-handed .50/1 and get one gold card for every 10 that comes out then you will get a single gold card for every 30 hours you play (as I said, more or less nonexistent). As you say, in whatever fashion, you are making them more valuable... but what you will learn is that that doesn't matter. People in general would much rather be handed something that is somewhat meaningless every now and again than to be handed something somewhat more valuable on rare occasions.

A while back someone came up with the idea of designing a $1 (one coin max) slot machine that only has one payout... if you hit 3 7s you win $100... if you don't, you lose. While it really wasn't a bad idea those are the machines in the back of the casino which gather dust. Someone occasionally slips a $20 in them but for the most part they just take up space because they just aren't any fun... yet someone can slip a $20 into a normal machine and have a good time losing their money as long as they hit a couple triple blanks and single cherries.

They also have the penny and nickel video slots with the interactive bonus rounds which are insanely popular and which ones get the most play on a regular basis? The ones with the bonus games that hit frequently. Who do you think has more fun? The guy who sticks in $10, plays for half an hour and cashes out $20 without ever hitting a bonus or the guy who plays for 10 minutes, goes fishing 4 times, pulls four boots out of the lake and loses his $10. While some folks differ, the general population would be happier having played the bonus 4 times and lost their $$$.

There is a scratch off lottery ticket junkie that lives on the border of 2 states which each offer state lotto tickets, state A sells 20 different types of $1 tickets which have prizes that include free tickets, $1 winners, $2 winners, etc, and state B sells 20 different types of $1 tickets which (because of our fictional state law) have minimum payouts of $20... which side of the street is this guy buying his tickets on? State A of course, because while the occasional $20 winner is nice, it is much more fun (and makes him feel like a winner) when the $20 he spends in tickets always leaves him with something to show for it, even if it is $2 and 2 free tickets.

Sad... but true.

I don't know what your current formula is, I would imagine you just jacked up the required rake which as I said... caters to the higher limits (who care less about the cards). So I would guess (and this could certainly be way off) that 5% of your player base collects about 80% (or more) of the circulating cards. If that is the case and it continues into Series Three then that "something special" you instituted when the site was created will be gone and you'll end up as just another poker room.

Any number of things you can do to even out how it's running... from doubling (or tripling or quadrupling) the number of available gold cards and lessening their implied value to dropping the rake from the equasion and instituting a formula based on number of players dealt in hands (full 10 man table = 10 dealt ins) with a multiplier factored in per stake to even out distribution (and drop the 2x and 3x values in the race). Would you rather have a site of players saying "remember when gold cards were worth more" or a site of players saying "what is a gold card".

I understand the need from a business standpoint to "give something extra" to higher limit players as they make the site more money, but it is my opinion that you should do this in some way through gold coins (FPPs) and revamp the gold card distribution. Gold cards are what you can continue to use to bring people to your site and they have far less value to the higher limit players anyways... I just see you going about it the wrong way.

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Helluva post, Fink.

Not sure where to go with this....I'm sure Cake has something really cool planned. THe problem is, no one knows what it is, so there's no anticipation. Bottom line (as Fink pointed out): No gold cards are coming out to the lower limit players, so there's nothing to look forward to.

Put another way:

Would you rather have a decent chance at something kind of cool, or almost no chance at something pretty darn cool, but you don't have any idea what "pretty darn cool" is????

Now for my real life example:

When Cake first started and asked THF to support their site, I hopped on and liked what I saw (I still do by the way). I was one of the players playing Cake when there were a grand total of 9 people (give or take 7-8 folks) playing on the entire site. There were so few players that no tourneys were playing (after the site became more than cash games) because there weren't enough people to fill a tourney.

Now, I'm almost completely a tournament/SNG player. I dabble with cash games every now and then, but I really just don't have the knack for it. But with the Cake Slices (now Gold Chips....BTW why the change? I liked the Cake Slices better!!!) and Gold Cards, I had a real incentive to play the cash games.

I really want to learn to play the cash games, but since I'm no good at it, I needed something to give me a better reason....the Gold Cards did that.

Now that I have basically no shot at the GOld cards, I no longer have any incentive to play the cash games, and I don't think I've been on a Cake cash game in 6 months (at least).

Just food for thought.

ZOM

PS: Seems like you could do a similar promotion on the tourney side, to reward us tourney-players too!!!

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I too have not played there since the GC's became almost non existant. I agree with fink that it appears to cater to the higher level players. I myself I am a low limit player and looked forward to the GC's coming out at the $10 rake. Now that they are so much harder to come by it is "just another site".

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Cake Manager,

I agree with my fellow players that have posted above.

I was also one of those VERY few players who played at Cake when there was only 2-3 table going and had only 10-15 different players playing those table. I bragged on this forum just how nice Cake Poker was and told other members here that they were missing out on a really nice site.

When you guys decided to change the amount of rake required to produce a G.C. I pretty much stopped playing at Cake. Why should I play there now when you've got rid of that little extra thing that made Cake Poker different? I can play almost two hours and before I see a G.C. at the .5/1 NL table where I have a 1 in 10 shot of getting one. That means I could play on that table ALL DAY and never get anything extra. I can play all day at another site and not get anything extra so why play at Cake?

Promises of exciting things to come in the future are pointless if you can't ever get a G.C. playing at the lower levels.


Am I reading this wrong or are you trying to say that for those of us who played at Cake when it was first trying to get off the ground are now going to be punished for holding on to our G.C.'s? We collected them early, hung onto them and now they're going to lose value?

Well that's because we're only getting 1/4 of the info. Why would you say something like that? Aren't you supposed to be trying to get us to come back to Cake and get us to play there more?

Please bring Doug back. At least he didn't talk to us like we are little kids.

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Yeah, you are reading it wrong. I'm Dutch and even I understand it...

This all sounds like fun. I'm going to play on Cake again.

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That's Poker

hmmm i never really played much on cake, but i really liked the gold card idea. It was a cool promotion and it definately helped the site. I will back the others here, Doug was a good rep, he really helped THF get involved at cake.

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Sorry gents,

This is Doug. I'm writing cryptically because I can't divulge what's coming up for Gold Cards publicly yet.

No doubt it's harder to get the Gold Cards now. Fully admit that, but it's also by design. You folks that gave Cake a shot in the early days will be happy you've done so, but you've only got my word on that at this point until you see the new features. Series 1 Gold Cards are going to be paying off more than Series 2, 3, etc, but it will take time for that to become clear.

The promotion was designed to evolve with the site. What you lose in the more frequent appearance in Gold Cards, you get in more value for the Gold Cards you receive (even the 2 of clubs). In fact, those of you who have a few dozen of the Gold Cards will find yourself with some interesting choices to make in the months to come, fun ones though.

My job here at Cake has evolved and I'm no longer forum posting, which I really enjoyed doing, but rather I'm working on the next level of Gold Cards and some new fun for Tournament players. Please don't get me wrong, no one who plays low limits should play Cake expecting to suck down tons of Gold Cards, because it's highly unlikely you'll nab them. The Gold Chips have actually gone up in rewards with the weekly tournaments because of the fact that some key features for Gold Cards are not yet ready to unveil, but when they do, it should mix things up a bit. The Gold Cards will continue to get harder and harder to get as the site grows, but the prizes for them will continue to increase as well, especially for Series 1 Gold Cards.

It's still possible to win big on Gold Cards. This week, for example, a player who plays mostly .25/.50 NL and has only earned 3 Gold Cards since joining in March (well after the good ole Gold Card days) took a Three of Clubs on tuesday, entered into a $1,500 Giveaway for the 3 of Clubs and won $405. And he's not a big player either, earns a Gold Chip once every few days or so.

If you've not been paying attention to the Giveaway tab in the Tournament Lobby, you might want to start. There's some big tournaments there for the lower Gold Cards.

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read my previous post (and agreements by the others) and try and let it sink in... this doesn't matter.
Forget tons, you will get on average one gold card for every 30 hours you put in on .50/1... this makes them meaningless.
So for Series Three you'll get a single gold card for every 60 hours you put in (on average)... so why are people going to play at your site again?
Your competitors (fairly new, mid to low range of activity) offer $1000 nightly freerolls, $2000 weekly freerolls, $10,000 bi-weekly freerolls and $50,000 monthly freerolls and the requirements are less play than what you require to get a single gold card (on average). I understand that you are giving away something for nothing but so is every other site that is trying to build their player base... if your sites idea of "something people are going to love" is giving them a random gold card on very rare occasions that MIGHT get them into a $1000 freeroll a week (or month or year) from now if they are around to see it and the time and day suits them, them your promotions team needs revamped. People don't work that way. As I have mentioned, people in general would much rather be given something somewhat worthless every now and again than to be given something on exceedingly (and apparently, escalating) rare occasions that might be worth a little more. Over the past few days I have spend 6 hours in your rings and no one (at .50/1 and under) gives a damn about the gold cards anymore... and you are going to make them more difficult to get?

Put your plan aside for a moment and listen to your player base (and remove your high(er) stakes players (who get the vast majority of the cards in question) from the equasion) and you will see that you are hurting yourselves. That special little niche you found that you used to start building your site will be completely dead upon the release of your Series Three cards.

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I completely understand what you're saying and what you're arguements are. The Gold Chips are there if you wish to get a more steady return for your time and this weekend, there are 4 events where we're giving away 2K for just 1 Gold Chip. As for the Gold Cards, I can't defend them yet until the entire promotional model is in play.

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