TheVPL
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Posts posted by TheVPL
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3
Appreciate the comments runadrum, they are quite telling. I'm not sure why you feel the need for such negativity, that's really disappointing for me to see. Please accept my apologies if my performance has lead to you feeling like that. The full results will be up tomorrow morning, and emailed to all finalists. From what I understand, the final went well. Once again, we are indebted to the support of Punters Lounge members and I, personally, am grateful for your efforts and commitment. JamesAgreed Andy We left before the end so will need an update from someone who hung around. Suspect will be waiting for ever for news on the VIP site. :ok -
Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 You should have had these some time ago. I haven't heard from anyone else missing anything so I'll chase that up.
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3
No idea why you haven't appeared on that list, but you're definitely in. I'll check out what's happened as I can't see anything else glaringly obvious.odd that i am not on the list even though i am 9th in the final league table and have played most of the games!
Regrettably, I concede that point. Jamesadmin hasn't been great ! -
Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Hi all, The prizes etc. from last week should be credited tomorrow, along with Week11 updates on the website. This week is the final week, so only two more tournaments to go! Thanks again to everyone for their support during the season - we do have plans for another season, subject to sorting a couple of things out, and if we do it then we will definitely be advertising on other websites/forums/print magazines to try and get the numbers up and therefore increase the value. James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 DUPLICATE POST FROM OUR FORUM Hi all, We've had a number of emails from people about what dates they can and cannot make and we've tried to accommodate as many people as possible. The Final will be held on 6th November at G Casino Luton. We've not confirmed a start time yet - we're happy to go with the majority preference for afternoon/evening times. We were, of course, anticipating 50 runners for the final, but it doesn't look like that many will qualify. Rather than offer up these places via satellites or direct buy-ins (and reduce our overheads!!) we're going to reward those of you that have been loyal to the league by only allowing those that have played the required number of games take part. This effectively increases the value of the final to each participant. We'll get an email out today/tomorrow confirming this - in the meantime, any questions just let me know! James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 The final is provisionally booked for Saturday 30th October. Should get 100% confirmation within the next 24/48 hours. Cheers, James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Hi all, All the updates will be live on the site within the next hour. Prizes will be paid out tomorrow. I understand people's frustration with the delays, this is my fault entirely and will be much quicker moving forward. The simple fact of the matter, unfortunately, is that the league didn't really generate much interest from the start of the season and numbers have been consistently poor. We will be looking to freshen things up for next season and see if we can (re)engage some people, but this time around we had a huge amount of interest and registrations, but very few actually took part in the tournaments. We invited feedback from a lot of people - as many of you know - and made the structure as player friendly/attractive as we could, with approx $50,000 of prizes - subject to a minimum of 100 participating players. I'm still amazed that we didn't get that, but we obviously then had to adjust accordingly. We actually have over 400 players registered to the league, but only a fraction playing! Again my apologies to those who have been sticking with it for the delays, and I promise an improvement moving forward. James
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Re: $500 Regular Player tournament TBA - VIP League Season 2 This has (finally!) been confirmed for Monday 26th July at 9pm. We have been chasing this up and this delay is not really down to any lack of effort on our behalf. It will be a password protected tournament, and will be found in the PPP Lobby under PPP Exclusives >>> Private Tournaments. Password will not be released until Monday. Any queries, please let me know.
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Re: $500 Regular Player tournament TBA - VIP League Season 2 Hi guys, Sorry for the overall crapness on this. A combination of PPP not being quite as helpful as they have been in the past and us not being as fully on the ball as we should have been is the cause. This tournament is 99% certain to be run on Monday 26th July at 9pm. I would like to say I'll be able to confirm this for sure tomorrow, but it might not be until early next week for 100% confirmation. We are working very hard on exploring options and trying to put something together for the next season as we really want to reward those who have stuck by this league, as well as making it attractive enough to get more numbers involved. I would just like to point out we have and continue to put a huge amount of effort (and not insignificant funding!) into this with a disproportinate return. Our absolute uncompromising goal is to make this a league that offers geniune value to the players and is enjoyable for the players and we are not giving up on this goal. We have made a less than zero return on this, and while I'm not looking for any kind of sympathy, we have continued to work so as not to let down those players that have stayed committed to the league and have expressed a desire to help us make it succeed. This was never expected to a huge revenue winner for us, it was about a branding exercise as much as anything and we genuinely wanted to do something that would be good for the players. This may all sound a little cliched and whatnot, but I'm being honest. I've enjoyed having the PL community being part of this (and am very grateful) but I also hope that our efforts are at least appreciated, even if the results of those efforts are not to be applauded. We don't give up easily, and we are determined to keep plugging away until we get the formula right. And I also want to make sure that those that have been supporters for the longest benefit from the significant added value we are hoping the league will offer. Take these comments as you wish (as I'm sure you will!) but I'm speaking with complete honesty and hope people understand where we are coming from. James
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Re: $500 Regular Player tournament 28th June - VIP League Season 2 I'm going to get an email out about this shortly. James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Hi, Well spamming is not really our thing to be honest and I'm not sure what else we can do. We don't want to create any bad feeling about the league anywhere by announcing it without permission on any forums - and we have approached some forums about getting permission. I wouldn't go anywhere near as far as saying we're giving up, but we are kind of out ideas. We've targetted our existing members hard (1,500 members), everyone that has played in past leagues (around 300) and we've sent out marketing material to several hundred pubs that play poker. I don't want to have to accept the fact that the league is not as appealing to people as we thought, but the we have had over 150 people register for the league and you've obviously seen how many are actually taking part!! I still believe once the league starts "proper" the numbers will jump up again - after all, people are pretty much guaranteed a place at the final! If not, then I guess we have to think again about how we do things for future seasons, if indeed there is a demand for future seasons!! James
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Re: $500 Regular Player tournament 28th June - VIP League Season 2 Guys I'm chasing this up now and will update as soon as I find out what is going on.
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 These should have all been credited. If anyone can confirm they have not received, I'll chase it up straight away. Cheers, James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Hi WASP, I understand that reaction and expect we have lost a number of players due to the uncertainty surround this season so far. To be fair, we tried to offer the absolute maximum value we could to this season and that came with some minimum requirements. Unfortunately, despite receiving plenty of registrations for the league, the participation was way below expectation and we had to try and salvage something for those that did want to play. We are very committed to this league, both in the "here and now" and it's longer term future. We will continue to work hard to offer players a fun league and plenty of added value. While this season has been nowhere near as "slick" as we would like it to be, we will aim to be better and next season should have a lot more clarity from the outset. Hopefully we will be able to attract you back at some point, along with others we have lost along the way. I'm very grateful to those that have continue to support the league and offered us invaluable feedback along the way. Cheers, James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Hi AvonGirl, That's a fair point about last weeks winners. Perhaps we'll combine the results over last weeks tournament and the two this week. We'll get a definitive today. Sadly, the turnout last night was pretty poor (lowest number of registrations yet!) but I can understand that of course. We're thinking of putting back the "official" start of the league a couple of weeks, to give us a bit more time to explain the changes and try and re-engage those who have registered but aren't taking part. We can also use this time to decide upon the location for the final and determine exact qualification criteria. One thought we had was to run the next two weeks tournaments as "warm-up" tournaments. The scores don't count towards the actual league, but we'll put some added value in them in one way or another. This gives us a couple of weeks to build up some more momentum while the tournaments are still there and being played. Anyone have any thoughts on this?? Cheers, James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Apologies for the cut and paste, but this is what I've just posted in our forum. It's not a perfect solution, but it allows us to keep things going and there is still some decent added value. We're also giving a choice about where to hold the final, so that might help a little. Hi all, Ok, here it is. The league is going to continue over the same period, with the same scoring system. Players will earn points in the same way, and only the top two scores will count. There will be no minimum requirements for the tournaments, and there will be no guarantees. There will be no mini season prizes, but there will be increased weekly prizes (approx $150 worth each week). Last weeks and this weeks scores WILL NOT count towards the league, but we will be giving away the weekly prizes to those who did well in last weeks tournament, and for the remaining two this week. There will be a Live Final, with 50 runners qualifying (exact qualification criteris to be announced tomorrow). The Live final will have a prizepool based on how many regular players we have in the tournament. A regular player will be someone who enters at least 20 tournaments across the whole series. For every regular player, there will be $100 in the prizepool. However, we a GUARANTEEING a minimum of $5,000. If we get 50 or less regular players then it will still be $5,000. We will select a minimum of 3 locations for the final, and will give players the chance to vote on which location suits them best. The most popular location will be used. Full terms and conditions will be released tomorrow. We realise this is a bit of a reduction in what we had planned - but then we've had much lower participation than we expected. This way, players can play KNOWING that there WILL DEFINITELY be a Live Final, albeit a probably reduced one. However, this enables us to keep the league going and in the meantime we can work even harder on getting more players involved, and we can plan for future seasons too. Thanks again to everyone for the support, and I hope this proposal is satisfactory to you all! James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Quick update, as posted in our forum. All minimum entry requirements are being scrapped, along with the guarantees. This SHOULD happen from tonight, worse case it will be from tomorrow. There will DEFINITELY be a live final - we're just working out what the value of that should be (to reflect the participants) and what the qualification criteria will be. There will also definitely be some kind of added incentives along the way - such as weekly prizes or whatever. Those of us that have supported us throughout this blip, we're grateful. Hope we can now get things back on track. Cheers, James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Hi all, thanks for the continued comments. We should hopefully get some kind of solution today to move this league forward. Rest assured, if things for whatever reason do not get worked out, we do have a couple of other ideas to get it back on track. I'm not going to let this league die!! I've put too much work into it so far and, besides, I quite like my job!! Cheers, James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Thanks for the continued feedback and suggestions all. Sadly, I'm not that confident we'll salvage this. An email was sent out to all registered players yesterday and the response was very poor. Which gives me the impression that people have, understandably, lost interest already. We've made a proposal for a re-structure to bwin, which would take effect from tomorrow. This will involve removing the guarantees and minimum player restriction, reducing the prizes throughout the season, but having a guaranteed final with a decent prizepool still. I'm not completely giving up, but I did just want to be honest with you guys as you've given us great support all along. The bottom line is the league has not been supported as well as we would like, and too many of the registered players have not been taking part in the tournaments. Cheers, James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3
Yep, makes sense. With a "national" league like this with players spread all over, it's never going to be perfect for everyone, so a rotation would be fairest. The long term goal for the league is to have something like quarterly regional finals and one annual national final. If we ever manage to get the numbers to justify such a structure, that should help as well. We could even make national final packages include accommodation and contributions to travel expenses. It was also one of the reasons why we made the "Main Event" final a guaranteed prize for everyone who qualified. Worst case scenario people would have at least won enough to cover some of their expenses.James For me and Geordiegaz to attend the last time, we spent 5 hrs driving there and back, £100 on hotels and spending money for 2 days in luton, its not cheap Hosting the finals around the country, say north, mid and south and alternate these, would benefit players more than sticking with same location. I dont mind the travel or the cost, but will deffo put smaller stake players off if they need to cash big just to break even:ok
I absolutely agree - but it's pretty unlikely for this season. The bwin organisation is very much divided into geographical locations - and it is the UK division that are providing bwins share of the prizes for this so they want it UK exclusive. Slightly counter-intuitive in my opinion, particularly with regards the guarantees - as there would be less cost if more were playing!! JamesWouldn't hurt if Bwin could be persuaded to open it to all nationalities for the purpose of the VIP league at least. -
Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 If there is a serious belief that changing the location of the final would make a difference, that's probably the easiest thing to change!! We could go for a more "central" Grosvenor Casino or we also have options at a couple of the more "exclusive" London casinos. James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Seems like a decent suggestion regarding the email reminder. To be honest, I'm not sure where we go from here, as the numbers are obviously quite a bit off. I was observing today and there was quite a lot of negative comments in the chat - including one suggestion that the whole thing was a con to get signups at bwin, which is a frankly absurd comment. Any signups we or bwin get out of this are considered a bonus at this stage - the primary goal is to create a league that was popular among players and had the potential to grow (hopefully grow a lot!) and then start attracting new players. This kind of negativity is more than a little disappointing to say the very least. I completely understand the frustrations of players wanting to take part and seeing the tournament cancelled - I would be equally annoyed. I do feel it's a little unjust to level such accusations at us though. We made the structure very clear from the outset and we haven't made any "after the event" adjustments. It sort of defeats the object of what we are/were trying to acheive. It's supposed to be a fun league with some decent added value and hopefully a great tournament at the end. We made sure there was the added value in this league, and we've marketed the league to a pretty large audience. But we can't make people take part and we can't make them have fun! To be fair, this community has been very supportive and I'm personally grateful for that. But if it's going to start creating negative feelings and potentially damaging to our parent brand, then we obviously have to reconsider the whole thing. One of the things that has occured to me is that perhaps we've timed it wrong. It's the World Cup coming up, and the weather has started to improve and either of these could have had an impact on the amount of people wanting to commit to playing regular games. As I've mentioned, we're going to discuss some options tomorrow and work out where to go from here. Any thoughts - via this forum, PM, our forum or email are welcomed. We certainly want to keep those who have made the effort to get involved as happy as possible!! Cheers James
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Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Hi all, We'll get an email out regarding the league either this evening or tomorrow. We just want to wait and see what happens with tournament tonight. We're a little baffled by the tournaments not even getting 50 runners. We weren't particularly expecting to get the 100+ that we had been hoping for admittedly, but didn't think we would get less than 50. There have been over 150 players register for the league since the new structure was announced - less that we had wanted but should have been enough to get the tournaments going. We'll be discussing some options tomorrow and will make sure we keep everyone informed. James
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Re: $500 Regular Player tournament 14th June - VIP League Season 2 You were on the list and should have received the email, but I've resent just now. If you don't receive it let me know and I'll PM you the details here.
VIP Poker League Season 3
in Poker
Posted
Re: VIP Poker League Season 3 Morning all. Just for Punters Lounge, the full list of winners is published here first. 1st - $2,000 - nealeriver 2nd - $1,100 - luckydeedee1 3rd - $700 - natsamPPP (or rather, his replacement0 4th - $425 - vic3485 5th - $250 - Fred Krueger 6th - $175 - avongirlBW 7th - $125 - PotRooster1 8th - $100 - RIVRDU2 9th - $75 - andbell666. 10th - $50 - Ripcheader Congrats to all the winners, and thanks again for taking part. Runadrum - fair enough, I concede you have a very valid point! I've no idea why the full report for the last final was never uploaded. Is there a :removefootfrommouth: emoticon available here? teaulc - Indeed you did, and we are grateful for all feedback. We've got a lot of thinking and planning to do if we are a) going to run this again and b) make it more appealing. avongirl & Spitvenom - Thank you very much for your kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Congratulations, too, on cashing at the final table. Thanks again to all how took part, and I really hope we can come up with something to take the league forward. James