GPWA Times - Issue 20 - March 2012

Your site, World Holdem League, is an online poker league where online pok- er players can compete three nights a week – and where U.S. players are wel- come. Explain how this works, and what makes your site unique. As you said we run three tournaments a week, each at a different time to try to attract players from different time zones. Players who finish in the top 20 percent of any league game earn points toward our monthly leader- board, and any player who makes the pay- out earns points on our player of the year leaderboard. Currently we award monthly prizes to the top three on the leaderboard, and yearly to the top five on our player of the year leaderboard. In the future we hope to be able to award more prizes as we grow and gain more sponsors. I think the level of competition and the prizes we offer make our league unique. We have some of the toughest competition on the Internet even though we are a com- pletely free-to-play league. We also have some great sponsors that provide great prizes for our monthly and yearly top players, including Bluff Poker Magazine , Blue Shark Optics, Tournament Poker Edge and Tournament Indicator, and we also provide T-shirts and custom poker chip card guards. Your site only promotes PokerStars, but you continue to allow U.S. players to participate in WHL tournaments. Since they can’t make deposits at PokerStars, have you considered either barring Americans from your league or promoting other sites? I will never bar American players from playing in our league. Right now we use PokerStars Home Games on PokerStars.net so ev- eryone is able to play. Until this year our league was always a buy-in league but af- ter Black Friday that became very difficult since we continue to try to let American players play. In the past several years we have played at many poker rooms and the poker room we play at is always the only room we promote. I am also currently working on another site that will promote multiple poker rooms once I launch it. It will be completely separate from our league, though. Over the past couple of years other af- filiates have signed on to place your fully managed poker league on their sites. What kind of feedback have you been getting from these affiliates? Most liked it and I did receive some great feedback from some of them, including ideas for improving the league. The fact that we do not promote other poker rooms makes it easier for some forum owners to agree to send their players to us, because they don’t have to worry about them join- ing other poker rooms through me instead of through them. Unfortunately since we moved to PokerStars this year and I made a completely new website, that service is something I am not offering at this time, although I do plan on making it available again as soon as I have time to set it up properly on our new site. What sort of advantage does hosting a poker league give you over other poker affiliates? And are you surprised more affiliates don’t try to do this? I am not sure it gives me any great advantage. Actually, as far as earnings are concerned, I am sure most affiliates make more than I do. I have never really been in this for the money; it started as a hobby and has turned into something I just love to do. Being a player myself, I love poker, I love the players I get to meet through the league, and most of all I love the competi- tion. And through the e-mail newsletters we have offered over the years I have built a very good player database for future projects. I am not really surprised that more affiliates don’t try this; as I men- tioned, it really isn’t a huge money-mak- ing idea. What is the most difficult aspect of run- ning the World Holdem League? The time it takes to run is definitely the most difficult part, setting up tournaments, sending e-mail reminders for games, blog- ging, Facebook, Twitter, finding sponsors – it all takes a lot of time. When did you launch your site? My cur- rent site launched in November of 2009 and the league started January 1, 2010. I also operated another poker forum and league that I ran for about five years until I sold it in early 2009. You sell World Holdem gear (T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, etc.) on your site. What prompted you to start selling the gear? And how successful has the on- line store been? Selling the gear started as a way to help cover the cost of some of the prizes we offer but it has turned into much more. The players seem to really like the gear; I actually make more from it at times then I do from affiliate earnings. How long did it take for you to start earning money? With World Holdem League it was almost immediate. I looked for sponsors and sold advertising space on the site before the league even started. Affiliate earnings began to come in very shortly after we started because we were a buy-in league at that time and most play- ers had to deposit to play. You also like to play online poker, and consistently do very well. Is it easier making money by playing poker or by running your site? That is actually a tough question to answer. I guess the site is probably easier, but playing is much more fun. I definitely can make more money faster by playing, although by play- ing you can also lose much faster. GPWA AFFILIATE INTERVIEW SERIES GARY MENGES BiggDawgg Working or playing, he’s in a league of his own Age:40 Hometown:Marseilles, Illinois Living in:Ottawa, Illinois FavoriteFood:Pizza MustReadBook: Doyle Brunson’s Super System I & II Site:www.worldholdemleague.com GPWA Affiliate Interview Series