GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 5 - May 2008

48 Tyson Tanaka | Continued from page 17 experience managing and ad- ministrating a discussion forum. We wanted to create a friendly, inviting poker forum, where be- ginners felt comfortable asking introductory questions without the fear of being ridiculed. I think building a community is an important step for an affiliate when building their web pres- ence, and a discussion forum is the primary tool to do this. The forum also needs constant man- aging – we have a team of mod- erators working with Xianti to maintain the safe, friendly and fun atmosphere of our forums. One of the nifty tools your site offers is a hand converter that takes hand histories frommajor online poker rooms and con- verts them into forum-friendly posts. But the hand converter doesn’t just make the posts FTR friendly. You’ve included sup- port for 2+2, FCP and a few oth- er forums. Why did you choose to support other forums with the hand converter? The hand converter is a great open source tool, initially developed by Bison at 2+2, which we have updated and modified several times over. Offering support to other fo- rums serves two purposes – we wanted the tool to be useful and helpful to a wide audience and secondly, the output created mentions FlopTurnRiver, so it actually works as an advertising tool as well. You run a private poker league on PokerStars. Do you find that the league does a better job in attracting new players to Pok- erStars than other methods? Or are most people who choose to play in the league PokerStars members already? Our poker league, the FTR Gauntlet, is not really a tool for acquisition. We don’t attract many new players with the poker league. However, it is a great instrument for build- ing and supporting our poker community. The Gauntlet games are discussed in our forums, there’s friendly trash-talking, and it allows beginner players to play against some of our more experienced, high-stakes play- ers. It looks like you also run private tournaments (beyond the poker league) as well? Are they gener- ally freerolls? Or do they require a deposit of some sort? Yes, we also run private FTR tournaments outside of our poker league, but these are all low buy-in tourna- ments. We try to avoid freerolls. We’ve found that there are a lot of individuals who solely hunt down freerolls, and these play- ers do not provide much, if any, value. So we offer money-added tournaments, where there is a low buy-in, like $3 or $5, and we add money to the overall prize pool. How much time does it take to administer the forum? Our part- ner Xianti is in charge of admin- istering the forum, along with the 21 moderators who report to him. While it doesn’t take us a lot of time, you can see that it does take a lot of eyeballs to make sure everything is cool in the forums. What’s the easiest part of man- aging forums? The easiest part of managing the forums is as- signing moderators and telling them they are in charge! What’s the most difficult? Deal- ing with troublemakers is tough, whether they are spammers, scammers, or disgruntled mem- bers. Most of our members are very friendly and easy-going but with large communities there are bound to be incidents. We have rules that dictate when members should be disciplined or banned, but difficult judgment calls have to be made. What characteristics of online poker rooms do you find are most important for players? The issues with online poker rooms have shifted through the past several years, but I think the most important characteristic for today’s online poker room is integrity. Players need to feel comfortable playing online, and the poker room’s integrity mani- fests itself in many different ways – its reputation, its policies toward cheating, its handling of payments, and perhaps most im- portantly, its customer service. The online poker rooms that will survive and flourish are the ones that treat their customers with honesty and respect. Poker rooms using outsourced, non- dedicated customer services that know very little about the details of the brand are a detriment and become exposed – we see so many players leaving poker rooms because of poor customer service. Ifyouhadtopickfivekeystosuc- cess as an affiliate, what would they be and why? For us, work- ing as an affiliate meant becom- ing self-employed. So starting off, the most important key for us was to be self-motivated. Can you work a 16-hour workday without a boss telling you what to do? Similarly, you have to be hard working and put in the hours needed. As an affiliate, you also have to be able to bring something new or refreshing to the table, so having creativity and ingenuity is important. It’s also important to be knowledge- able and educated in many dif- ferent areas, so be prepared to learn a lot of stuff! You are going to wear many hats – not only am I a poker player, but also a computer programmer, web de- veloper, SEO expert, bookkeeper and accountant, writer, salesman and manager. What traits do you look for in an affiliatemanager? Howabout in an affiliate program? The most important thing to me regarding an affiliate manager is respon- siveness. It’s extremely frustrat- ing when affiliate managers do not bother responding to com- munications in a timely manner. Affiliate managers need to un- derstand that their affiliates are not just customers but business partners and should be treated with that respect. I have dropped several affiliate programs due to a lack of responsiveness. What prompted you to join the GPWA? And how has it helped you so far? We joined the GPWA in order to learn more about our industry and network with some of the top Web sites in our space. The GPWA is a great resource for staying on top of industry news. We also like attending the vari- ous industry conferences, includ- ing the CAP conference, and the GPWA keeps us informed with these events. If you could change one thing about the online gaming indus- try, what would it be, and why? Of course we believe legislation in the U.S. needs revamping, along with clarifications within other districts and jurisdictions. GPWA TIMES | GPWA Affiliate Interview Series