Players Sponsoring Themselves on Twitch

Was reading about Twitch this week. Hadn’t realized it had begun as a spinoff from the old Justin.tv, which I recall having tuned into occasionally in the past, including during those early marathon-streaming days of the old Quadjacks who I believe moved there at some point not long after Black Friday.

Justin.tv began back in 2007, then in 2011 created Twitch as a kind of separate network just for video gaming and “e-sports” competitions. The latter grew in popularity, then last summer Justin.tv was shut down so the parent company (Twitch Interactive) could focus just on Twitch.

Back in February PokerNews did an article suggesting 10 poker-related Twitch accounts to follow. Last month Eric Raskin wrote an interesting piece for All In looking at Twitch from a more theoretical point of view and relating it to other forms of “life streaming” whereby people turn their lives into shows for others to watch. (Twitter functions like that for some, I think, as I was writing about yesterday.)

BLUFF just ran a long profile of Scott Ball, a.k.a. “The Man Behind Twitch’s Poker Explosion,” which includes an overview of the site’s brief history and increasing involvement with poker.

Even The Wall Street Journal has written about Twitch becoming a destination for online poker players and those who enjoy watching others play (and/or learning about poker, too). The WSJ article cited a statistic that “In January, Twitch streamed 56 million minutes of poker, less than 1% of the total 16 billion minutes of streamed video on the site.” There were only 44,640 minutes in January, so I suppose that means an average of about 1,250 poker-related streams were live every minute of every day that month -- more than I’d have guessed.

Those who are able to get 500 or more viewers to watch their streams consistently are eligible to have a subscriber button put on their channels, which in turn becomes a way for viewers to subscribe for $4.99 a month (half of which goes to Twitch). Subscribers can then be offered extras such as special programming, access to archives, and so on.

Those who have Twitch channels can also derive income by selling advertising (with the revenue also shared 50/50 with Twitch). Twitchers can additionally get sponsorships or collect donations as a way to “monetize” what they’re doing, and in the case of poker players who are also coaches, they can use their Twitch channels to direct folks to purchase other content, hire them as coaches, and so on.

It struck me that with the paucity of online poker sponsorships post-Black Friday, Twitch has become a form of “self-sponsorship” for a not insignificant number of players, kind of analogous to self-publishing or other kinds of independently-produced content (e.g., music, video/film).

For me it remains a kind of idle, only occasionally-sought-after entertainment, although I continue to be impressed with how some -- with Jason Somerville the pioneer and current Twitch “chip leader” (by far) -- have found ways to make it work both for them and their viewers/followers/subscribers. And I continue to be curious about what will come of it, too.

The Professionals Leave the Table

Today Full Tilt Poker announced they aren’t renewing sponsorship contracts with Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and Gus Hansen, thereby jettisoning the last two sponsored pros from the site. Also gone (apparently) is the name originally given to the site’s “power trio” of sponsored pros -- Blom, Hansen, and Tom Dwan -- shortly after the launch of FTP 2.0 in November 2012: “The Professionals.”

Dwan left the band in December 2013. I wrote here then how the occasion inspired “thoughts of how the whole idea of poker celebs -- that different class of poker ‘professionals’ -- once such a very effective construct of online sites and abetted ably by the TV shows the sites sponsored, seems like something from an earlier era.”

Today’s news moves the needle even less. Hansen has long remained a figure of interest to many thanks to his win in the very first televised World Poker Tour event way back in 2002, his high-level involvement with FTP as a member of Team Full Tilt, and his continued participation in the “nosebleed” stakes games on the site where he’s reportedly lost over $20 million, including more than $17 million on the site during the last two years (according to High Stakes DB).

Blom, too, has fascinated many ever since the mysterious “Isildur1” showed up to challenge all of those Team Full Tilters and the rest of the world in late 2009. I’ve written here many times about Blom, including how intriguing it was to report on him at the WSOP. High Stakes DB shows Blom sitting around break-even during his almost two years playing on FTP 2.0, having been up nearly $6 million during the first six or seven months before falling back down to where he was on the site back in November 2012 (down a few milly).

The last post I wrote here about Hansen was in January 2013 when just a couple of months after FTP 2.0 went live he fired off some tone-deaf tweets in defense of Howard Lederer that were dismissive of just about the entire online poker community. The title of that post, “Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High,” suggests how his thoughts were received here. The last one I wrote about Blom was right about the same time, the title of which was a response to enthusiastic tweets from the FTP account reporting his presence at the high-stakes tables on the site: “Blasé About Blom.” Again, the title is an indicator of the attitude expressed in the post.

Today the dissolution of “The Professionals” altogether brings a different thought to mind about the significance of sponsored pros to online sites. I actually think they can serve a great purpose, even today, not just in helping attract players and building sites’ presence, but in helping to advocate for poker, generally speaking. The Team PokerStars Pros are an obviously well managed example of this, with players all over the world doing a lot to help explain and promote poker to wider audiences in their respective countries.

I’m realizing today, though, that FTP’s “Professionals” idea -- a dim echo of Team Full Tilt from the start -- had very little to do with establishing and strengthening connections among members of an online poker community. Rather, its whole ethos was to emphasize the impassable distance between Hansen, Blom, and Dwan and the unwashed masses.

The spectacle of watching “The Professionals” play for high stakes was mildly diverting for some, but hardly inspiring for most, particularly given the seeming apathy -- or even antipathy (in Hansen’s case) -- they appeared to have for the poker community as a whole.

In fact, the news of the end of the “The Professionals” makes me think of what a table full of amateurs might say to each other after a pro player finally gets up to leave after having made things difficult for them for the previous several hours.

“Glad he’s gone.”

The Place of Patches

Was reading through a few WSOP-related pieces yesterday including some concerning the Main Event and final table, and I found myself thinking briefly about how online poker sponsorships have receded considerably from being part of the story of the WSOP.

I suppose it was looking at pics of the November Nine and how inconspicuous, really, the patching of the last nine players seemed to be that got me thinking about how little we’ve been paying attention to the subject, especially when compared to the pre-Black Friday era.

Of the final nine, Mark Newhouse had an Ivey Poker patch (recently acquired, I believe), Sylvain Loosli had the Winamax logo on the front of his hoody, J.C. Tran had one for PokerAce.tv, and Jay Farber was wearing a couple of 888 patches on that last day. Meanwhile I don’t believe the other five players were sporting any logos, although I imagine by November all nine will probably have some sort of sponsorship.

I remember doing a quick circuit of the tables during Day 2 of Event No. 59, the $2,500 2-7 Triple Draw event that concluded just before the Main Event got started. There were about 75 players left at the time and during my tour of the tables I consciously looked for patches just to get an estimation of how many I saw. I even jotted down the sponsors, although I didn’t keep track of the list.

I saw about a dozen patches overall, although not all of them were poker-related. In other words, there was an average of about one patch per six-handed table in the 2-7 tournament, although as I think about it the average was probably skewed a bit high thanks to fact that that particular event had attracted a number of well-known players.

For example, Tom Schneider had his LoudMouth Poker patch and matching crazy cap and shorts; he’d go out shy of the cash in this event after winning two bracelets earlier in the Series. Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi (who’d finish 16th) had three or four of them, I recall, including one for the Mizrachi Dealer Academy and another for the Turlock Poker Room in Turlock, California. Team PokerStars Pros Naoya Kihara and Daniel Negreanu were still in, too, and of course they were both patched up. Kihara would squeak into the money to finish 28th while Negreanu went on to finish runner-up.

Eventual winner Eli Elezra had a patch advertising a site called Attack Poker, one with which I’m not too familiar but which sponsored a few players here and there during the 2013 WSOP, including Black Friday indictee Chad Elie, the payment processor who only recently was released from prison and who Attack Poker signed and put into the Main Event. (By the way, for more news regarding Elie and his ongoing legal battles, see Haley Hintze’s latest articles for Flushdraw.)

Like I say, though, all of these patches and sponsorships were well off most folks’ radar for much of the Series and the Main Event. The only time I remember sponsorship even becoming a topic of conversation was on the final day (Day 7). Jackie Glazier had gone out in 31st the day before as the highest-finishing woman in this year’s Main Event, and throughout her run had been wearing an Ivey Poker patch as one of that site’s many signed pros. The next day, however, 888 poker had signed Glazier and thus she had on their logo when doing an interview with Kara Scott for the later ESPN telecast.

If you pick up Dr. Pauly’s Lost Vegas (covering the WSOP from 2005 to 2008) or even watch the BET RAISE FOLD documentary which I was discussing some on Monday, you see how prominent the idea of a sponsorship once was in poker, something almost akin to getting called up to the big leagues in baseball in the way it provided concrete financial assurance as well as a kind of symbolic stamp of approval for one’s talents (deserved or otherwise).

In some cases and with a few sites it is still obviously a big deal to get sponsored, but it is hardly a goal for most tournament players at present. Still, it was kind of interesting to see a few players during that next-to-last-day of the Main Event (when they played down from 68 to 27) be handed patches as they’d picked up a small bonus for having gotten that far. And to remember how much more prevalent such a scene was not that long ago.

Signs of the Times: Hellmuth & UB

Been marveling some over the last couple of months at how much the logos worn by professional poker players seem to pique the interest of many observers.

As this year’s WSOP Main Event final table demonstrated, the whole “patching” thing has clearly evolved into a highly intricate set of maneuvers, perhaps not quite as complicated as the game itself, though similarly informed by intricate strategies developed from partial information. Like poker, the advertising game involves a lot of “calculated guessing,” one might say.

The patches also provide another set of symbols to consider when taking in the “story” of a particular tournament, occasionally adding further richness to the already interesting narrative being related. Each player primarily represents him or herself, but may also be associated with others via the display of similar patches. Thus does the main “plot” concerning the tourney’s outcome occasionally get fleshed out further with these “subplots” regarding sponsorships.

For instance, when Jonathan Duhamel -- a “PokerStars guy” -- won the WSOP Main Event, it was viewed by some as a victory by Stars and a loss for Full Tilt. The fact that a lot of us play on these sites, and likely have our own preferences or even “allegiances,” perhaps adds (in a kind of arbitrary way) another layer of significance when it comes to the business of interpreting the final table story.

The patches are also great for gossip, too, it seems. In fact, we have recently witnessed how even the absence of a patch can, in some cases, be enough to get the rumor mill crankin’ in high gear.

I’m referring, of course, to all the talk about Phil Hellmuth having recently made a few appearances without his usual set of UltimateBet -- now “UB” -- logos. Surely it is testament to the marketing power the “Poker Brat” wields when people take notice what patches he is not wearing. Not to mention speculate so extensively about whose patches he might wear in the future.

You’d think this guy were Ralph Lauren or something, the way folks are getting so caught up in the business of following his fashion.

As you probably have heard, when Hellmuth showed up to contribute commentary over on ESPN3’s live stream from the WSOP Main Event final table a couple of weeks ago, he was not sporting any UB logos. Was a bit conspicuous, especially since Hellmuth never ever misses an opportunity to play the salesman.

Indeed, during the heads-up portion he annoyed many viewers by the way he’d ignore the action and instead talk about himself and his various money-making endeavors. If I remember correctly, he even interrupted himself one time that night -- very close to the final hand, I think -- to say “Let’s see... What else do I have to promote?”

Might have blown over, but when Hellmuth turned up at the NAPT Los Angeles shootout event without the usual “UB” stampage, the wondering got louder. Could it be that Hellmuth might be stepping away from the company with whom he has been associated for over a decade? And if so, with whom might he sign next? Stars? Tilt? Party? His own new skin/site? Harrah’s/WSOP? (For more on that latter possibility, see this recent post by B.J. Nemeth.)

I think it is obvious that the still-unresolved insider cheating scandal at UB adds further intrigue here. The fact is, ever since the scandal at UltimateBet first broke in the spring of 2008, wearing a UB patch has taken on special meaning.

Regardless of the wearer -- and indeed, despite the good intentions and/or best efforts of some of those who have donned it -- the UB patch has become a unique symbol. It yields various interpretations, but for many it evokes certain, specific themes, including greed, fraud, self-interest, and other negative and/or detrimental associations for poker.

What will Hellmuth do? Hellmuth has worn the UB symbol longer than anyone, I think. According to the UB site, “Hellmuth was instrumental in creating the UB poker software in 1999,” and most believe he has always had some sort of significant financial stake in the site.

One has to believe it would take a lot for him to move on at this late date, especially after so many better spots to act seem to have passed. Then again, for all his bluster, we all know what a nit Hellmuth can be. He will let himself get blinded down sometimes.

Love him or hate him, Hellmuth is himself a symbol, the meaning of which in a lot of ways coincides with the UB one. Which for me tends to suggest that it doesn’t really matter much if he wears the UB patch again.

In truth, Hellmuth is -- and always will be -- UB. And you can decide for yourself what that means.