What to expect from iPoker this year with David Pomroy

We chat to the Head of Poker at Playtech about communication, promotions, MTTs, bots, mobile and much more.

For those that do not know you, what’s your background?

David Pomroy: I played professionally from 2001-2011 (18 – 28 years old) after falling in love with poker as a teenager, mainly cash games online but also some MTTs and SNGs. In 2011 I was starting to see that the general standard of play was creeping up on me and decided I should do something else other than play full-time, but I still very much wanted to work in poker. I bought a share in a staking company (SharkStaking) in 2011 and after running that for 18 months I went to work for Black Belt Poker (an old iPoker skin). I then started my own staking company (Bear Hug Poker) before moving to Unibet Poker in 2014 as Marketing Manager, before becoming Head of Poker there. The opportunity to move to Playtech/iPoker came up last year and was a challenge I couldn’t turn down. Much of my play as a pro player was on the big networks like Cryptologic and iPoker and I feel an affinity towards the network. I also think there is a huge amount of potential here, given the strength of the development team and the brands we’re working with.

What do you see as your biggest challenge in your role as Head of Poker?

David Pomroy: I think there have been two major challenges facing operators over the last few years. The first is finding a way to introduce new players to the game, as poker has become less prominent in the mainstream media and people are bombarded with other ways to spend their time. Secondly, once you find those new players, how do you onboard them in such a way that they are likely to come back again and again over time and become regular players? This second part has naturally become more difficult over the years as the skill gap between new and existing players is constantly widening and that’s something most operators and networks have been trying to solve by working towards healthier and more sustainable ecosystems. I know that talk of ‘ecosystem’ is often anathema to poker players as it’s been used at various sites as an excuse to increase rake or lower rewards. My main aim is to improve the ecosystem at iPoker because I want to help build sustainable poker sites. However, that doesn’t mean penalising grinders, increasing rake or lowering rewards; it means finding ways to keep new players more engaged and facilitating a longer relationship with the game for most players. Sometimes that means making a change that grinders won’t instantly like, but in the long term the aim is to provide more enjoyable games for everyone.

"Lack of communication has been an issue"

What are the most common criticisms of the iPoker network you see from players that you plan to tackle in the next couple of years?

David Pomroy: One source of frustration around iPoker that I’ve seen both as a player and as Head of Poker elsewhere is a lack of communication between the network and players. This is tricky as a network because we can’t speak for the brands on our networks, but I do feel that we can find ways to bridge the gap between ourselves and players and that’s one of the things we’re going to be looking at in future. Increased communication will hopefully also help players to place further trust in the direction the network is taking, and communicating our future strategic plans is something we’re very keen to do. I think the network also needs to work to improve promotions, bring the MTT schedule back to something more competitive and make a concerted effort to restore trust that we are deterring and removing bots.

What specific issues does a poker network face compared to standalone rooms in 2019?

David Pomroy: I think it’s akin to the restrictions a large PLC faces versus the freedom a private start-up has; a standalone operator sets the strategy and product but as a network we are building the product while trying to find a common ground between sometimes contradicting strategies from our network partners. We have plenty of plans in the works, but there is a process that any new feature, promotion or change to network policy must go through which doesn’t exist when you are a standalone operator. As a network, we can’t make a big change if some brands are against it, and so working with all brands on a respective network to find consensus and work towards a common goal is the starting point. Once a feature is built, it will be rolled out at various times by different brands according to the development resource they have on their side. Facilitating a quicker release and feature activation cycle is also going to be something we’ll be focused on so that players see improvements that benefit them a lot sooner.

What advantage does a network have these days over the standalone rooms?

David Pomroy: The biggest advantage I see is the source of new players. We have some of the biggest online Sportsbooks and Casinos on our networks and they provide a great source of new players, whether it be their existing players crossing over from Sportsbook or Casino or simply their huge brand power reaching out to new poker players. One of our main areas of focus over the next few years will be improving the retention rates amongst those new players and hopefully providing a platform for more and more of them to fall in love with the game.

"We are looking at how to reward low volume players"

There is a perception that Sportsbooks don’t invest much time and money in their poker room product because they can make more money elsewhere, hence just having a skin on the network. Is that a fair concern?

David Pomroy: There isn’t a huge difference in acquisition costs or revenue per player between Sportsbook and poker, but the main advantage Sportsbook has is simply the scale it currently achieves. PokerStars have demonstrated over the years that poker can have huge scale and brands like 888 and Unibet are committing substantial resource to poker despite it not being their primary source of income. If you have a great Sportsbook but don’t offer games like poker, you run the real risk of players heading to a site which offers everything.

Currently there are no major live tours or online tournament series associated with iPoker, will that change?

David Pomroy: I believe there has been ongoing discussion around that topic here over several years, but a solution has never really been found. I'm not a huge believer in live events or tours organised by the network as it’s hard to find a solution which works for all associated brands. I’d much rather work to facilitate and support events or tours that our brands wanted to organise themselves. One good example is Paddy Power’s involvement in the Irish Open and I hope that we can help support increasing involvement there over the years. Given that our playerbase consists of large numbers of casual and new players, I would also love to see brands working on low buy-in tours and events which are accessible to more players.

"We are focussing a lot on mobile"

There is a lot of talk about how best to allocate rewards to players, can you share some insight where you stand on this issue and what direction iPoker may go in?

David Pomroy: There is no centralised iPoker rewards program, instead each brand on a network will operate their own rewards program depending on their respective strategy and playerbase. However, we do operate network promotions and we do intend to broaden our offering there as well as the communication around those promotions. I like to see any operator rewarding a wider portion of their playerbase and that’s something we’ll lobby for on a brand by brand basis and which we’ll try to address ourselves via network promotions. I think there’s also room for some ‘out of the box’ thinking when it comes to rewarding lower volume players and we have some interesting concepts we’re going to explore further there.

What new features can you tease our members will be coming this year?

David Pomroy: I was excited when I joined Playtech to see that there are very talented development teams here who already had some real innovations in the pipeline. Given the sheer number of new players coming through mobile apps and web browser clients, our plan is to focus a lot of effort on developing those channels further (while of course not neglecting the download client). We will launch a new HTML browser client later this year and focus a lot of our effort on UX and navigation improvements across the various clients. People are becoming increasingly demanding when it comes to apps and intuitive UX, and we need to consider that a lot of our players will be looking at the client for the first time with perhaps only a rudimentary poker knowledge that extends to basic terms such as ‘cash game’ or ‘tournament’. We’d like to do a better job of onboarding those new players and allowing them quick access to a poker game without intimidating them with an increasing number of options, filters and gametypes – those things should still be available for regular players to find but we can’t assume that a first-time player will want to struggle through that. Although we plan to steer our development towards UX and usability, we will also be bringing an innovation to an existing gametype later this year which will be an industry-first and something I’m excited about. Unfortunately, it’s too early for me to share details on that, but I’ll be sure to let you know once we’re closer to launch!

What would you like to see change at iPoker? Let us know in the comments: