Well the first day of CAP Euro has officially ended. All I can say is what a great conference so far. Unfortunately our PAW booth somehow got stuck in Madrid, so where our booth is supposed to be, it is completely empty……. similar to our mini-bar.

I suppose I’ll just go right into a few of the highlights for me so far.

Last Night - Although I was extremely tired I took one for the team and went out anyways. Myself, Nick, Scrawny Bob, Darko, and Brandon all went to dinner before the party. After that we headed down to the main party in Port Olympico. As always the party was awesome, Thanks to Gian and Canaffco for lots of free drinks and an overall great time. I would say however that I would be a bit nervous walking the streets of Barcelona by myself. When we got back to the hotel, Brandon and I decided it would be a good idea to close down the bar with the guys from CAP. <———–bad idea.

Doyle Brunson - Doyle was the keynote speaker today. It was really great hearing him speak about the evolution of poker and telling his stories from the old days.

ASOP Affiliates Series of Poker- Well I did manage to get a seat into the ASOP. Unfortunately I had a few meetings that were important and will more than likely make me more than $5K and a bracelet. I gave the seat to Ryan from PAW (also known as RCNMastermind) and we agreed to split the money if he won. He got knocked out half way through when he got caught in a race situation with A7 and didn’t win.

Meetings - Personally I hate all the scheduled meetings. I would rather make deals in the evening or on the fly. Having to be at someone’s booth and sit down for a scheduled meeting just seems too damn formal. Nonetheless it’s all part of the business and must be done.

CakePoker -I went to lunch with an old friend Shenaz who is now the director of the CakePoker.com affiliate program. Within 5 minutes our deal was complete. <——–This is how all negotiations should go. Next week CakePoker will be joining the PAW network with the best hybrid deal the network has ever seen. Normally I would push Cake hard just because it’s Shenaz, but I think Cake has a ton of potential, and with this deal affiliates would be stupid not to put Cake on their sites.

PokerStars - I met with Fiona from Stars today as well. We chatted a bit about how PAW can send more players to the room, naturally I asked for an increased CPA. We’ll see about that one. For now however I believe PAW members are going to be able to promote an exclusive deposit bonus. The details should get worked out next week.

FullTilt - What can I say, Jessica has always been great to work with. As if the new CPA was not enough, we are going to be rolling out a few new things on the network in regards to FullTilt. #1 We are going to be able to set-up tournaments for affiliates including freerolls with money added. So with this we can set up an affiliate freeroll with say $50 added and just deduct the $ from the affiliates PAW account. #2 We are going to start issuing affiliates rakeback trackers if they want to promote rakeback. Your players will get the standard 27% rakeback, and the affiliate will make 5%. Players will be able to check their stats each day through the Network. Likewise we will take care of all the monthly payments.

PartyPoker - I go way back with Party and it was nice to catch up with them. I spoke with Dione about doing some work with Partybets. PartyPoker is one of the top rooms on our network and I’d like to leverage more of their brands. For non U.S. affiliates, you really can’t go wrong promoting Party on either rev share or CPA. For their casino and sportsbetting business I would highly suggest rev share however.

ChanPoker - I got to stay in the ChanPoker VIP suite last night. Brandon and I discussed how successful the affiliate tournament was and I think we are going to plan another one. We added ChanPoker to PokerNews last week and it has been converting great. Out of all the Ongame rooms, I would promote Chan over anyone else out there. Great brand, and a  great director of their affiliate program. I think we are going to rework the PAW deal a bit as well. More on that next week.

So as you can see, day 1 has been quite prosperous. It’s around 6:00 and we are getting ready to head to dinner. To be honest I could go for a cheese burger or something simple. I am quickly learning that I am not a big fan of Spanish news. I’ll post a picture blog later.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 10:12 am and is filed under Affiliate Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.