Casino Operators Beware: AKA23

[Professor]

"I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a advantage player. You have a right to ban me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was an online Blackjack player. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a casino to collect a few bonuses. We left the casino after we had played for an hour or two and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and the casino boss had come and closed every one of our accounts. There they were in a pile. A pile of little closed accounts. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that. These pit bosses were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to ban players and affiliates without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

Col. Walter E. Kurtz

[Casinomeister]

..."I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen...

Someone's been hittin' up the whacky weed

[dominique]

hehe Prof, you have been reading some weird s#!t !

Actually it's a classic, but that makes it no less weird.

[Professor]

Its surreal, just like this thread....

[soflat]

Josh are you new to the business? You haven't figured out how to handle advantage players and the affiliates that refer them yet?

Are you trying to start a cartel here? A cartel of casinos and affiliate managers?

[jetset]

Sounds more to me as if it's the operators who are sinking their own ships with ill-advised bonus sums that possibly negate the "edge" factor.....this certainly is a weird thread.

This is a casino manager complaining about an affiliate who's sending him lots of traffic - traffic which legitimately adheres to T&Cs that the casino itself has designed!

Who's fault is it that the casino has lost big bucks in this scenario? Shouldn't the casino take into account that amongst the gamblers it attracts with its bonus offers there are certain to be expert players who can test the T&C - legally - to the maximum?

Unfortunately, the downside of this sort of experience means that casinos are likely to tighten up or modify their T&Cs to combat the (for them) worse possible scenario of too many expert gamblers....and that means ordinary players will find less in the way of bonuses too.

There are some good suggestions in this thread, especially about retention.

[thelawnet]

Though I know that this forum is typically dedicated to the player side of the business, I thought this to be revalent given the recent roast of Prime Casino. In addition, I felt that this was a large enough audience to make those of you who are operators/affiliate managers/casino directors, aware of what's happening.

I am actually in agreement with those of you have deemed some of our terms to be "Draconian". I have had to modify our terms in this manner due to the fact that the lion's share of our traffic over the last two months consisted bonus seekers and advantage players. Though there is absolutely nothing illegal or even immoral about being one of these people, it is simply impossible to remain profitable when the majority of your players are mathematical gamblers.

Having said everything above, I'd like to bring an issue to light that has been plaguing us for several weeks. There exist in our business, rings of advantage, bonus seeker, and mathematical gamblers (I don't like labels but whatever you want to call them...) that are coming from a very short list of affiliates. At the top of this list in our Casino is a man known as: AKA23. I informed the Affiliate Manager dealing with him to ask him politely to stop sending traffic over two weeks ago. Since then, one of his advantage players has taken us for an enormous amount of money.

Again, there is nothing illegal about what this man is doing but I want to make all of you aware to watch out for this guy. He and a few other affiliates (in my opinion) are running a largescale operation sending hordes of bonus seekers to casinos. I can confirm this because I have a friend at another major Microgaming group who was complaining about this very person to me. He has also sent almost the same number of players to them as well. It was then that I decided to say something about it as I would prefer that affiliates like this are banned from all Affiliate Programs as they make business very difficult for everyone.

Though AKA has been polite and candid about sending awful players, he has after two weeks of almost daily emails, refused to take our listing down from his sites.

In summary, he is the main source of our poor quality traffic and our new terms and conditions have been adjusted to prevent us from being cleaned out by his players and others like them.

Lastly, I read some of my posts on the "other" thread and realized that I may have come off a bit snide. I apologize if some of you took me this way but I was dealing with a massive influx of these "players" and so watching advantage players complain about their winnings being withdrawn was not something I was overly sympathetic about. Having said that though, it was wrong to reverse chargeback their Neteller accounts and we will not be doing this again.

Our software has been recently patched to make it impossible to withdraw until the wagering requirements are met. Because of this new feature, we will never again issue a payment that shouldn't be issued. Having said that, a player will never actually be able to break the terms by withdrawing early either.

Let me get this straight.

This guy appears to have a site called "Beating Bonuses". It is public website, anyone can go there. It appears they have done, and have clicked on his link to your site.

This does not represent a 'ring' in any shape or form, and it is inappropriate and possibly defamatory to describe it as one, and to name him personally.

Secondly, to make a comment like this is just stupid:

"one of his advantage players has taken us for an enormous amount of money."

You have ONE signup bonus of £100. If this guy has made an "enormous amount of money" he as not "taken you for it", he has won it by g-a-m-b-l-i-n-g. Most casinos I understand to be in the business of gambling. Perhaps yours is not - this explains why you are not attracting any 'good' players, as the implication from your comments, that players are simply there to make regular cash donations, as if you were some kind of charitable cause.

To make it clear: the £100 you gave him, the "enormous amount of money", he *won*.

Moving on, your suggestion that he is somehow acting improperly by refusing to remove your link is again foolish and possibly defamatory.

Aka23 is, I believe, an American and has a constitutional right of free speech. Linking to your website is his right, and you should not be suggesting that he is doing anything wrong by doing this. I am not sure of the terms of your contract with him, but I am sure that as an honest legitimate business you will pay whatever consideration is due under the terms of your contract for the players he has sent your way.

You do of course have a right to cease to do business with him as an affiliate, having complied with your contractual obligations in respect of past transactions, but your suggestion that he should remove a simple hyperlink is absurd.

You in turn are quite free to ban players coming from his site, before they deposit, although I must confess I am rather concerned by another statement you made.

"watching advantage players complain about their winnings being withdrawn was not something I was overly sympathetic about"

Eh????? What?

As I suggested above, casinos are in the gambling business. Not the donation to business.

So it is not a very good advertisement for your business when you openly admit to not really caring about paying your winners.

"it is simply impossible to remain profitable when the majority of your players are mathematical gamblers. "

Indeed. Such is running a business. It's hard to make a profit as a fine dining restaurant when the only customers don't have much money as well.

It's also hard to make a profit as a car dealer if you don't sell any cars.

Boo hoo. Improve your marketing. Change your business plan. Block signups from his site.

Do whatever it is you want to do.

But don't come whining and blaming someone else's behaviour for the fact that you've apparently opened the world's first casino were you don't like people to gamble.

If your business loses money CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS.

It's not rocket science really.

[thelawnet]

Affiliates don't expect to be paid when the casino isn't making a profit. Casinos would drop like flies if they paid affiliates for traffic that loses money for the casino - a double whammie.

They have a CPA agreement to pay $75 per new customer.

http://www.primepartners.com/signup.asp

If you send 20 customers, win or lose, the casino owes the affiliate $1500. Very simple.

If the casino finds the traffic is not profitable, the terms of the agreement typically provide that they can move him onto a revenue share, where if the casino doesn't make any money, the affiliate doesn't get paid.

But they still have to pay for the traffic they sent to him before they changed the agreement.

[dominique]

Not sure what the T&Cs are there, but usually there is a rule about minimum value of deposits when you do CPA.

On CAP you will see dozens of complaint posts because the casino closing the CPA affiliate account - usually it turns out there is a clause in the T&C about it.

There used to be a lot of stuff going on years back, where players would sign up as affiliates and get a CPA deal, and then send all their friends to make minimum deposits and the casinos would pay out 3x the amount they took in.

Obviously no business can exist like that, so they created the minimum value T&Cs.

[lots0]

Is it just me or is the title of this thread unwarranted and more than a little derogatory toward AKA23?

I for one vote for an edit.