Exclusive Scott Yeates Interview: The Future of Online Poker

Scott Yeates, Hybrid Interaction's new online poker consultant

Scott Yeates, Hybrid Interaction's new online poker consultantFormer PokerStars VIP manager and Hybrid Interaction Poker Consultant Scott Yeates has years of experience in the online poker industry. As we evaluate how to push the online poker industry forward in this time of regulatory uncertainty and economic challenge, I thought it was a good time to sit down with one of the industry’s experts.

I caught up with Scott just after the announcement of his departure from PokerStars and new role with Hybrid Interaction to learn more about his thoughts on rakeback, poker network strategies, VIP programs and Black Friday. But before getting into the issues that affect the online poker industry today and tomorrow, I asked Scott why he decided to make the move from PokerStars to Hybrid Interaction.

“In March 2010, PokerStars offered me two positions, one was Poker Room Manager for PokerStars.it and the other was ring game manager for PokerStars.com. My wife and I had been on the Isle of Man for four years and we had some pressing personal reasons for moving back to the states so I passed on the positions and resigned from PokerStars. It was a very close call, but I think we made the correct decision”.

Scott was responsible for leading the VIP program at PokerStars for five years prior to this move so I asked him the biggest lesson that he learned from his VIP management at Stars.

“Listen to your players. Players will direct you in the correct direction if you figure out who shares your same goals”.

Collecting “rake” from players is how online poker sites have always made their money- poker rooms pocket roughly 5% up to $3 USD of every player’s deposit and the rest goes into the pot for play. “Rakeback”, or giving players a percentage of their rake back to them, has been used as a retention tool by poker sites for years and has always been a subject of debate. On one hand, poker operators use rakeback as a means of rewarding players who are loyal to their site and deposit a lot of money into it. On the other hand, players who generate a lot of rake for poker sites are usually winning players and will end up withdrawing their winnings resulting in a net loss for the site. I asked Scott what he thinks about the rakeback debate, and his concise response was,

“Rakeback will change with regulated poker and those that don’t change will fail. I would watch what PokerStrategy does since they are the leader in the industry”.

Another topic that tends to polarize the industry is how to reward operators within a poker network. Several poker networks, including the Bodog Network, have declared that they will reward operators for bringing recreational players into the ecosystem as opposed to the highly skilled players or pros. Other poker networks have chosen the exact opposite approach so I asked Scott to explain his position on this issue as well.

“Casino sites see a players’ deposit as their money and they hate to see winners cashing out the money. If I was a casino I would feel the same way but others have proven that pro players can benefit your site. For example, pro players are an important part of a site especially a small site because they add liquidity.
We are going to see some major changes to poker over the next few years that should benefit the casinos and players will address the issue of liquidity. New games that will be invented for tablet and cell phone play will have a major impact and will becoming a large percentage of a sites rake. Today it’s close to zero percent”.

The DOJ’s decision to shut down the US facing businesses of three huge online poker sites on April 15th, 2011, or “Black Friday”, completely changed the online poker industry as we know it. This move by the DOJ caused a ripple effect across the globe so I asked Scott if Black Friday affected the CRM within other online poker companies.

“CRM shouldn’t change- their goals are the same as they were in March. 18-25 year old males have the same wants in Russia as they do in the USA”.

Before letting him go, I asked Scott to leave us with one thought about the online poker industry and his inspirational response was,

“Poker’s future has never looked brighter than today, we’re all going to be lucky to take part in the poker world!”