Lessons learned from a failed poker software business

Oh, and there is some software involved, too. But product quality only goes so far if your strategy for marketing is "I put it up on the Internet and eventually people find me". (That _can_ work but you have to have God's own luck AND an amazing product.)

Here's another lesson for you: if people are not buying your software, the answer is NOT to charge less. You can't convince people who aren't at your site to buy by offering them a discount -- they can't see the discount. On the other hand, folks who then see the discounted price as the "normal" price mentally value it to match. And software which only costs $10 is worthless. You are selling me a tool to _make money_ and can't justify a price higher than $10?

(I leave it to your imagination what I think of the "Make it free and try monetizing with ads!" advice you'll find elsewhere in this discussion.)

I sell software which is so trivial that technical types have difficulty believing it sells at all. My customers love me, and are happy to part with $25. And I should really get around to raising that one of these days. Should sell about $20k this year, which isn't quite quit-the-day-job money but on an hourly basis works out to "pretty freaking sweet". Not to crimp the startup style here but, erm, charging people money for value remains a decent business model.

I liked the name, but the problem was the three words: all+in+expert. There was a time after it launched where the site came up as #1, but now its faded into oblivion. I thought it succinctly captured what the software was about, but as you said, maybe it wasn't catchy enough.

I'm launching a new site in a few weeks which I'm going to do a few things differently with. The digitalpoint idea isn't bad.

No need for a donation, your advice is far more valuable than $20 will ever be.

After it launched I decided that the best way to demonstrate its utility was to search poker forums for problems and then post the ALL IN Expert results. I wound up adding a feature to the software that let people export the results in a forum-friendly format which also linked back to the site. This helped bring some people to the site and if I had continued it for some time it may have brought in a few more registrations. In hindsight maybe I should have done this more. It's hard to say... No matter how much you prod a dead duck it's not gonna move much.

For instance, if you can calculate your equity with T9s against a range of (AA-22, Ak-AT, A9s, KQ-KT, K9s, QJ-QTs)in your head, consider yourself a genius.

The type of software he built is very popular among people who are good at poker or trying to become so.

If you make no estimate what kind of hand your opponent has you can only reason in three ways:

a) you assume he always has the best hand. So you throw away your hand.

b) you assume he always has the worst hand. So you put your chips in.

c) you bet big if you have good cards, and you throw your cards away when your cards are lousy.

Clearly (a) and (b) are bad strategies.

The last strategy is not as bad as the other two, but still terrible. More often than not your cards are bad. So your opponent will figure out you're not willing to make large bets with lousy cards, so every time you don't bet, he will, and every time you bet, he won't. You're going to lose your chips that way. Basic game theory.

So you need to figure out what cards he could have been dealt so that his actions make sense. Then, from that range of plausible cards, figure out how often he has a better hand than you do. If you like your odds, you put your chips in. Otherwise, you throw your cards away.

It's a lot more complex than this, of course. But the point is that "estimating your opponent's hands", as difficult as it may be, is absolutely crucial if you want to win.

A beginner will primarily focus on what his own cards are. An intermediate will focus on what his opponent's cards are. A more advanced player will focus on what his opponent thinks his cards are and so on. The best players in the world are experts at figuring out which level you're thinking on so they can think one level beyond you.

Once you estimate your opponent's range based on his style, the cards, his previous actions, etc, you need to know what to do with that information. ALL IN Expert was designed to help with the second part.

It has immense value, in fact, it's the hardest part of the game. Figuring out what to do once you've estimated someone's hand is (with a little practice and the help of a good computer program) pretty easy.

The entire game is one big war to see who can estimate his opponents' hands the best, while preventing his opponents from doing the same to him.

With a lot of work it might one day make some decent change, but again, it's not worth it at this point.

If I told you what I made off of this sort of thing in the pre-UIGEA days (and especially before Party spun off its skins sites) you'd shit your pants.

Top rakeback providers made 6 or maybe even low 7 figures per month at the pinnacle. The Poker Tracker guys have sold many thousands of copies at $50 a pop.

Games in general are the only thing monetizing well right now on Facebook and MySpace platforms too, and the #1 most profitable is almost certainly Zynga's Texas Hold'em.