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Ladbrokes AWARDS VERIFICATION |
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Ladbrokes offers a wide selection of blackjack games, with 12 available currently. As well as several popular favourites like Vegas Strip Blackjack and European Blackjack, there are also some more unusual options. These include high-limit blackjack, double exposure blackjack and the enthusiastically named Super Fun Blackjack 21. The high-limit blackjack is played out on a brilliant red casino table (all others are green), which helps ramp up the temperature of the game. Tell us about Ladbrokes 2007. What has been the highlight of the year for the company and why? From a poker perspective it’s been a really good year, particularly in terms of some of the offline events that we had. At the end of 2007, we had Poker Million VI, which was a culmination of six months of qualification from our players to win the envied 72 seats in the televised heats. Ladbrokes add $500,000 to this event. So it’s the biggest added money in televised poker in the world and a really big flagship event for us. After the heats we then have two semifinals followed by a live final, which was played out on December 21. That live final had six amazing players including some of our sponsored players. The best thing about this event is the benefit for the Ladbrokes Poker community. At the live final we had over 400 Ladbrokes Poker customers and friends who joined us for the party and to watch the event live as it was happening. There was loads of excitement, lots of friendly banter, and everyone routing for different players including their friends and family. So people who normally only know each other by their screen name were meeting in person. This was quickly followed by the Ladbrokes Poker Cruise, for which there were qualifiers running throughout the whole of 2007 as people tried to win a $5,500 package to get on that ship. They could qualify for as little as $5, and there were even people on the ship who had got there without spending anything. So with everybody trying to qualify for these offline events, it brings the community together. So this year has been about the players. What has been the worst moment of 2007 for the company and why? Certainly the most nerve-wracking moment was when we turned on our Ladbrokes 3D Poker for the first time. After lots of product development, testing and hard work, we were really hoping that everything would go smoothly—and we extremely relieved when it did. We can now have 3D and 2D players playing at the same table. What steps has Ladbrokes taken to ensure a good online reputation? We at Ladbrokes want to stay true to our customers and our community. We offer them reliable banking, trustworthy withdrawal of cash, stable software—and we can do all of this because we’re not on a network. We own all customers and so we can do amazing things like Poker Million and the Ladbrokes Poker Cruise. We own our own network, and so people meet each other on Ladbrokes and start chatting to each other. We notice this particularly at offline events, they all make friends, be they in Sweden or in Birmingham. Ladbrokes Poker was established in May 2002 and we’ve always been on our network and we’ve grown and grown. Initially, certainly in the UK, people came to Ladbrokes because they knew and trusted the brand. In the early days when internet gaming was forming, and people were being asked to give credit card numbers, they wanted to do it with a company they felt safe doing that with. So being an established high street name and having our own network has helped us. When other companies joined the online poker bandwagon at a later date, a lot of them joined up together in order to get a lot of players together. Whereas because we started relatively early, and we did it ourselves, people trusted us. And they quickly found out that they liked playing each other too, with many of them remaining with us to this day. We seem to have bred some Ladbrokes ‘favourites’ who are well known across the community. Our emphasis is on getting community players. We have a team of poker managers in Gibraltar, and a lot of the players know them. They are the guys who are in the chat every day, answering queries, helping customers. And then we have a stable of professionals too. We have Roy ‘The Boy’ Brindley, Irish Open winner Marty Smyth, and World Heads-Up Champion Jeff Kimber—and this is something we’ll be looking to develop in 2008. We want them to be visible, out and about on the offline poker circuit, and also increasingly, they are there to help the online players. We want to use them much more in their specialist areas of the game. For example, Roy The Boy is very good at Omaha, so how can we help players to play Omaha better? And at last year’s WSOP we were the only online poker site to be sanctioned by Harrah’s, which meant we were able to wire the buy-ins directly, were able to book hotels directly, and had our own players lounge—no other poker site was able to offer this last year. We had a great welcome party on the rooftop of the Rio—and the essence of what poker is all about could be seen on the faces of players at that party. What do you have planned for 2008? What sort of year is it going to be? There’s lots and lots of optimism for 2008. We have another Poker Million, and we’ll be just as involved with the WSOP this year. It’s going to be the year of 3D too so we’ll be promoting our 3D Poker to new audiences and growing our community. We’re going to have new software features coming, including multi-currency tables. There will be more affiliate partnerships. Our racehorse Laddies Poker Two is very promising and won his first race at Kempton. Our community owns him—people played for and won shares in him on the site. So all the shareholders are looking forward to him having a really successful year and sharing any winnings. We’ve got some great cash game promotions going on early in the year, players can win WSOP packages, millions of dollars in cash, a trip to Jonas ‘Nebuchad’ Danielson’s mansion for tuition with him and a ride in his Ferrari. Our VIP Club is a focus for 2008—recognising our valued customers with special promotions and privileges—trips to Dubai, the Spanish Grand Prix, Cheltenham racecourse hospitality, and more. Kate McLennan, marketing director, Ladbrokes Poker. What is special or unique about Ladbrokes’ poker software? The whole process of Ladbrokes relationship with Microgaming is that we have a degree of freedom that allows us to create and design our own features and really push the direction in which we want to move as a company. Usability of the site is absolutely crucial for us. We want players to have the smoothest transactions possible. We want them to come from registration and get straight to a table without any problems in between. Our latest upgrades have focused on allowing players to do everything they need to do while they’re at the table. So, for instance, we have Quick Bank, which is almost a full banking system at the table, where you can access your account and transfer money from different wallets. We now have the MTT lobbies in chat, so if you’re playing in a tournament you don’t have to go back to the tournament lobby to see what the chipstacks are—that’s all in chat at the table, so you’re able to control your position in the game much better. Our aim is to make sure everything is there for you, in the place where you think it should logically be. We’ve done usability studies on where people’s eyes naturally tend to look for things and can then make assumptions on how we should design things. We’re introducing multi-currency games, which is a large upgrade for us. This allows players to play in their home currencies, should they wish to, which localises the site more for our international interests. It comes down to the ease of play, qualify, and dependability. Coupled with our fantastic customer service, we really do hope to deliver a very strong package. Everything is targeted at our players, and we take feedback from them to use in future. Valli Ardalan, head of poker management and poker product development, Ladbrokes Poker. What makes Ladbrokes’ sportsbook software so popular and easy to use? There are a number of reasons why the site is so popular. We have horse racing from all UK and Irish tracks streamed live to your PC; a Flash bet in play interface, offering sports not just from the UK but across the world—Croatian water polo, Greek basketball and Algerian football to name but three; lots of great new bet-in-play markets across all sports, allowing punters to bet in an casino-style fashion—bets such as 'Winner of Next Point' in tennis and 'Score off next ball' in cricket make the in play experience really quick and very much live. There are detailed form and stats for all UK racing, including silks; and lots of other extra content to enhance the betting experience—scorecards for all England international cricket matches; head-to-head stats on all major football; video previews from experts such as Alastair Down, John Motson and Frank Warren; detailed statistics on all major US sports; and live scores on all major sports. It’s all available in eleven different languages, catering for Ladbrokes customers across the globe. James Welham, head of content, Ladbrokes Sportsbook. |
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