Poker Industry PRO in 2019: Seven Exclusive Online Poker Industry Interviews
Key Takeaways
  • Partypoker’s Colette Stewart on live streaming.
  • PokerStars’ Severin Rasset on the Aurora game engine.
  • Exclusive new Adda52 CEO Naveen Goyal.

PokerMatch: Focusing All Efforts on the Home-Grown Ukrainian Poker Market (January 2019)

Top line: “PokerMatch is the Ukrainian poker room you may not know too much about. Having left the Russian Pokerdom network in early 2018 after two years, PokerMatch is fast becoming a popular choice for players in Eastern Europe.”

Key takeaways:

  • CEO of PokerMatch Ruslan Bangert took time out of his schedule to let us know more about what makes PokerMatch tick and what can be expected from the Ukrainian poker room in 2019.
  • PokerMatch left the PokerDom network in early 2018 to “integrate more deeply into the home market” where the poker room sells themselves on “national pride” and is the only poker room in the country to offer games in the local currency of UAH.
  • This atmosphere has resulted in players feeling like the poker room is a “native project” that everyone contributes too.

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Playtech’s New Head of Poker Product David Pomroy on the Future of the Online Poker Network (March 2019)

Top line: “Poker Industry PRO last sat down with David Pomroy in August 2017. Then, he had just taken on the role as Head of Poker at Unibet.”

Key takeaways:

  • In an exclusive interview with PRO, David talks about his new position and what can be expected from Playtech under his guidance as they face the challenges of the ever competitive online poker market.
  • “The online poker industry has faced a lot of challenges over the last decade and that has been felt by Playtech at times, especially given the added issues that come with operating as a network.”
  • “We are fortunate that we can build a product which is going to be the first online poker experience for a lot of sports bettors and casino players, many of whom are no longer interested in accessing online poker through a traditional desktop download client.”

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Behind Partypoker’s Team Online: Five Questions for Colette Stewart (March 2019)

Top line: “2019 has partypoker putting Twitch and live streaming at the core of their acquisitions strategy as they aim to build a global Twitch audience throughout the year.”

Key takeaways:

  • Colette Stewart, Poker Twitch and Community Manager along with input from newly signed Team Online pro, Jaime Staples took time out of their schedule to answer some of our questions about Team Online and the future of Twitch.
  • “Twitch is growing so fast that new viewers are joining daily, yet there’s still room for more poker streamers and content creators to come on board.”
  • “partypoker is incredibly proud to be working alongside some of the premier streamers in poker.”

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PokerStars: The Next Generation—Inside Aurora, the Operator’s All-New Game Engine (April 2019)

Top line: “Last December, pokerfuse exclusively revealed that PokerStars was working on a new game engine, codenamed Aurora.”

Key takeaways:

  • Last December, pokerfuse exclusively revealed that PokerStars was working on a new game engine, codenamed Aurora.
  • Based on new image assets deployed in the free-play “dot-net” poker client, it appeared that under Aurora, PokerStars was redesigning the online poker experience on desktop.
  • “To me, the vision around what we’re trying to do is realizing that the taste of our players is changing and the trends are evolving very quickly.”

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Five Questions for Giorgi Tsutskiridze, Head of Poker and Skill Games at BetConstruct (June 2019)

Top line: “BetConstruct is an igaming network that offers white labeling, turnkey and API solutions for gaming operators looking to operate under their licenses.”

Key takeaways:

  • After making the move from the Georgian online gaming operator Adjarabet, Giorgi Tsutskiridze now heads up the Head of Poker and Skill Games team at BetConstruct.
  • “With a finger on the pulse of multiple tech trends and 15 years experience of delivering innovative and proven offerings, we push the limits in iGaming to give maximum freedom of choice and independence to our partner operators that drives them on their path to success.”

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Adda52, India’s Leading Online Poker Room: Five Questions for New CEO Naveen Goyal (October 2019)

Top line: “India’s oldest and leading online poker room Adda52 recently saw a change in its leadership, appointing Naveen Goyal as the new CEO.”

Key takeaways:

  • CEO says the company will come to a decision about the TDS policy “in the next few weeks.”
  • Operator plans competitive online tournament series in the future.
  • “Traffic doubled” with Gayle marketing campaign.

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Growth, Community and Network Expansion: Seven Questions for Unibet’s Head of Poker Kristoffer Bergvall (November 2019)

Top line: “Swedish online gambling company Kindred Group’s poker product Unibet is continuing to grow, recently celebrating yet another period of double-digit year-over-year growth during the Q3 financial results.”

Key takeaways:

  • “If we rise to that challenge I have no doubt that we will grow our player base at a much faster rate.”
  • “If we had known the success of HexaPro we would have added the game format earlier.”
  • “We are evaluating our expansion options and it is possible that we will add more Kindred brands to the network.”

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