In a recent interview between Unibets’ Head of Poker, Andrew West and Poker Industry PRO, it was revealed that lottery style Sit & Gos will not be added to the network’s offering anytime in the near future.
Lottery Sit & Gos have been seen as the biggest innovation the online poker industry has seen in the last few years—with French operator Winamax leading that trend by launching Expresso in August 2013.
Expresso features three-handed games, a hyper turbo structure and a blind lobby—which quickly paved the way for other poker operators wanting to mimic and capitalize on its popularity. PokerStars, FullTilt, and iPoker are just some of the operators now offering up these types of games to their customers.
When asked if Unibet would be considering Lottery Sit & Gos for their platform, West responded: “At some stage, a feature becomes industry standard and you lose players by not having it. I don’t think that’s where Expresso-like games are yet, and I don’t think they’ll get there any time soon.
“They’re definitely fun, but they’re too high variance for there to be many winners, and I think you need winners for games to have a future,” West opined. “They’re also vulnerable to 3rd party software granting huge edges.”
Casual Players
Unibet has always been outspoken over the years in seeking to attract casual, low stakes players, but are West is an active posters on the 2 + 2 poker forums that traditionally appeal to high-volume players.
When asked about this interesting dichotomy West said: “I think that when people say “casual player” they are thinking of just a bad (or even stupid) player. But plenty of people play poker because it’s fun, and they like talking to other people with the same idea. Lots of people on 2 + 2 who used to take the game more seriously are now at that stage of their poker career – I’d probably be one of them if I was allowed to play on Unibet.
“I doubt there’re more than a few hundred professional poker players in the world (as in, makes more money than working behind a bar), but there’s tens of thousands of 2 + 2 posters. It’s the biggest poker community in the world, and it’s got a wide range of player types, lots of whom will recommend sites to their friends,” West continued.
“It’s valuable to be well known and (mostly) well respected there. It’s also valuable to get good feedback on features, bugs, promotions, etc. We use it a lot to learn how to replicate bugs that have slipped through, or to fine-tune future promotions.”
