Hi There,
This is my Blog and it is all about our Journey to get our On line Poker Site up and running . The site is called http://www.redhandpoker.com/ and we offer a full Poker card room where players can log on and play poker against players from all over the world for real cash as well as for free, there are tournaments running all the time, 24 hours a day, as well as special offers and player bonus wins.
As you have no doubt gathered the site is live although traffic has been slow and I will now explain how we got here.
Four years ago I looked into the option of forming an on line casino and very quickly learnt that this was going to be tough, what with all the legislation and the demise of the UK Gaming Board and the forming of the new Gambling Commission, this in itself posted lots of problems and to top it all there was the Labour government of the day who had been led to believe that gambling was going to be the saviour of modern England and we should have casinos on every street corner. The British government deiced that they had to clean up this "On Line Gambling" and opted to allow sites to move to the UK and comply with a list of rules outlined by the government and in return the British government would charge a huge tax rate but give them a BS Kite mark that would be posted on the site to prove that they were compliant with UK law. This didn't seem such a good deal for the gaming companies as the rules led out by the Government were actually what the companies were already abiding by and the tax rates in other countries were much more reasonable, so all the On Line Sites based here in the UK left for Malta, Gibraltar and such like, not to forget this was not just the Poker and Casino sites but due to the new higher rate of tax suggested by the DCMS but also the on line bookmakers joined the exodus as well.
So as you can imagine my job of setting up an online site suddenly became a little harder.
I operate land based Adult gaming centers in the UK and am licenced with the Gambling Commission in the UK, we also comply as a licensing condition with social awareness and the three main licencing conditions of the 2005 gaming act,
1) Preventing Gambling from being a source of crime or disorder,being associated with crime or disorder or being used to support crime.
2)Ensuring that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way.
3)Protecting children and other venerable persons from being harmed or exploited by gambling.
We are a responsible company and pride ourselves on our operation, so I felt that for us On line was the direction in which our business should go.
I put funds aside for marketing and began my quest to set up the site, I very quickly found a company in Malta that were willing to host our site but at the provisional meetings it became clear that all my knowledge of the gaming industry, that I had worked in all my life both in the UK and abroad, was neither here nor there this was going to be an IT and marketing exercise. I contacted a friend of mine who is involved in IT and offered him a percentage of the company if he would become involved, he agreed and we began developing the site and I was off to Malts to get the correct gaming licence. One thing I wanted was slot machines and casino games on the site, however this proved difficult as by this time America had outlawed on line gambling sites and they would not allow American citizens to play. Although this did not seem to make much difference to me from what I was learning the American market was massive and the hope was that in the future they would relax their laws therefore it would be better to operate a Poker site and allow everyone to play including Americans, this would allow us to market the site in the US and when and if the US laws were relaxed we could add the casino games at a later date, thus redhandpoker was born.
I had put a considerable amount of money aside for marketing for when the site was ready to go live, however there were delays, the network we were joining were merging with another network and this all took time, there were hosting issues and this all took time and while all this was going on we were all heading for the worst financial collapse the world had seen since the great depression.
As a result of the financial collapse business in my land based AGC's plummeted as did all gaming revenues worldwide, so the money I had put aside for marketing was used up to keep our business afloat. I was now in a position where I have 18 staff who all have mortgages and commitments and I had to keep the land based side of the business, our only business, going at all costs and we have done this. We have had to make a lot of cutbacks, this did not include staff losses as we worked together to ensure everyone kept their job, but never the less it has not been a great time. Very slowly our business is getting back to where it once was and I am sure that it will be better and stronger in the coming months.
During this time our site went live, as you can imagine my time was pre occupied with keeping and recovering our business so I had no time to dedicate to the new online venture and the money I had put aside for marketing was gone. The site went live on December 20th and by the 27th it had crashed, I am pleased to say that all the problems were ironed out and on January 7th 2010 http://www.redhandpoker.com/ was up and running without a hitch.
Since this date the site has been updated weekly although we are changing that to daily to give our clients more of a feel of what is going on with Tournaments, Bonus giveaways and competitions.
On line poker from an operators point of view is good in that we do not pay the winner, all the players sit at a table and play with their money against each other and when one wins the funds are immediately transferred to that player and the house take a small percentage for supplying the table/card room and site, this percentage is displayed on every table so that every player can see it and is very competitive compared with our competitors. when players deposit cash it goes into their "wallet" and when they cash out it is paid directly back to their card or bank account which ever they prefer. Redhand do not hold any details at all, our cash handling is carried out by Money Booker's, net teller, Western Union, 900pay to name a few and the customer chooses which one, they deposit with the company and then the company you have chosen deposit to your wallet at redhand. On sign up http://www.redhandpoker.com/ will ask for your credit card details, this is only for age verification and no details are held, as a company we must ensure that players are over 18 and credit card is the quickest and most reliable way of doing this as well as being the industry standard.
Our vision for http://www.redhandpoker.com/ is to provide a platform where players can play as well as interact with each other, there is a chat facility where you can talk to other players and learn more about the game. We have a how to play section, which explains the rules and not just Texas hold Em we also have Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo as well as 7 card stud. We run a transparent site and hope in the future to add the full casino suite, we have sit and go tournaments, Freerolls as well as big cash tournaments and at the moment every Sunday you can enter our "Mexican Rivera" tourney where you can win a trip to Mexico on board a cruise ship and be at the Mexican Poker tour worth over $3,000.
We have a lot of plans for http://www.redhandpoker.com/ and hope to grow and develop we are also looking into a not for profit affiliate which would enable players to play and donate to charities at the same time!
Please take a look at the site and let us know what you think by contacting us at info@redhandpoker.com I look forward to your comments.
Thanks for reading
Redhand
