Bodog's Recreational Business Model

I just came across this news post on the Calvin Ayre's (Bodog) website "Viewpoint – Bodog Network’s Recreational Poker Model". I doubt my comment will be published so let's recab the video here.

Video by Gaming & Poker news - CalvinAyre.com

Jonas Ödman VP of Bodog states that their recreational business model is clearly aimed at the recreational / losing player who deposits a lot. The aim of Bodog here, according to Ödman is to offer players more of a "entertaining poker experience" rather than a real poker grind. When asked what more serious players or poker pros think about the model he replied "They don't like , but we don't care much about that".


I wonder since when those players have turned into "rakers" which any other site prefers of the recreational player since those are the ones playing larger number of hands, more cash tables = higher revenue. There is no revenue in a simple deposit, the sites make their profit on player generated rake for which players preferable need to play cash tables and loads of them. Bodog's aim seems to be to circulate the money in their system rather than making large revenue from high profile multi tablers or semi-pros / pros.

Ödman also stated that Bodog has introduced anonymous tables to prevent the more serious grinders from using tools such as HoldemManger. First of all, this is nothing new Mr. Ödman. NordicBet is offering anonymous tables since a long time and most serious grinders don't play them for a number of reasons. Being a serious grinder myself I relay on accurate stats specially when grinding numerous tables hence Bodog is not interesting for me to play on at all. It also aids collusion such as whole card sharing via chat clients etc since I cant ID players who keep showing up on the same tables. Though Jonas Ödman claims that Bodog takes this issue very serious I prefer to be on top of it myself not having to relay on their security meassures working or not.

He also stated that the whole cards of all players are visible in the hand history since there is no issue protecting player integrity since they are anonymous. - Wring again imho. It means I can have the hand history open while playing a session and will see what whole cards the players had in the previous hand fixing my strategy to that while in the same session which I see as an exploit to the play. What good is it to me if I fold my bluff and the players can see my folded cards in the history in the next hand?

Watch the video and let me know what you think about it by commenting bellow.