As the image shows, Pat Hartnett was seen promoting Real Deal Poker, wearing their patch on his shirt during the 2010 WSOP in Las Vegas, but this only came after (the aptly named) Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield was also seen in Real Deal Poker’s colours, and has now partnered with the Isle of Man based poker provider who are offering a “Beat the Champ” promotion offering registered players the chance to play and “knock out” the 5 time World Heavyweight Champ!

The face to face match against Evander will be held in Leicester Square, London as part of the now infamous Poker in the Park but there are a few rounds of qualifiers to go through first.

Click through on the banner below for more information on the promotion before signing up to Real Deal Poker to be in for a chance of qualifying to play against the Champ himself!

Darren is also a qualified and experienced web designer so those looking for a website are serviced here too, and who knows, I may even jump on the bandwagon and help with SEO and PPC management ;)

Les has a serious IT background and has just moved over to the Costa bringing a wealth of knowledge with him, and I have no doubt that IT World is going to be a great addition to the area. There are very few people offering IT services properly out here (although their are a good number of shysters operating on the coast) so I really think the guys are filling a much needed gap in the market and I’m wishing them the best of luck for the future!

Alas, Google Maps had failed me, as a quick look at the postcode of said hotel, and indeed the image which showed no nearby buildings, quickly alerted my suspicions. The Trelawney Hotel is actually in Torquay:

Google Maps, well and truly, failed!

Real Deal Poker is the only poker software developer at the moment, which has shied away from RNGs (Random Number Generators) and has developed a platform that actually involves real decks of cards being shuffled (though be it by machines) in order to create a matrix of permutations, from which their poker platform pulls a deck. From my conversations with Gene Gioia the system works something akin to the following:

• A deck of cards (with barcodes) is shuffled by machine
• The order of the cards following the shuffle is recorded and placed in a matrix
• When this particular “deck” is pulled by the poker client, a player (here’s the random element) gets to cut the deck at a random position
• The cards are then dealt in order from that position, to create the rest of the gameplay

The client itself isn’t much different from any of the others that are readily available, with the exception of the burn pot. The dealer shows a burn card being placed to the side of the deck before each phase of play, just like in a real game… which begs the question, why do we never see a burn stack on any other software platform?

The guys over at Real Deal quoted a piece of research which stated that a large percentage (up to 30%!) of players interviewed at land based poker games state trust issues regarding RNGs as their primary reason for not playing online. By eliminating that hurdle, RDP are inviting a target market which would vastly supersede the current number of online poker players, to join the online poker world!

There is a great vid (albeit a little long) of Gene demoing his platform below, and for any of you wanting to see it in action, hope over to www.realdealpoker.com, take a look, and enjoy some free bucks on me:

Tracking sub-domains with Google Analytics also works, with the minimal of configuration, by simply amending your GA code (this is the most up to date version, just by the way):

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

To read:

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXXX-1']);
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.yourdomain.com']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

Simple enough? Well, here is a a nice tidbit of information, if you have two pages on your primary and sub-domains, that share the same page name (i.e. index.html), then Google Analytics will combine the statistics for these two pages artificially inflating the statistics for index.html on the primary domain. As my good friend Rob put it: “I wonder who decided that this was a sensible default?” Sensible default indeed!

More endless searching led me to information on setting up a filter, which will supposedly split your data and track traffic on both sub-domains and the primary domain:

Unfortunately, this didn’t work out too well either in my tests:

So, calling on the Twitterverse, David Whitehouse from Bronco volunteered to help out and see if we could get this fixed, and came across the following filter configuration from Brian Clifton’s book:

This has now been set up, and I’m running a few more tests on some new pages and will report on results as soon as they’re in…

Update

So it’s the morning after the afternoon before, and I can’t say the results are overly brilliant, especially when I spot the following duplication in my analytics overview:

Furthermore, the subdomain I have been testing is being treated like a subdirectory in the reporting:

So when you hover over the “Visit this page” link in GA, you get the following in your status bar:

Not what I would call perfect, by any means.

LONDON, UK – 6th May 2010 –GameOn Marketing Limited and GameOn Affiliates Limited will today see the launch of GameOn Consultants Limited (GameOn Consultants).

GameOn Consultants is a “one stop shop” that offers operators practical assistance and advice on all aspects of running a casino, poker, sports, bingo, live casino and soft games operation.

With more than 35 years of combined experience within igaming that spans every sector of the industry, GameOn Consultants will offer a wide range of services from advice and assistance with implementation of products and licensing, sourcing and managing white label solutions; developing product set up requirements, devising bonus and loyalty strategies, fraud and risk analysis and a full CRM service.

GameOn Consultants will also manage all online aspects of a client’s product offering from domain registration and management, to website design and search engine marketing (PPC/SEO).

Commenting on the launch, Darren Wyatt, Director of GameOn Consultants said, “GameOn Consultants has the expertise and dynamism required to make a really exciting impact within the igaming space. The new company will sit alongside GameOn Marketing and GameOn Affiliates, both of which represent some of the leading names in igaming – a testament to the strength of the brand – something we are incredibly proud to be part of.”

Sarah Jones, Director of GameOn Marketing and GameOn Affiliates said, “We are constantly striving to find new ways of giving additional value to an industry that we are extremely passionate about. GameOn Consultants is such an exciting opportunity and truly believe that we now have the capacity to assist any company within online gaming with any request.”

To find out more, please go to www.GameOn-Consultants.com

See for yourself: Google SERP

Unfortunately the page seems to be down, but there’s still a cached version here, screenshot-ed below:

Enough amusement for one day :)

Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

?
See for yourself. Load up a fresh Chrome window, click the page icon, and scroll down to Developer > Developer Tools:

Right click anywhere in that window, and select View Source:

Tada:

As he puts it, those in the UK and Europe start seeing April-fools based jokes and posts, technically, a day earlier than we should, where as those in the US, once they feel safe after the midday cut off, are duped once more in the evening as those of us closer to Greenwich start pranking about!

CRAP – The Campaign for a Recognised April-fools Period calls for an internationally recognised, 24 hour period, spanning March 31st and April 1st.

Android’s WordPress App may be light on the features, dull and not overly exciting, but it does the job. Quite how well it does the job will only be truly apparent after I hit the publish button at the end of this post!

WordPress App for Android – What’s missing?

Straight away, we notice the lack of 1 touch buttons to insert H2 tags, most of the nice plugin functionality for SEO stuff and no functionality to upload media from the phone into the post. Makes live blogging a bit of a chore! Still, it’s getting there!