VIP Feedback

Your feedback is very important to us, as it allows us to improve our service and VIP club so that you as VIPs feel you get the most from us and enjoy your experience to its full potential. Last month Lewis ‘Abattoir’ Gill wrote in with a few points that he feels we need to address, read on below to see how we the VIP Team have responded and are going to action his points.

If you would like to write in and get your point across or tell us about an event your recently attended with us, write us an email at vippromotions@ladbrokes.com, and if your lucky enough to be featured in our next VIP Newsletter we will give you a £50 shop voucher, to use in our Online Shop.

Star Letter from Lewis ‘Abattoir’ Gill

The VIP service offered by Ladbrokes and yourself is of very high quality. Obviously I can't praise you and the team enough for the trip to Killarney. It was an amazing trip that was only made better by the presence of the team. The MSN VIP manager is also an amazing tool that is available throughout most of the day. Having someone there to answer your questions in real time really is something to pride yourselves on. No other website offers this service which can make a lot of players feel unnoticed and under valued. It's the little touches like these that make the player feel like he is not just some grinder sitting in a room somewhere but he is actually a valued poker player.

I did have an idea, I know now that you have a featured VIP player, maybe every month you should have a different VIP player, perhaps his name is in red at the tables. Perhaps they get 40% rake back for the month if they play 20k points worth of hands. Not only does this make the player feel like they are getting special treatment but it will also give them a big incentive to play more hands. Perhaps you cant give the extra 10% then maybe they win a prize or something, take one of the electronic prizes from the VIP quarterly tournament or something if they make 20k points.

As you may or may not know we are on the Microgaming network which caps us to only offering up to 30% rake back to any Ladbrokes Poker Players, this is offered exclusively to the VIP Club. At present we do rotate our Featured VIP on monthly bases, click here to see our entire VIP Featured Players list for 2010. We normally do offer our featured VIPs a small incentive, something like a tournament ticket or a Online Poker Shop voucher, but we have found that the players we ask to do the interview are more than happy and having them featured in the Newsletter and on the web site is reward enough.

This leads me onto my next point. To become a VIP member you have to make 10k points per month. I think that this is a fairly easy target to reach which is a very good thing but I do think that there should be another level of VIP, maybe a VIP platinum. This could be a quarterly target or just a monthly one. I worked out that about 50k points in the month is a difficult but doable task. When I say difficult I know that Fraser would make it in a week lol but for a normal 6 tabling player it would be a fair target. I don’t know what the prize for this could be, i remember saying legally you couldn't give 40% but i do think there would have to be some sort of monetary incentive. OR maybe if you reach VIP platinum then you have to obviously make 50k points per month to keep it BUT you get double points for the next two months so you now have to make 100k points but you will get there in the same amount of playing time. This will not only benefit the players but also Ladbrokes as you are now guaranteed more rake from the extra hands player will be playing.

We set the VIP qualification target at 10k points in order to hopefully give a wider set of players a VIP experience. The 10k points target is achievable and not an unrealistic target for players to aim for. The idea of a Platinum Club is a good one and has been considered. We will continue to try and develop the VIP club and this is certainly an option. We will look into a higher tier and see what sort of rewards we can offer to players who achieve higher status without breaking network rules.

Another point that I would like to bring up is the use of a key gen, I think loads of the poker websites have implemented this. It is basically a small USB stick with a small calculator Esq screen. The player then uses points to buy keys which will be a 6 digit code or something. Now when they log in they have to type in this number as well as there password. This makes it impossible for anyone to log into their account without physically being in possession of this key gen. I'm sure u would be able to find a more in depth description. It means that people will feel safer leaving money in their account. It’s also another area in which you can match your competition.

We are not convinced a key generator would provide a decent level of security above the current settings we have at ladbrokespoker.com, or in any of our online offerings. Our system is robust and security levels are probably a lot higher than sites offering a key generator. My question would be why these sites see the need to create an extra layer of security; their existing levels should be robust enough.