CHILICONNECT
already signed up for and to join them there. Poker Stars has recently enjoyed much success with their Home Games option, allowing players to create their own clubs and play together with friends. With the tournament-tracking in Chilipoker players can now play in larger tournaments but still as an organised group of friends.
to all intents and purposes, like an instant messenger application. Floating beside the poker client, Chiliconnect allows players to make the game a more social experience, as well as participate in real money challenges against each other.
As with any ‘buddy’ system you can populate your list with friends as your network grows, but on Chiliconnect you can also share results as well as keep tabs on how well your friends are doing, all in real time. The system can then link immediately to the popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and post results there for your non-Chilipoker friends to see. Similarly, you can update Chiliconnect with your ‘moods’, random thoughts, and – if you’re anything like the poker players I know – whinge on about your bad beats.
FOLLOW ME FOLLOW YOU
Key to the social functionality of Chiliconnect is the ability to see the tournaments your friends are
A WORD WITH… Chilipoker founder, Alexandre Dreyfus
CIONLINE: How long has Chiliconnect been in development? ALEXANDRE DREYFUS: The genesis of Chiliconnect was two years ago, but we really started at the end of last year when we decided that to survive in our industry we needed to be different; and to be different, we needed to innovate. The entire company did a brainstorming exercise, and we eventually launched Chiliconnect v1.0 on the 5th of April.
CIO: Why do you think no one has done this before? AD: It’s not a revolution, it’s an
improvement. There are two kinds of online poker room: the leaders like Poker Stars and Full Tilt, and the others who are trying to become Poker Stars and Full Tilt! However, the ‘others’ are quiet often part of a network (ongame, ipoker, entraction, etc.) and cannot actually control the poker client. Because Chilipoker is smaller it was easier for us to set-up this innovative feature.
You can also create Last Longer challenges (from
$1 to $1,000) with up to six players, and still proposition friends up to 30 minutes into a tournament, daring them to make a comeback or retain a lead as you all battle for survival. Chilipoker will then automatically settle all challenges, with no commission or fee on top.
In another tip of the hat to real-world tournaments,
players can use Chiliconnect to swap percentages with each other in any online tournament. Before and even after a tournament has begun players can exchange up to 50% in shares.
Word is only just spreading through the online
poker community about the arrival of Chiliconnect, and while no player can pretend the new tools and options don’t sound like lots of fun, whether they’ll be enough to tempt serious online players away from their preferred sites remains to be seen. Watch this space…
AD: Of course all our tools and concepts
CIO: What feature do you expect to be most popular? AD: There are many features, but for me the
most exciting are the side bets and challenges. I love that I can challenge my friends online and then brag about my results on social networks.
CIO: Where there any planned features you
had to abandon? AD: We haven’t abandoned anything, just
delayed them... We have a least ten more features to bring to Chiliconnect in the next 3-4 months.
CIO: What are your expectations for
increased player numbers on the site? AD: Chiliconnect is a tool, it’s not the perfect killer app. This means that we need to invest to promote Chilipoker as a whole, but we clearly want to take the figures we had one year ago and double them in the next two years.
CIO: Is this concept protected or do you think other poker sites will immediately bring out their own versions?
MAY 2011 51
are patented and copyrighted in Europe. We will be very vigilant about this.
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