Poker in the Far East | Thomas A. Hall, C.E.O., AsianLogic

31 March 2009

By Christopher A. Krafcik

Welcome to IGamingNews' new series of articles exploring poker in the Far East. Below is the first installment of a two-part interview with Mr. Hall.

He talks fast. Really fast. And he knows a thing or two about Asia.

Thomas A. Hall, the chief executive of AsianLogic Ltd. and non-executive director of Playtech Ltd., was keen to discuss the growth prospects for poker in Asia, a market he insists -- and rightly -- should not be treated with a broad brush.

In the Western markets, poker grew quickly -- it just took off. Do you expect history to repeat itself in Asia?

Yes, I do. I think you'll see it in the next two years. It's already happening.

In Asia, it is a fragmented -- not a homogenous -- market; poker is going to grow faster in some markets than in others. I think it will grow -- it's already popular in Korea, but Korea already has an efficient cyberpolice set up, so PokerStars and Fulltilt get blocked quite aggressively by the Koreans. There's a lot of countries, though, that don't block at all.

I think you're going to see more land-based tours -- you'll see another one in Singapore this year -- you'll see another in Korea, Cambodia, places like that. I think you'll start to see poker tournaments on the boats. I think it's going to grow and grow and grow.

I heard at AiG from a number of people that traditional Asian card games are not achieving a high level of success. Is this true, and why?

The traditional Asian card games and mah-jongg have never really caught on online. One of the main reasons is it's too easy to cheat, player-collusion wise, in most of these games. Both mah-jongg and the two other, popular Asian games -- one in China called Do Di Zhu, and the other is Cho Dai Di, known as Big Two in the rest of the region -- are sequential games, meaning one player makes a play, then the other. Because it's easy to cheat, the trouble is players have never got comfortable playing them for anything other than small stakes.

Has Texas Hold'em fared any better?

Texas Hold'em has exploded pretty much across Asia, and the initial boom came in the Philippines and Korea.

Philippines because it is the closest assimilated to the U.S. in Asia. They started airing celebrity poker from the U.S. -- in other words, celebs were playing poker for charity, and the Filipinos started really getting into Texas Hold'em poker. There's now about, I think, 14 or 15 poker rooms in the Philippines, and it's become really popular.

Korea, probably because of the U.S. service people there, though poker's been popular for a while. If I had to choose a nation of the strongest poker players, it would be Korea.

Also, I think, generally -- I'm part Asian, so I've played a lot of these games since I was a kid -- I think Texas Hold'em actually lends itself to being one of the best games, if not the best game, to play online. There's a reason it's become so popular. I mean, you could argue Omaha is the more exciting game, but you know, that's the next step after Texas Hold'em, if you like.

What companies are doing well with Texas Hold'em?

AsianLogic's seen huge numbers of signups in play-for-fun across the region. The Japanese are playing more and more poker. Everest did really well in Japan, actually -- for some reason, their brand seems to have done really well in Japan. We actually have one of the top-performing sites in China called DafaPoker. Fulltilt and PokerStars are very popular in Korea. A lot of the brands are doing well.

There's not too much customization required as well with Texas Hold'em, so that makes things relatively simple. Koreans have a traditionally different interface, they like to have a sort of graphics-heavy interface to play, but others in Southeast Asia don't seem to really care.

Speaking of graphics-heavy, at what phase is your marketing deal with PKR, signed last November?

We haven't really started PKR's stuff yet because they're launching their Chinese client in May. Their English-language one, we still have some issues because the size of the client is large. So we're doing a sort of combined push with PKR in May, and we're just getting ready for that, integrating the right payment processor.

We're pushing the PKR product on two fronts: one is we're going to get it integrated into certain markets, like China, for play-for-fun and play-for-subscription markets. Because it's 3-D-heavy content, it's got the fully customizable avatar -- all the sorts of things that work really well in the play-for-fun and play-for-subscription markets.

What are some of the more advanced poker products -- in addition to your own -- that you've seen launched in Asia?

Well, we're working with the likes of Fulltilt in Asia, helping them on a number of fronts. They've got a very exciting product within their suite of games called Matrix -- I think they've patented it -- which is effectively where you play sit-and-go tournaments, simultaneously, at four tables against the same nine people.

In Asia there's a huge pro-gamer market, probably the biggest pro-gamer market in the world: China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines. And that sort of gaming appeals massively to these people, so I think that's going to be a big success in Asia, and I know Fulltilt is looking to develop nine tables or even 16.

Part two of this interview will be published Wednesday, April 1.

Poker in the Far East | Thomas A. Hall, C.E.O., AsianLogic is republished from iGamingNews.com.