Wicked Ways: Even Witchcraft Can’t Save the Epic Poker League
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in Colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693.
The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Over and Terminer 1692 in Salem Town.
"And now Nineteen persons having been hang'd, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned, in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of the Churches of N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation in general, and not one clear'd; about Fifty having confest themselves to be Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and Two Hundred more acccused; the Special Commision of Oyer and Terminer comes to a period,..." - Robert Calef
Witches still exist today, they even run for Congress.
From January 2010 through August 2010, we are now learning that the company which would eventually become Federated Sports+Gaming, parent to the Epic Poker League, had registered dozens of domain names with the word “wicked”.
But the spell cast upon the poker community was short-lasted.
It turns out Epic’s parent company was trying to purchase the poker news portal WickedChopsPoker.com, with the two parties obviously having a pretty bad falling out.
From WickedChopsPoker:
From January 2010 through August 2010, the company that eventually became Federated Sports+Gaming was in negotiations with the Entities Who Comprise Wicked Chops Poker to acquire Wicked Chops Poker as part of a larger media development strategy. When it became clear that FS+G had not yet raised the financial capital to make such an acquisition, or perhaps that they had changed direction on making acquisitions in general, we began negotiating to work as consultants for their company. Eventually, we settled on a web and content development agreement.
In early November 2010, FS+G finally agreed to remove the prohibitive intellectual property language from their web development contract. At this time, Jeffrey Pollack and Annie Dukerequested a meeting with the Entities to discuss the “state of the state.” At this meeting (yet before we actually received the revised contract), after an hour of discussions about The Social Networkand how Mark Zuckerberg tried to screw over his friend Eduardo Saverin**, Pollack and Duke revealed that they planned to name their company and new organization the Wicked Poker League.
Our initial reaction was that Wicked Poker was an awful name for a pro player league.
Our second reaction was they legally couldn’t do such a thing, and we hired an intellectual property attorney to handle the matter.***
WCP noted that the “Wicked” domains were purchased at a time the two parties were in discussions and that neither Pollack or Duke disclosed what they were up to.
Regarding the league’s recent bankruptcy protection filing, WCP had this to offer:
We were not surprised by what happened with the company, we sincerely hope that all the people they owe money to somehow, eventually, get paid.
But despite this wicked activity, Annie Duke is not necessarily a witch.
Just ask fellow poker pro Daniel Negreanu.
Witch, no, BITCH, yes.
Maybe Negreanu is the true witch as he got this one right on the money from the onset.
Negreanu’s vitriol for Duke is well documented. He often refers to her as “Annie Puke” in addition to “f***ing c***”, “b****” and “thief”.
He's never referred to her as a witch...at least not yet.
Duke’s participation in the league wasn’t necessarily the primary reason for Negreanu’s ominous future prediction for Epic in its early days.
Many of you have asked me why I have chosen not to support, or participate in the Epic Poker League, and while I have a laundry list of reasons, I'd point out that I chose not to take part in the World Team Poker event for one sole reason: I didn't think it would be a success. The same holds true with the Epic Poker League. Not just because of the bizarre choice in name, but because I don't believe this product will resonate with the public and based on my intimate knowledge of how these types of things work, I don't think it's possible to bring in enough revenue to survive. The only legitimate chance the league has to survive is if regulation happened in the U.S. and they were able to create an online poker site.
Jeffrey Pollack wouldn't admit that to you publicly, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math here. Millions of dollars being given away to players, money spent on a TV time buy, money spent on staff, etc. with no way of recouping those funds through licensing or sponsorship. Networks aren't going to pay you for poker programming because the necessary ratings just aren't there. The WSOP is the world's most prestigious brand at this point with hundreds of hours of poker programming on TV, and yet they have been unsuccessful in bringing in major money from mainstream sponsors.
- Ace King, Gambling911.com
