CalvinAyre.com published an interesting peek at the differences between living in Gibraltar and living in London if you’re in the online gaming business.  Some people miss the hustle and bustle of a big city like London and can’t imagine ever being comfortable in a small country (30,000 people) like Gibraltar.  Others love the weather, laid back lifestyle, and proximity to holiday destinations in Spain.  Either way, if you’re involved or want to become involved in the online poker industry this article is worth a read since the vast majortiy of poker companies are located in Gibraltar, London, Isle of Man, or Malta.  

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Recently I’ve been getting more and more emails from professional poker players who are thinking about getting a more conventional job working for an online poker room. I’m here with some bad news, folks, being a poker professional doesn’t qualify you for a lot of jobs in the online poker industry.

Right now the online market is going through a lot of changes. Some positive and some negative. Since BlackFriday, PokerStars and Full Tilt have had to exit the US market. UB/Absolute has laid off nearly all of their staff and may hire back a small percentage if they end up coming out of Black Friday without going bankrupt. And with Full Tilt owing approx 50% of it’s pre-Black Friday business and Stars 30%, there are going to be quite a lot of people reassigned or out of a job soon.

Even the non-US facing sites have been seeing continued declines in poker numbers. Sure Black Friday gave many of them a small boost but for most, at best, that just puts them back where they were a year or two ago.

Are sites still hiring? Yes. But they’re going to be hiring one of two types of people:

1. People experienced in the online gaming sector as demonstrated by previous work experience in the industry.

2. People with very specific job skills (i.e. database administrators, AR managers, etc) that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the online gaming industry.

If Stars and Tilt (and even some non-US facing rooms) are laying off staff that means there will be somewhat of a glut of experienced people in the areas heavily affected. Anybody who is hiring will have access to lots of quality job candidates.

And if you have a very specific job skill like HR manager or Linux Administrator then you can find a job anywhere. There’s no specific glory to fixing laptops at an online poker room than there is fixing laptops for any other company. Focusing on a specific industry segment doesn’t seem like a ideal job search strategy. Not that you might not want to take a job if it’s available but to focus on the online poker industry for these kinds of jobs would be very limiting.

But the truth of the matter is that despite the fallout from Black Friday this has always been the case. When I first started in this industry at Full Tilt I wasn’t hired because I liked playing poker and could grind limit games. I was hired because I had over a decade of experience working as a software engineering project manager. Over the years I expanded into other areas but I would have never gotten my foot in the door without a solid resume showing relevant non-poker skills.

Likewise when you look at many of the top poker journalists today most weren’t poker players who became writers. They were writers who played poker. Some didn’t necessarily start out as writers per se but proved themselves on blogs first and used the quality of their previous work to get their foot in the door.

And as I look back over all of the people I’ve worked with over the years I can’t think of very many (i.e. less than 10) who only brought their poker playing passion or abilities as their only marketable job skills to the table. In fact, most brought almost zero poker playing experience to the table. Because they were hired for their expertise in non-poker related skills. It doesn’t matter if your head of PR knows a straight draw from a flush draw as long as he has a lot of media contacts and can get your message out there in front of the right people.

Are there any jobs for pure poker players? Sure. But unfortunately most are lower paying entry level sorts of positions. For instance, someone recently asked me about becoming a VIP host since they know a lot of top players. But a VIP host usually either has experience as a brick and mortar VIP manager or they’re brought up from customer support after having proven themselves. They don’t necessarily need to know poker though it’s obviously nice if they do (and many will learn the basics via the job). They’re there to take care of players. If a VIP player wants a bonus he doesn’t care if you know anything about poker as long as you can get him the bonus. If the VIP player has won a trip to the WSOP ME he’s calling you to sort out problems with his hotel room or asking for a different size t-shirt not whether he should have called that river bet.

So my advice to any former or transitioning poker pros out there is to go light on your poker qualifications and heavy on what value you can provide the company. Sure, mention that you’ve spent the last three years playing professionally but it should be a mention and not the crux of your CV/resume.

Try to focus on what value you bring to the company outside of your ability to play poker. Are you kick-ass graphic artist or website designer? Sell that in your CV. What was your major at university? Sell that on your resume. Anything is probably better than selling yourself as a professional poker player.

Because at the end of the day nobody cares what limits you played or how many tournaments you’ve won (if you’re not a well-known pro, and why would you be looking for a 9 – 5 job if you were). All they care about is how you’re going to help make the company money.

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Online poker industry veteran Barry Carter has a great post up about some of the realities of working in the industry. He discusses some of the downsides to working in the industry including a lack of job security and how it’s a great way to ruin what you may love as a hobby.

Having a job that is also a hobby is amazing, but it can also burn you out. Sometimes I am sick of the word poker and I have long periods where I never play – which is nice but if you currently love the escapism of poker then working there might be too much of a step too far. You simply cannot put poker away when it’s both your job and your hobby; usually this will leave you either playing less or poker affecting your social life a bit more. Although I was a pretty high volume player for a long time, but something had to give and I am much happier now I only play a few hours a week for fun.

Check out more on Barry’s blog.

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According to the Irish Times, Pocket Kings, the marketing and software development side of Full Tilt Poker, will be hiring an additional 100 people bringing their total number to 800 Dublin based employees.  As other online poker rooms struggle with layoffs and poor earnings reports, Full Tilt Poker and Pocket Kings seem to be bucking the trend and hiring additional staff to cover their expanding business.

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Many poker jobs are located in Gibraltar. There are several online poker sites that operate from this small country of only 30,000 residents. In fact, the country is so small that they had to build their airport on reclaimed land. Since the country isn’t wide enough to land a plane and going lengthwise would smash you into the famous Rock of Gibraltar it intersects the country.

I ran across this site that has several photos and some commentary on this unique airport and the fact that it is possibly the only airport in the world that intersects the main road into and out of the country.

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Many people are under the false impression that all jobs in the online poker industry revolve around a few key positions like Poker Room Manager, Marketing, and Software Engineering. While those are the most visible and obvious jobs there are all sorts of jobs in the online poker industry. Below is a list of the jobs that are commonly found at online poker sites.

Acquisition
- Country Management
- Affiliate Managers
- Online advertising
- Offline advertising
- SEO/PPC
- Website
- Copy Writer/Editor
- Graphic Artists
- PR / Corporate Communications

Retention
- Poker Room Management
- Tournament Management
- CS Agent
- VIP Hosts
- Promotion Specialist
- Email Specialist
- Loyalty

Operations
- Business Analysis/Intelligence
- Risk Management
- Compliance
- Legal

IT
- Software enginnering
- Product Management
- Networking
- IT Ops

Support Operations
- HR
- Finance
- Receptionist
- IS/IT Support

As you can see, most online poker sites break their business into compartmentalized areas of focus. However because of the dynamic nature of the online poker industry the lines can often become fuzzy. For instance, Acquisitions has the role of bringing customers in the door and Retention is supposed to keep them playing. But more often than not people in Retention roles play a large part in assisting Acquisitions by providing products and promotions for the Acquisitions team to promote. Likewise, in order to properly advertise promotions designed to keep players on the site the Retention team will often need to coordinate with the Acquisitions team to get the message out to players. And obviously roles like Operations, IT, and Support Ops lend a hand across several areas.

Worth bearing in mind is that each organization is unique and has evolved according to the background and experience of the management running the company so no job title has a hard and fast definition. For instance, at some online poker rooms the Product Manager is in charge of managing the software development of the product. At another poker room that same title may indicate that the role has overarching authority over everything poker as the entire offering is seen as a product.

There are also jobs considered in the online poker industry that don’t work for a specific online poker room. For instance, recruiters often specialize in online gaming and might focus on placing people specifically at online poker sites.

Likewise, a major force in the online poker industry are the affiliates who send players to the online poker sites in exchange for either a flat fee or a percentage of the rake generated by the players. Many affiliates have grown into full-fledged businesses of their own and employ everything from SEO experts to Business Intelligence specialists to help them grow their business.

There are also several businesses that specialize in selling products or services to online poker rooms. Probably the most obvious of these are payment solution providers. Other product/service providers offer outsourced affiliate management and outsourced loyalty scheme management. Consultants also fall into the services category and can range from WebTrends configuration specialists to accountants/auditors.

Last but certainly not least are the online and offline journalists who write about the online poker industry. Some write regular columns or are staff writers for online and offline publications while others specialize in tournament reporting.

I’ve probably still left a handful of important roles out and if I have, please feel free to ping me and I’ll update this document or leave a comment below. In future posts we’ll attempt to cover each role to give a better understanding of what each job does and how it fits into the overall picture.

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