Interview with Absolute Poker manager Richard Frost
6/30/2006 11:23:17 AM
Running an online poker room might seem to some to be a step down from being a practicing attorney, but Absolute Poker’s manager Richard Frost would tell you it’s the other way around. For him, poker is far more interesting, engaging, and challenging.
When you talk to him, however, his legal training is clearly apparent and you would have no problem imagining him in front of a jury, making his closing argument.
We talked recently about his job, his background, and the difficulty of keeping everyone happy.
MF: How long have you been in the poker business?
RF: I have actually only been in the poker business for a little over a year now.
MF: How did you get started?
RF: My background, I was a lawyer a few years, and after a few years doing that I figured out it wasn’t the path for me. By the way, a lot of former lawyers are in the poker business. So I went on to managing call centers and working in telecommunications. I played a lot of online poker, I started to become a serious recreational player when I was in the University, I’m going back a ways before Internet poker and everything. I was probably like a lot of people, started playing in college, occasionally with the guys, and as Internet poker started I was probably one of earlier players in that new wave of poker. So, at some point, I played on Absolute for quite a while, among other sites, and they had a job posted for assistant poker room manager, and I went through the interview process, and that’s how I came on board.
MF: And is it preferable to being an attorney?
RF: Oh, I love it. For me, it’s my passion so it’s really a chance to work at something related to what I love doing. At my old job, probably like a lot of people, for a while I was sort of dissatisfied with my job, working all day and then coming home and playing poker really late into the night and coming back to my job tired. So, it’s definitely a chance to work in a field that I love.
MF: Is there a benefit to having a legal background in regards to what you do now?
RF: I think that there is. I mean if you were to go through the commonalities among poker players, there are the lawyers, a sort of discreet group of players, and then there are the accountants, the numbers crunching guys, I think being a lawyer you definitely develop some skills in terms of logic, people-reading skills from doing trials and that sort of thing. As far as my actual job, separately, it’s hard to say, really. Probably, I use more of the skills that I developed running call centers, working with a support team, which is a lot of what I end up doing now. I think that’s probably a more useful skill.
MF: Customer relations?
RF: Yes, definitely, it comes down to customers, how to make sure everyone gets the answers they need as quickly as possible. The correct answers.
MF: But additionally, do your legal skills help you in areas such as analyzing complicated issues, like disputes maybe?
RF: I think there’s some correlation, especially in something like looking for fraud in the financial transactions side. And in the actual game itself. I’m used to case briefs, seeing how these things work, digging through the haystack looking for that little clue, there is a lot of investigation involved in these issues, so it does come in handy. It’s sort of learning what to look for, once you find something that looks suspicious, follow that, and dig deeper, and that leads somewhere else, and hopefully, somewhere along the line you come up with the answer you’re looking for.
MF: What’s the hardest thing about running a poker room?
RF: Whenever you’re dealing with a lot of people, it’s impossible to keep everyone happy all the time, there’s obviously a balancing act, and that I think is the toughest part.
MF: Why is it so hard to keep everybody happy?
RF: You always try to make the customer happy, but obviously there’s some limit to what you can do because you’re dealing with real money, and you are going to get the kind of requests where they lost, they were unlucky or something happened, but really they’re not entitled to anything. When that happens, you’re left in that kind of, “What can you do here?” There’s definitely a lot of room for us to take steps to make people happy. So that’s what you do whenever it is something where you can’t give them exactly what they want, my school of thought is try to come up a solution that will keep them happy. There’s often something there that you can do, maybe give them a free tournament entry. Yeah, I can’t give them cash, because maybe it’s something where they just lost it and quite frankly, you just can’t give in to those demands. But there’s often something you can do to make them happy. Most people, if you explain it to them and they can see you are transparent and above-board, are happy with that.
MF: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
RF: I’m from Northern Ontario, Canada.
MF: I haven’t heard one ‘Eh?’ yet, Eh?
RF: I’ve lost that, probably over time. I lived in Toronto for about 10 years. And Vancouver, briefly, before coming to Costa Rica. I’m married, and I’ve been married for about 5 years, no children. That’s pretty much about it.
MF: A hypothetical question: If you had children, and they were just at the age where they could legally play poker, would you caution them against it?
RF: I think, as long as you’re an adult, and you’re playing responsibly, and can afford to lose, that’s fine. I just don’t think that typically people at that age have money to lose. I always tell people to start really small, to play only for fun. Find a stake that you are comfortable with, and then play at 2 stakes lower than that. And I think that’s always good advice. I can tell you that I played on the Internet probably a year, year and a half, at 25 cent to fifty cent limits before even making the jump into what would be considered small limits.
MF: So basically, you’re in favor of responsible gambling.
RF: Absolutely.
MF: Absolute--is there an echo in here?—Poker has some of the best bonuses, is there a downside to attracting so many quote: Bonus Hunters?
RF: You have to be a little careful in terms of the type of clientele you’re attracting, and some of it goes to questions of the actual game experience itself, if people are only interested in pursuing a bonus it can make the game action tighter. I think what we’ve done is kept a reasonable balance with that. In the last year, I think you will see a lot of our bonuses have been geared toward VIP members.
MF: There are many, many, many poker rooms out there, why should I play at Absolute?
RF: Let’s see. Good size, first off, so you can find the action that you’re looking for. One of the better things I think we offer being a medium-sized site is that we haven’t forgotten the individual customer, there’s a lot of attention for the individual customer. If there’s an issue, we can look at it, we do still value people as individuals, whereas in bigger rooms the players can kind of get lost in the shuffle. You send them an e-mail and you’re only going to get a form response and if it requires them to bend over backwards or to maybe make an individual ruling in the customer’s favor, it’s a lot more difficult for them to do that. We have a lot of variety, and I think one of the best things we offer is an incredible amount of tournaments running all the time at a lot of different limits.
MF: Can you give me an idea of Absolute’s business philosophy?
RF: Our model has always been to be the best and most trusted. And that is something we always are looking to put forward and keep working on. To ensure everyone that not only are we operating above board, but that everyone can see that we are operating above board, to be accountable to our customers, those are things that are really important to us especially with Internet poker where people don’t see you in person. It’s a little bit different than in brick and mortar casinos. So really, the things we’re always--as a company philosophy--looking to do is to make sure we value our customers and that we act always in the most ethical manner and with the utmost integrity.
MF: When you tell people what you do for a living, do they think less of you?
RF: It’s hard to say, but I think now there’s a relatively positive image of poker. Every once in a while I get someone who is taken aback by it. And I find that less so for my actual job, but more so when I tell people I’m just a player. I get occasionally people who generally don’t understand it. Normally when you explain that to people, I think in today’s age there’s a lot of information about poker players, on TV all the time, and I think a lot of people have come to realize that it can be different depending on the person and how they approach it than some other forms of gambling where there is a ‘House’ edge, and where a player cannot win in the long run. I think people now do recognize that there are players in the world who have consistently won.
MF: They recognize the skill involved.
RF: Exactly. When it comes to my work, typically I haven’t had any negative reactions, what people say when I’ve left the room, who knows? Most people I know are actually really interested in it. Have a lot of questions.
MF: Why don’t online poker rooms have Elvis impersonators performing in little cyber-lounges?
RF: That’s a good question; I really don’t know the answer to that one.
MF: It seems to me Vegas has the model down. A little entertainment, get them on the tables, and the online experience doesn’t really address that aspect.
RF: We’ve definitely been trying to make things more interactive, I don’t know specifically about that, you’ll see that our newsletter goes out in a video format, we try to have a phone interview with one of our pros on there, and actually we’re working on other ways to make it a more interactive experience for our players, but I definitely think we haven’t really taken advantage of the full capability, as far as that goes.
MF: What’s a typical day for you like?
RF: Hmm, a lot of checking of the computer. In a typical day I come into the office somewhere between 10 A.M. and noon, immediately get into the e-mails to see what I’ve missed since I last checked, and checking of course our main interface to see what’s happening on our site. There’s definitely a lot of monitoring at all times to see what’s happening, to check the e-mails or issues with customers. Analysis of what we are offering on the site, how it’s working out, what tournaments are doing well, all that sort of thing. And the way things are, currently in poker, things change so fast, there’s a lot of sites, so there’s really a lot you have to keep up on. Seems like constantly, so really, in a general sense, you keep an eye on what’s going on not only on our site, but what everyone else is doing, it definitely keeps you busy.
MF: What do you think of the pending legislation in Washington in regards to banning Internet gambling?
RF: Well, it’s a little bit difficult when you’re Canadian to comment on that. If you ask me, I definitely think there are strange contradictions in the kind of legislation they’re trying to put forward. For instance, I don’t understand why there is an exemption for horseracing. I definitely think it ignores some of the realities of who’s playing poker, what people want apparently, and to be honest, I really don’t see there being the will for people to not have it in the U.S., typically the biggest consumers of online poker in the world.
MF: If they were to legalize it, do you think that would be better or worse?
RF: Well, it could be worse. Whether it would really make a significant difference, I mean, from my perspective what I would see happening is I would just see a big economic benefit to the United States. Because what I see is you have a lot of consumers there who are interested in the product, and you have a lot of companies who are not allowed to operate there, that I am sure would operate in the United States and hire within the States, if they could, certainly, because their customer base is there. So I think it’s one of those things that you really don’t understand who’s really benefiting from this ban. I guess I could take it a little further, early on there was some debate about whether online poker was hurting brick and mortar casinos, and taking away that sort of business, and now that we have had the experience of seeing it over time, it would be hard to find anyone who believes it. Even brick and mortar casinos have acknowledged that they have done much better in part because of the demand created by online poker.
MF: There are probably a lot of people who think managing a poker room would be glamorous. Do you care to share the reality?
RF: Oh, it’s definitely not glamorous. You know, I didn’t have that kind of illusion when I started, but I mean definitely, if you’ve been to a real poker room, you see even the floor managers, and realize there’s a lot of . . . whenever you’re dealing with people and money and gambling and losers, there’s a lot of dealing with people issues that takes all your time, and which are never easy to deal with, even when there are cases where there’s a clear cut right and wrong. You can’t really approach it that way, you have to view it as trying to make everyone happy in the situation. And it’s a lot harder than I think people realize, and there can be a fair amount of stress.
MF: Everyone’s complaint is unique to them, and it’s very serious to them, but you get so many every day.
RF: One of the big myths that people believe, I think, is that if you work in online poker you sit around a computer and play poker all day. The reality is that I play significantly less than probably I have, ever. Because of the actual job demands. But, having said that, it’s also very rewarding. If you’re interested in the game and especially if you’re interested in the structure of games, and how to create games, it’s definitely very rewarding.
MF: Do you think those PokerStars guys need to lose weight?
RF: Ummm . . . no comment. But I think you could expand that question to include a lot of poker players.
MF: Yeah, it’s kind of a sedentary pursuit. Does your staff have any secret nicknames for you that you are not supposed to know about, but do?
RF: I get a lot related to my last name, you know, Frosty, and that sort of thing.
MF: Okay, last question. If I ever get arrested, what quality should I look for in an attorney to represent me?
RF: That’s easy. You definitely want an attorney who plays poker. Hands down.