Cliffs notes: I have reached the end of the beginning of my career. If anybody wants me to remove their name from this post I'd be glad to do so, whether we are friend or foe bill at torrentmarketing dot com
This one will be long, but for a few people on this Earth, it will be special and/or important, and for a select few, it'll alter the general structure of things. Please excuse the funny language, I just woke up after two hours of sleep to check my email. One of them was the message that prompted this post on PAW. I only got three hours of sleep the last time I slept, five hours in period of > 57 hours. Start up baby. I worked every one of those hours I wasn't sleeping, in that room with a shower and a toilet or preparing a sandwich, opening a red bull or pacing the room smoking a cigarette . Why would I do that? I just tried to buy the behemoth of online poker advertising, and on the face of it I was rejected...though to me its just that you don't buy something like this on a whim, when the owners don't want to sell, and with a slick salesman's approach and fake names and multiple gimmick accounts on every forum. You do it over a 3-24 month period, or more, and you do it with class, integrity and honesty. So thats how I'm looking at this. Time for me to refocus my efforts, refine the other projects I have going on, integrate the two sites I've already purchased into my existing mess of a network...find one unique corporate identity and brand ($200 to the person who names my company and $500 if you include a domain...more if you own it/can sell it to me and its worth the extra cost...I just want a name/domain/plan) for this SOMETHING that I am creating, whatever it is. It morphes and changes and grows and shrinks when PartyPoker changes major things about its business, BUT THE ONE THING IT DOES with shocking consistency is SPIT OFF TONS OF MONEY. So for now, I've gone with Torrent Marketing. Tentative. Torrent means a raging river, of revenue in this case, and Marketing with that is a marketing method that produces a ranging river of revenue. I like it, though I think it is possible to do better.
My name is William Franceschine. Some people call me Degen or Wild Bill or Grind Blog or Blueman or TheDean or sadly, any of a dozen other short lived identities. Why did I use all of that crap? Because I got my start in online gaming as a broke and hungry, degenerate gambling college student. I some how limped to the finish line at UCSB in 2004 through maximizing every dollar of student loan revenue and took a job selling ink toner for $400 per week, and I had to wake up at 5am and take two busses from the ghetto part of North Hollywood to Canoga Park, to be at work by 7am. Sleeping on my best friends couch and attempting to rebuild my life, in the wake of over $10,000 in gambling losses (a lot as a broke recent college grad) I figured out how to win at poker. I was barely eeking a living and I got offered a stake for $500 on 2+2. The guy told me 'if you lose its a freeroll, so its on me'. Well I lost his $500, quickly. I was far too excited to have a $500 bankroll to play poker well, and a $500 buy-in is nothing when 4 tabling $33 SNG's anyway. At this time I was known simply as GauchoFish. I let him know I lost and he said simply 'thats poker'. Awesome, what class...what a guy. So I went about my life, took a week off poker and sold ink toner, and then started to play again. I went on a heater and made a lot of money. The staker looked me up and saw that I was winning again and emailed me and asked me for his cut. I told him he wasn't entitled to one and he disagreed, so I posted it on 2+2 in an attempt to clarify if I owed him. Everybody told me I did, and I didn't feel that I did...so I did what I have been doing ever since when I disagree with somebody (Beanie, Anthony Martino, Mat Sklansky, Dids, NT, Anurag Dixit, Bill Frist...anybody!) I went ballistic on the internet and said a bunch of retarded shit I would never say to anybodys face. I acted like a fucking donkey on the keyboard and proved to a bunch of people, 150 posts into my 2+2 career, that I have a ranging personality flaw.
So what did I do? Did I wither and die? Nope. I did what I always do in the face of adversity. I persisted and I adapted and I bounced back. But I made a wrong decision...one I have been making on a regular basis for the last three years. I decided to lie about who I was to try and be a part of the community! I became Degen. After awhile it was discovered Degen was GauchoFish and there are probably 100 people alive who will forever tell you that Degen and GauchoFish are scum because they scammed Irieguy. Oddly enough, I don't think Irieguy or his father, are one of those 100-200 people, but nonetheless, those SNG junkies will all despise me until I die. I'm not passing judgement on that, they have valid reasons to go on and limited information about what happened for the 24 years before that, nor the three years after, so they are doing what poker players do, and making reads with limited information available.
Well for all of my character flaws, I don't think anybody who takes a long hard look can deny that I am very smart and very motivated and very talented at, well, "torrent marketing"
I learned how to beat poker and I read some posts on 2+2 about how some people made big money in the affiliate business (raptor, you sir are the one who taught me my first few bits about the game). I read about this guy named John who owned some ugly site called RRR that advertised these things called Rakeback Sites which I wasn't too familiar with. I then read that he sold RRR and that people were sceptical of the new owner. People accused PokerListings of being the real owner and that the site RakeBrain was simply the rakeback face of PokerListings. I'm not accusing them of this, only saying that this is what I read...I hope others will at least turn to Google before saying I shouldn't say that in this thread.
So I spotted a market. As all of the great marketers (of anything) will tell you, what you need is an amazing market, you can always find a product to fill it. If you have an amazing product and no market, you are broke. So I spotted a market for a place for rakeback affiliates to advertise. So I commissioned a developer to build RakeReport.net for me, I had no idea how to program (or choose domains!! lol) or how to do anything else related to the technology side of that business, but I saw a market, boy did I see one. The site was making $6,000 per month within a couple of months. Wow. I can't recall what I was making from poker at the time, but it can't have been more than that. I had found a new career, I guess?
Well over time I got to know some people in the business, as my mind works, I began to ask questions and solve the riddle that is the rakeback business (where 4-6 affiliates control 90%+ of the market), and figured out that these guys paying me $1,500+ per month were doing very well for themselves with the advertising they bought from me, 2+2, SEO and other methods....and were getting rich!
So I decided to go into the business for myself. What I should have done is told the affiliates and PokerAddict and anybody else who would listen, and ask them the best way to proceed. They probably would have said 'change your directory to not say it is unbiased, tell all current and future and potential advertisers you own the directory and your site is at the top and thats that, good luck'. But I didn't do that. I decided to live a stupid fucking lie. I made the site in secret and listed it at the top, even installing a fake women at the top of it, Heidi. Heidi never existed, it was Anthony Martino, the current 'owner' of RakeReport.net (we'll get to that).
This whole plan got unveiled and people blasted me, especially the affiliates who felt wronged. They should have, I was an idiot. But instead of responding admitting that and promising to do things right, I did what I did last time this happened with GauchoFish, I made a fucking ass of myself on a message board. Nice work Bill.....
So then I move on, RakeAid does well and makes some amazing partnerships, notably with CardRunners, SNG Icons and the Ship It Holla Balla's. RakeAid goes from 100 to over 2,000 player accounts in the matter of a couple of months. I'm profiting well over $20,000 per month with no variance, and I guess I had a new job.
Then comes beanie. I'm working closely with the owners of a major poker media property on a co-branded rakeback site and trying to manage the barrage of customer support emails coming daily ('heidi' working hard as well) and build still more partnerships to grow business, and here comes beanie with a one line post that again altered the course of my life. Well, his post didn't,
but my reply did.
I blew up on him, for no reason. A) he was right, and B) he was just expressing his opinion, whatever, I should have let it go. Message boards are for flaming sometimes. Deal with it. I couldn't, I had to attack back and the lengths I took it to were unacceptable and ultimately let to me losing my partnership with CardRunners. Something they really had no choice in, their members were calling for my head, as many of them love Beanie. It was all for the best anyway as CR is not about money or rakeback, its about something wonderful and awesome rising out of the poker community, and RakeReduction is far more wonderful and awesome at providing rakeback than I was (or am!) so its best for everybody, well, other than my financial planner...
So I pushed the boundaries of this one and tried very hard to get even with the people who I felt had wronged me here, and just basically pissed off everybody who I came in contact with at 2+2 who had anything to do with that (a sincere apology to PokerAddict, RakeTheRake, Beanie, Taylor Caby and anybody else who's name or image I dragged through the mud, or attempted to, in that emberrassing saga) and ultimately the moderators of 2+2 had no choice but to ban me, for good, even though I had reached legend status for my non-affiliate world dealings, with my blog and 2,000+ post thread on Thailand.
So what did I do? I created yet another fake identity. Blueman. Blueman built up a 10 month image linked to two things...pissing off mods on 2+2 (or in reality getting even with the ones I was still angry with) and staking people on 2+2. He also did some other notable things, but those are the two people that knew who blueman was would remember. Well that, and as a well respected and trusted member of the high stakes poker community. The one thing I haven't mentioned here at all is what I did between blow ups. I built my rakeback sites and I won hundreds of thousands of dollars playing poker....live poker, online poker, cash games and tournaments, I won big money playing it all, well, only no-limit hold em
During that time I built up a network of hundreds of the highest stakes, best players in the world. Not everybody in that world is somebody I know, but everybody in that world is a friend of somebody I am a friend with, no doubt about it. Anybody alive in the high stakes poker world. Thats a valuable rolodex, make no mistake. If somebody asked me to cut off business dealings with that network for the rest of my life and offered me $5,000,000 for it, I would laugh in their face.
Well then I decided to take an assumed name and try to buy a major internet property. I got a backer in place who was prepared to put down any amount of money so long as the deal made sense, and went to the owner of the property and began discussing a deal...and then I told him what I had done, taken on an assumed name. Buried under layers of other assumed names, and he walked. Doesn't have any interest in speaking to me at this point...I understand, my whole approach to this has been a joke. My whole approach to business has been a joke.
No longer. I just spilled the beans. I will forever refer anybody to this post if they ask me about what happened in the past. And I'm changing my ways. I don't care if anybody believes me right now, because I've already changed, some people will read this sentence with a tear in their eye (because they've seen it already), others will be sceptical at first and then one day come around, others still simply wont give a fuck, and wonder why they read all of this when they just wanted to figure out what any of it has to do with Absolute Poker. Well, I'll tell you. I am again promoting Absolute Poker, because it isn't about me or what people have done in the past or what any forum member, moderator or group of people thinks, its all about 'torrent marketing'.
So what prompted this post, and what am I asking of the PAW community here? I need some help with Anthony Martino. I'm hoping actually that he will admit to what he had done. This is the one thing about my poker career that I can't simply learn from and move on. He stole my website. I have a 22 email exchange right now with him asking for me to buy the site from him and for me and him to never sue one another. It ended with this:
"
I don't know anyone well enough @ 2+2 to consider having them act as a 3rd party on this transaction, especially since you have been involved in trying to purchase moderator accounts, it's impossible for me to know who can be trusted. Number of posts @ the site does not convey a level of trust expected, since plenty of high-profile members there have been involved in scams (I believe GrannieMae was in the past as well?)
So no, I can't trust that type of 3rd party. I would trust Eric Morris, who is the freaking co-President of Bluff Magazine and does not know of our beef with one another, and wouldn't need to know"
Wow. So what he is saying here is that after 6,000 posts on 2+2, there is nobody on that website he can trust to broker a $5,000 transaction involving him sending me the domain back. The whole structure of the emails has been that A) he stole the website and domain B) he didn't pay me the money he agreed to as per our agreement C) we both did bad stuff and don't want this in court or to have enemies D) he wants me to 'buy' the site, and i want a 'settlement' because I think I am the rightful owner (and several lawyers have confirmed this) and that is what is important here. E) he feels I wronged him and misled him and stole a bonus from him when he worked for me F) i'm willing to acknowledge that but he hasn't given me the 60%+ of profit I am supposed to get each month, so I think that $10,000+ should more than compensate for the $1000 bonus that he didn't get.
So AJ, I ask you now, please give me my domain back without further ado. You can contact my domain manager to facilitate the transaction. Upon receipt, I will transfer you $1,000 for your efforts. I will do nothing else, ever, nor will I reply to your emails to me, and I ask the PAW to please help me with this. This is the last straw for me, the last remnants of my shady past.
Watch guys, I'm going to be standing at the top of all of this with Tony G, PokerListings, CardPlayer, RakeTheRake and the other super affiliates, one more year like the last one and I'll be one of the major industry players (if somebody offered to buy out my existings sites now for $2,000,000, I would give them a flat 'no'). So whatever scepticism you have now, just save it, and try to have an open mind, because you wont be able to avoid having some opinion about me if you are a part of this industry.
Thanks for reading.
William Franceschine