More on the 'United Poker Group' Crapfest

I'm always tickled pink when 'the other side' responds, with the other side in this case being 'Johnny Rothman' of the United Poker Group fame. Since poor Johnny feels maligned by my previous post, I thought I'd take an extra moment to explore more fully some of the claims made on the Rothman-and-pals site.

Let's start here, with the first of a series of quotes: "Fact: 3% of Professional Poker Players Raking Over $10,000 Per Month Don't Solely Rely on Playing Poker."

Source for this fact? There is none. Blindly quoted facts may or may not be true, but when they appear within an infomercial they tend strongly toward the bullshit side. In this case, though, the whole matter is laughably irrelevant. Because... made from thin air or not, what difference could it make to the efficacy of the product?

Verdict: Baffled with bullshit

Here's a good one --- the graphic purporting to prove product income from an online poker business:



But, there's no supporting facts here. Again, this crap is cobbled up out of thin air, or may as well be. There's no reference for verification.

Verdict: Empty, unprovable claim

The whole section on creating 'customizable poker content' remains an incredible hoot. The UnitedPokerGroup con artists make this claim without showing a single example of the content they presume to supply. There are only two realistic explanations. First, and most likely, is that this 'plan' is simply the pre-packaging of the illegal, black-hat SEO tactic of swiping stories from the RSS/news feeds of other sites; second is that they'll issue you a dozen or so cheesy and uninteresting pieces from their own hastily-built library. And judging by the writing skills 'Johnny Rothman' shows, those would pretty much suck. A professionally designed product with grammar as bad as these examples:

Why SNG’s? Let me put it in Laman’s terms: Playing an SNG is like watching the same movie over and over again…The beginning, middle and ending will always be the same result. And that’s the secret to SNG’s…If you know the exact winning poker SNG system, you’ll always end up a winner!

Okay, who is Mr. Laman and how did he get to set the terms?

No matter how good you may be there are many donkey's that can rain on your parade.

Donkeys come in all flavors. Those that can't spell or use punctuation correctly have blogs that are laughable, not informative.

The problem is that you are most-likely playing MTT’s wrong. Using typical texas holdem strategies when you should be using something else – All the while,...

Hideous.

I'd put in more examples, but it's just beating a dead horse to death, if you get my drift.

Verdict: The UPC group's writing skills are at the level of... grocery list, NOT someone who should be teaching you to establish and profit from a professional, high-quality poker site. Their site-desing skills are a bit better... if using a web-editor program's pre-packaged template is your thing. Note that your site really won't look any different, after all; it'll be just like every other sucker's site resulting from the purchase of the same package.

Ahh, here's another example of one of those meaningless graphics that purports to prove something:



It's supposed to enervate the reader into believing that the biggest dollars are made by the entrepreneurs, not even the biggest or most successful of the poker players. But what factual proof -- or even statistics or other damned lies -- is offered to back up this visual claim? Nothing. It could be true, you know... but no one would ever know from this crap.

Verdict: Pseudo-factual assertions without underlying statistical support are garbage.

The section on setting up a 'power poker blog' remains my favorite:

UPG Expert #4: George Deveroe

“How a Blogging Expert Earns Thousands of Dollars per Month Effortlessly Off His Online Poker Blogs.”

One would think that a so-called 'power poker blogger' would have some sort of a web presence, but 'George Deveroe' exists nowhere else except on the United Poker Group site. Why, I'd dare say that 'George Deveroe' is a --- gasp! --- pseudonym, hiding the identity of someone who doesn't want to admit that the methods he's selling to you violate the DMCA and its European counterparts.

What say you to this repeated blind assertion, Mr. Site Author Johnny Rothman? Tell you what, you want a 'fair review,' although I assume that just means you want further pimping of your product, and you're not really interested in anything else. How about you send me this part of your program as it exists today and I'll see if it violates any digital copyright laws, or otherwise supports this claim:

"The only 7 Super-Effective Blogging Techniques you’ll ever need to know to dominate the search engines and have an unfair-advantage over the competition."

Let's see just what those seven (not "7," you illiterate dolt) techniques are, huh? And how does that jive with this claim: Create your poker blog, then set it and forget it…And continue to watch the money rolling in! Sure sounds like something automated --- and illegal --- to me. (Note to Johnny: Even swiping a Yahoo! or Google feed for 'poker' is illegal.) But seriously, you send it to me at halhal2@yahoo.com and I will report on exactly what the product offers, good or bad. Put up or shut up.

Oh, and I did get a kick out of the 'site traffic' graphic accompanying this section, reproduced in part here:



Ummm, starting point higher than finishing point. You do realize, dear Johnny, that the long-term trend as you've defined it within this graph goes to zero traffic, right? Also, all interested parties should note that 'page views' is the least relevant stat to use, since every image or script call embedded within what most non-techies think of as a 'web page' can result in another hit. It's typical of this site's pseudo-factual bogus-ness.

Verdict: It's either lies or misrepresentation. Either way, it's not worth buying.

Google Page rank is a more relevant way of determining real web strength. This site and my personal poker blog both pull a 4/10 at last report, and here's how UnitedPokerGroup fares, based on the algorithm at checkpagerank.com:



Verdict: You guys are good.

Oh, wait, that's a lie, too.