It has become more and more common for Publishers to buy and sell PAS Websites from one another, then request that we transfer the Websites to the new owner's Publisher account. Previously, we did not have an official stance or policy in place to provide for these transfers and several issues were consistently coming up that we wanted to address. What we have done is come up with a Website Transfer Policy that should address all of these issues. For some background, we'd like to point of what some of these issues were and how the new policy will address them.

Q: Does PAS allow "Website Transfers" or "Publisher Account Merges"? Does PAS facilitate or broker them?
A: After discussing this internally at great length, we have come to the conclusion that we definitely do allow these types of transfers. After all, the websites that you run are yours to run, we simply do our best to make that easier for you. While we will allow these transfers, and we will facilitate them from a tech perspective, we will not broker the transaction or arbitrate any negotiations. We will, however, handle all of the 'tech' work in moving the actual websites & players within the PAS system over to the new owner - provided that the instructions provided in the newly published policy are followed.

Q: How will timing and scheduling of these requests be handled?
A: One of the biggest reasons for this new policy is the timing & scheduling of the transfers. Due to the numerous 'edge cases' that can come up when working on transfers, they can be very time consuming. The potential exists for problematic and / or duplicated data (usernames, email addresses, stats, etc) each of which must be checked & resolved by our tech team (by hand). This means that we have to invest a significant amount of time into the transfer on our end to ensure that it's done correct and that everything is completely accurate afterward. In addition, previously we had been spending significant time prior to working on the transfer due to legwork involved in verifying the authenticity of transfer requests, confirming details of the request, etc. The new policy will address this issue, as well.

PAS will now guarantee that all transfers are complete within 14 days of the initial request, provided that you follow the instructions when making the request. This gives you a hard time frame for the 'worst case scenario' as far as scheduling, and often times the transfer will actually be scheduled & completed even sooner than the 14 day deadline.

Q: How do we handle a Transfer if a Member Username or Email Address already exists on both Publisher accounts?
A: These duplicate data issues remain a concern but, under the policy, we have given ourselves enough to time resolve them and, when needed, communicate with the requestor to ensure that we resolve the duplicate data appropriately. All transfers that take place under this new policy will also receive a final 'report' indicating any issues that were resolved by hand as well as a general summary of the transfer and what was moved (how many Members, Trackers, Websites, etc- were moved or had to be altered due to data inconsistencies).

Q: Can you sell a Website or Publisher Account without selling the players under it?
A: This one has come up a few times, and the answer is simply a "No". Here at PAS we believe in providing the highest quality of service to your customers. We believe in providing you, the Publishers, with the best service possible - and in turn, we also believe in providing your players with the best level of service that is possible. Under this same line of thinking, we do not believe that we can provide a high level of service to players if we allow websites to be sold without the accompanying players.

We must ensure that a Player's service is not interrupted by the business dealings that go on within the industry. At its core: If a player is in the habit of logging in to 'Website A' every day to see his stats, that player should continue to be able to do so regardless of any Publisher or Website Transfers, too.

Q: How do we know that it's an authentic request & not a hacked account or forged request?
A: Our new policy addresses this via the instructions provided. When requesting a transfer or brokering a deal with another Publisher, please be sure that you are both aware of and have thoroughly read through the policy. Be sure that when you are ready to make the transfer that you have read the instructions ('Requesting a Transfer' on the policy's page) and that you follow them when making the request.

Q: Why is there a service fee for these transfers?
A: As mentioned in several of the answers above, these transfers can be very time consuming for us to complete and require manual hands-on time from our tech team. The introduction of this policy allows us to provide a guaranteed level of service to Publishers so that you are aware of what to expect, and provides everyone with some 'boundaries' so that everyone is on the same page. With this new policy there should never be any question as to what will happen, when it will happen, or how it will happen. The introduction of this one-time service fee is what allows us to provide this high quality of service and allows us to dedicate the proper time to these transfers in order to guarantee this level of service.

Be sure to check out the actual Website Transfer Policy, which can also be found via our PAS Docs Main Page (under ‘Additional Resources’ heading).

We hope that this helps to clarify how we handle Website Transfers and Publisher Account Merges and hopefully addresses any concerns that you may have had regarding them. If you have any questions related to your specific situation please feel free to open a helpdesk ticket and let us know!

Stats Imports

One of the most common questions that we receive, both from a support and tech perspective, is "why are my stats missing?" or "what are my stats showing X?". In a future post I'll dive further into how these things can occur, what causes them, how they get fixed, and how we verify the accuracy of our stats each month. In this post however I would like to cover the basics of how we receive stats and the two main ways that those stats are then 'pulled in' to the PAS system.

Where do the stats come from?

Typically, the poker rooms will provide an account that we can use to login and view different data. These backends are very similar to (and often less powerful than) the Publisher Control Panel that PAS provides for our Publishers. From these backend interfaces, provided by rooms such as Full Tilt and Cake Poker, we are able to get a report that includes the player 'identifier' (tracker name) and the player's MGR. Sometimes these reports also include deductions, or at least a total of all deductions, but not always - sometimes we are only shown the 'Net', but this varies by room. There are also some rooms which do not have any sort of backend at all - we either are forced to request the stats via email, or they automatically email reports to us each day.

Getting the Stats in to PAS

Once we have the data - the MGR - we then have to get that data in to PAS so that our system can run it's numerous calculations on the data, issue payments, calculate comissions, and display the stats for you and your players. How does that happen? One of the following two ways...

Auto-Importers

At rooms that provide us with an account that we can use to login and view stats, we are usually able to build what we call an "importer". An importer is, in its most basic form, a script that follows a specific set of instructions (think of them as replay-able actions) that then automate the process of logging into that room's backend. An importer will login to the room's backend, navigate to the stats page, query for the proper date range, export the data, and then feed it back into the PAS system so that it may be stored and so that calculations can be run.

Manual Imports

For those rooms that do not provide us with an account or a backend that we can use to view stats from, we are forced to manually import the data. This means that someone at PAS has to manually obtain the data which usually happens via an automated email - but sometimes we are required to manually request the data from the room, too. From this point, that person must open the report, check it for accuracy, confirm which columns to use for things such as player identifiers, campaign identifiers, deductions, and MGR. Once these columns have been confirmed and we're sure that the report is accurate, this person then logs into our PAS Employee Control Panel and must make a series of selections: Is this data for the whole month, or just yesterday? Which affiliate account is this? What columns are being imported, and in what order? Obviously, this is a fairly tedious and potentially error-prone process - but one that must be done in order to provide stats to our Publishers and our players.

In a future post I'll dive deeper into topics such as: The different accuracy checks that we perform each step of the way, the potential problems with the processes, why data sometimes looks (or is) inaccurate, and how it all gets fixed - before payments are released on the 10th!