Online poker was booming. New sites were opening every week. Then the biggest operator, Party Poker got closed down. Someone was going to steel share by hoovering up their homeless players. Pokerstars came to us with big ambitions but to succeed they needed to differentiate themselves. No one was talking about skill. Poker wasn’t a game of chance like blackjack or bingo, it was a game of cunning, strategy and stamina. It was a sport! The pot was huge and the window was small. With a £1m chipstack, Big Al went all-in writing, producing and playing out 10 commercials, 18 print ads and umpteen banners to 19 foreign markets in 10 weeks.  Within 3 months of launch, registered players had risen from 9m to 13m and within 6 months, Pokerstars were No1 in every market they had entered.

TV, print, online.