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A WORD WITH… Chilipoker founder, Alexandre Dreyfus
CIONLINE: How long has Chiliconnect been in development?
ALEXANDRE DREYFUS: The genesis of Chiliconnect was two years ago, but we really started at the end of last year when we decided that to survive in our industry we needed to be different; and to be different, we needed to innovate. The entire company did a brainstorming exercise, and we eventually launched Chiliconnect v1.0 on the 5th of April.
CIO: Why do you think no one has done this before?
AD: It’s not a revolution, it’s an improvement. There are two kinds of online poker room: the leaders like Poker Stars and Full Tilt, and the others who are trying to become Poker Stars and Full Tilt! However, the ‘others’ are quiet often part of a network (ongame, ipoker, entraction, etc.) and cannot actually control the poker client. Because Chilipoker is smaller it was easier for us to set-up this innovative feature.
CIO: What feature do you expect to be most popular?
AD: There are many features, but for me the most exciting are the side bets and challenges. I love that I can challenge my friends online and then brag about my results on social networks.
CIO: Where there any planned features you had to abandon?
AD: We haven’t abandoned anything, just delayed them... We have a least ten more features to bring to Chiliconnect in the next 3-4 months.
CIO: What are your expectations for increased player numbers on the site?
AD: Chiliconnect is a tool, it’s not the perfect killer app. This means that we need to invest to promote Chilipoker as a whole, but we clearly want to take the figures we had one year ago and double them in the next two years.
CIO: Is this concept protected or do you think other poker sites will immediately bring out their own versions?
AD: Of course all our tools and concepts are patented and copyrighted in Europe. We will be very vigilant about this.
