With quarter three behind us, we are running out of 2022, but full of anticipation for go-live. Very much in the spirit of 4Poker, our internal values really speak to the brand and our principles: Transparency, Integrity, Belonging and Teamwork.

Hopefully, everyone would agree the sheer presence of this pre-launch blog is indicative of our care and authenticity when it comes to Transparency and Integrity.

As for Beloning and Teamwork, over the past couple of weeks we have been far more active in ensuring we are connected as a team, with a lot of highs shared as we enjoy the start-up ride.

Values aren’t worth the paper they are written on, unless they are lived and embedded through procedure and real action. When I first got into gaming “People-First” and “People Focus” were very much lived values. I would say today, this is harder to achieve because a lot of the corporate direction and focus on operational efficiency challenges these values at their core. As a private company and challenger brand, we know we must work harder to ensure such values are a reality, whether that is travel spend for Teamwork, or investment in people and belonging via an unrivalled “work anywhere” culture and set of policies.

Although Teamwork itself is very generic in nature, I have many years of learning how difficult productive collaboration can be, if people are not given the platform to perform together.

Last month we had our first offsite strategy summit on the Isle of Man. Many of the management team across the globe from all functions paused launch plans for a day, to put our minds and focus into 2023 planning and prioritization. The mere action of turning off our laptops was both cathartic and productive, as we enjoyed some passionate unfiltered discussion, enjoyable team building, meals, and drinks. Just last week we doubled down on the softer side of collaboration as our team in Malta enjoyed some time in the sun with their extended families.

At 4Poker we differentiate between Teamwork and Belonging, with the latter focused on our intent to be welcoming and accepting of, not just our colleagues, but, all members of our poker community and the wider communities we are close to. Belonging at 4Poker is that desire to be part of something even greater than ourselves or the game.

It was nice therefore to finish our offsite week with a 4Poker sponsored tournament at the local casino in the Isle of Man, something I talked about in an earlier blog piece titled Next Level Community . The event felt a bit of a throwback to the earlier days of gaming community on the Island. We are a new brand and have one of our headquarters, many management staff, and hopefully soon our second license on the Isle of Man. I think it’s wonderful to get back to the early days of Isle of Man where the likes of “PokerStars” and “Microgaming” were synonymous not only with the industry, but the entire population. Our ambition to execute on becoming a “community company”, coming to life.

My thanks go out to all of the locals who joined us at the tables on the night, as we gave away 4 seats to the highest 4 non-staff finishers to the October Manx Cup - we hope the players enjoyed the night as much as we did. We very much look forward to the day we can put on a major event at the Villa Marina and other similar locations!

In that same week, the eagle-eyed may have even spotted a film crew or drone hovering around the local promenade. I am happy to report that we kicked off part 1 of a 2-part series going “Inside 4Poker”.

We will pause on my written blog just before launch in the coming weeks, to instead go behind the scenes and meet the people behind the brand, in video form. In the spirit of continuing to live that internal value of Transparency, we will share some interviews with many of our key business leaders, before Part 2 takes it a step further to share some of the drama of running a poker operation.

It’s quite a simple initiative in all, but historically has been an untold story. With more of the industry turning in the direction of faceless online slots, I’m excited to share the personalities working hard to reinvigorate the poker space.

In terms of the launch, we are currently in the process of submitting to the Isle of Man for what will be our second license. This will put us in a position for a soft-launch in Quarter 4 that will allow us to reach well over 150 countries in the new year.

We will stay in communication in the lead-up to this, but the product overall is progressing well and we are planning to put on our first poker tournament series in Q1 next year. Then we’ll begin progressing further developments and licensing, to open up new games, tournament types and countries where we are available to play.

Lastly, I’m very happy to announce that all of the above is being built on the solid foundation of knowing we now have our first license in hand, following the good news that we received our Malta License from the MGA. It’s now all systems go to have 4Poker live before 2022 finally does run out.