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The iGaming Leader is hosted by Leo Judkins, founder of The iGaming Leader Mastermind.
Every other week, Leo sits down with Founders, C-suite executives, and VPs from across the iGaming industry for conversations you won't hear on a conference panel. The real decisions. The hard calls. What leadership actually looks like from the inside.
No keynote polish. No PR answers. Just honest conversations between people who know the industry.
New episodes every other Wednesday.
DC: [00:00:00] it's a rough industry I've seen people shoot firearms in a casino
I've seen all kinds of fights
latin America was wild at the time.
are we gonna run a great tournament or not? Are we gonna have players happy? Are we gonna do a
really high-quality poker tournament?
I was absolutely ignorant to all of this
and it was a very painful learning curve
I thought, Okay, yeah, for sure this is gonna be the end of me. they will hire somebody, more qualified
somebody says, well, the chips aren't here. They're stuck in customs. I say, Okay, do we have a plan B? No, we have no plan B. If they don't get out of customs, we have no tournament
Two days before the tournament starts, Mark Scheinberg, looked around and said, It doesn't look very crowded. why are we not doing better? And I say, Well, Mark, it's difficult. Not everybody's behind the tournament, some of the countries struggle, it's tough. He looked at me, like the room stopped, and he said, and what part of that is my problem and not your problem, David?
At the end of the day, you have to make it work, you have to deliver. There is no space for not
Leo (2): Hey, welcome to the iGaming Leader Podcast I'm your host, Leo Judkins, founder of iGaming Leader Mastermind. And on this show, I sit down with some of the most [00:01:00] inspirational and forward thinking leaders in our industry diving into the real challenges, high stakes decisions and lessons. That shape our
industry
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Leo: hey, everybody. Welcome to the iGaming Leader Podcast. My guest today calls himself a gambling rat from the age of 18. Started on the casino floor in Latin America in the late '90s, was a shift manager at, Casino Buenos Aires. by 2000, launched a casino from zero, ran the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, which I'm super excited to talk about, and is now chief strategy officer at Gaming1, where he's, taken them into four US states and made them a [00:02:00] serious contender in Europe. As he puts it, if the job exists in gambling, he's probably done it. now nearly 30 years in, and the story we're going to unpack today is how he went from knowing everything to knowing very little. David, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you.
DC: Hi Leo, thanks for having me. Very excited to have a chat get a few things out there and,and look back at the past
Leo: Yeah, man. I'm excited about it. Because, look, you've been in the industry for a very long time, starting at 18, like you said.
You know, you're a gambling rat from the age of 18. What's, uh, what does the casino floor in the late '90s teach you that kinda still shows up maybe in your work today?
DC: I don't know if I mentioned actually, I started working, in Venezuela in 1995. My dad worked in the industry, and we moved to Venezuela for his job. I was 18, and I wanted to start working while I was going to university, so I did a dealer training school, and after that I just never looked back.
It's been gambling since that day. Not really planned, it just happened. But it was a ton of fun at [00:03:00] the time there. I mean, the casino floor in a place like this, this was Margarita Island. This was pre-Chavez era, so this was booming. This is where everybody went for holidays in the country. There was a new law in Venezuela that shut down all the casinos in the country.
This was the only one to reopen. It was, built in resemblance of the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. It was massive. It was a time where it was at the top of the wave, if you may. So it was a ton, ton, ton of fun. Now, I think that the retail and the land-based business, for me it was, there are some codes there.
There is some bonding with the people. You go through a lot of stuff. it's a tough job. and you develop a way of caring for the people that you work with unlike anything I have seen I, I'm sure other industries have that, for sure. But here it's long hours. you live against the world really.
You wake up when everybody else goes to bed You miss all the family occasions. It's just the way it goes, so you have a second [00:04:00] family in the job, and this develop a way of caring for others that maybe is not that natural in other industries. This is something I've carried with me always.
And then perhaps because of the nature of the timing of it, or I don't know, we were young, whatever it was, curiosity was a big deal when I started in retail. We were always thinking, "Why is this game rules like this? Why, why, you know, they send that guy to that table when he's a terrible dealer, but all of a sudden because the player is losing, they send him, and I'm so much better, and I can go faster, and I can go more accurate.
But, but why I cannot do anything to make anybody lose? Why is that important?" And so I remember always talking with the guys. We were doing the training schools. We set up all the new games when they started. I remember the first time we saw Pai Gow Poker, it was like, "What the hell is this?" So the curiosity and the bond with the people, big-time things that have stuck with me since those days.
Leo: I remember being on Margarita in the early 2000s. It was amazing.
DC: no joke. Yeah. All right. Okay
Leo: [00:05:00] When, when I asked you about your proudest moment, one of them that showed up was from 26 years ago. yeah, it's, shift manager of Bu-Buenos Aires.
why did that still make your list?
DC: this was a time where South America land-based was still developing and booming. I grew up in the north of Spain in a small town, Oviedo in Asturias. Never had any imagination I would ever leave there, you know, I would live there forever. And then for life circumstances, my dad got a job and we move out
remember, this is almost pre-internet days, The world was smaller for us at the time. So my, my imagine of, of casinos and my image of this was still very little form. When I discovered the industry in Venezuela, all I knew was what I was seeing there. I took a trip to Vegas after a few years just before going to Buenos Aires, and for me that was like, okay, this is something else, right?
And then I went to Buenos Aires, and the law passed in Buenos Aires and allowed this only casino in the city of Buenos Aires, not in the [00:06:00] province where there was already one in El Tigre, but it was really in the city. It was in the federal waters, which is why it passed, and it was a riverboat brought from Mississippi.
You can imagine what this is. It's one of the biggest cities in the world. You have 21 million people and one casino. at the beginning, people were showing how much money they had to decide if we allow them to go in or not. Imagine that. It's crazy. That's how busy it was.
So the way to put this operation together was quite complex, and there was people from all around the world. There was people from UK, there was people from Argentina, there was people from South Africa, from Macau. Wherever there was some form of formal proper gaming industry developed, there was somebody from there that came to Casino Buenos Aires to just get this thing going in time.
So the amalgamation we had between pit bosses, shift managers, and so on and so forth was crazy. But it was good for me. It was like Disneyland. Everything was new. I had people I could talk about blackjack rules and games. I had people [00:07:00] I can talk about, you know, drug lords and, and all the crazy stories of South Africa and this and that. it was amazing. But we're talking about a property that had 2,000 employees. It was 24/7. It had over 2,000 slots, over 150 table games. It was very busy. So for me to find myself running this as a shift and in charge of the whole operation very early in my career was really a privilege and an opportunity that doesn't often come around.
At that time, I was young, but I could be trusted because my dad worked in the company as well. And this was, I mean, as good as it gets, I think, from a professional career point of view, to be involved in something as dynamic and as close to the real thing as it gets without being in one of the real hubs of gaming.
So for me, it still stands out as how did I ever get in charge of that so early? It was like, okay, pinch yourself every day, but it was great.
Leo: do you remember how, like what it felt like to be maybe the day that you were put in charge of it and
DC: because I [00:08:00] started at the very bottom in the casino retail,
I've done every job in the casino. I've been in the cage, I've been in the slots, I've been in the, tables, I've been on everything. It always felt quite natural and ready. I never had anxiety with the progression because at the end of the day, as a shift manager, the buck stops with you during those eight hours that you're there.
But for the most part, you've seen what happens already. You just maybe didn't have to make the final decision, but, you've seen the people have arguments at tables because a dealer has made a mistake. You've seen a day being short of staff because some people didn't show up, and you have to do wonders and ask people to stay over.
You've seen days where you're, short of chips, and you have to maneuver around so tables don't go to sleep. Like, you've gone through all of that. So, the other advantage that for me was very natural at the time is I also knew everybody very well. so, you know, if you know how to delegate and you do it well, and you have a good team, it's not that difficult.
So it was more the excitement of [00:09:00] saying, "Okay, I have an opportunity to influence a little bit the service I would-- I think we should be providing," than anything else. the other stuff was okay. it wasn't like you go from zero to 100 in one day, you know. It was quite gradual in a way. It was just the scale was bigger, that's all.
Way more people, way more complexity.
Leo: Yeah, and more responsibility. Makes a lot of sense. So, then 2004, right, with, Casino Asturias, you launched that from zero, yeah, what did that teach you? tell me a little bit more about that journey. That, that's, that sounds awesome as well.
DC: that was, like, not in a million years I would have thought that I would ever come back to Asturias, which is where I am from, and to open a casino and to be the manager of this thing. Like, if you'd asked me when I was 15 years old, I would have said, "Not in a million years there's a chance that would ever happen."
Yet, we were. through a friend that helped, a local group, participate in the tender. They won the tender. They were looking for somebody, and they approached me because I was from there. So for me, it was exciting to be able to come back to Spain, even though I [00:10:00] consider myself half Latin American and half Venezuelan, and live the dream that I was told.
when I moved to South America, a lot of the casino managers were Spanish people because it was a Spanish company, CIRSA, and they were telling me all the big stories of when gambling was legalized in Spain in the late '70s after Franco died. And I had this imagine of, oh, being a casino director in Spain is like, wow, amazing.
So here we are with the opportunity to build this casino from zero, literally the construction, all the recruitment, the dealer school, the whole thing, which we did. I was lucky to also have Sylvie, my wife, working with me during that. She was one of the pit bosses, so that was a lot of fun to do.
And the biggest takeaway I take from this is that that was the first time I had an opportunity to create a culture from zero. 'Cause okay, it was a group that already had a culture, but this was a whole new vertical. It was a whole new dimension for them. and I was the expert, so everybody turned to me for guidance and so on and so forth.
So for me, it was really the [00:11:00] first time I could dictate what kind of attention to detail, what kind of discipline around certain parts of the business, what kind of culture with the people, And it's funny that we had some friction at some points because the culture of the group started to interact, and I had such a dominant role in the setup that the culture I wanted to put in place was overtaking other things.
So I had to have some flexibility around that. But I would say that the biggest takeaway was that, because I had done training schools before in multiple countries, 'cause we had a lot of operations in South America, and I had, set up, new rooms or expansions or things of that nature. That wasn't that super difficult, but the opportunity to really create a culture...
I mean, you take the people when they know nothing about the industry. You educate them for three, four, five months through the training school. You have such a great opportunity to really set the tone and the pace. So that was unique and not that common to have that opportunity.
just to kind of go a little bit deeper on that what were some of the things that were important for you culture-wise to really kind of make [00:12:00] sure that you landed? and perhaps even if there may be still things that you find important now in your career, when I started in this industry, I was taught, by people from Spain that were taught by people from the UK that were the people that originally started retail gambling in Europe So I was taught in a way that It was very strict. The technical part was the priority, the technical excellence.
nobody told me you're here to entertain a customer, this is a service industry. Nobody told me this is a mathematical business, we need volume, we need things to move along, we need flow, They told me if you don't pick the card in such a way, you're an idiot. If you don't... are very strict or this or that, you're not doing a good job.
So I understand it's a little bit like the military kind of approach. It's a rough day today, I get that, And it did prepare me and others well to then face the challenges of being in front of the customers on the floor when, it's a rough [00:13:00] industry in many levels.
So I can understand that you need to prepare people for roughness. But I think it was way too much and unnecessary. And I mean, believe me, I've seen people shoot firearms in a casino. I've seen all kinds of fights. Latin America was wild at the time. seen all these things. But in reality, nothing justifies that approach.
It's still a service industry, in my opinion. So for me, it was very important to teach people to understand and love the challenge of the job and being good at it, because it's important that you're good to provide quality service, but to really understand that this is a service industry, and that the customer is first and above everything else.
It's very easy in a retail casino to make a customer have a hard time. People come, they're afraid. They don't know what to do. They don't know if they can ask change in a table in a certain way or another. They don't know if what they're gonna bet is too much or too little. They don't know if they're gonna look stupid or taking for granted on this, on that.
They don't know if the person next to them is a millionaire or not. They're [00:14:00] intimidated. and the list goes on and on and on. So for me, it was super important that people understood that everybody counts, because it's so hier-hierarchical in the land-based industry, or at least it was at the time, that, a dealer would feel like, "Okay, I'm here.
I'll do what I have to do. That's it. I question nothing. I value nothing. My contribution is very little." And it's not true. At the end of the day, it's really the person. All the small moments of truth happen with a dealer. We used to always have the joke that, this is the dealer, this is the customer, and when you're bored in a table, normally you're looking that way, and as the customer is coming, you make sure you don't make eye to eye, because if you make eye to eye, they're gonna sit down, and now you have to work,
It was that kind of mentality. And I was like, "No, it's the opposite," you know. You should be inviting people to come to the table and forget about the technical part, which is necessary, but... So it was about understanding that this is rough. People are gonna win, people are gonna lose, we're gonna have bad nights, we're gonna...
but this is a service industry done by people, and everybody [00:15:00] counts, and every little touchpoint is super, super important, because by definition, it's an intimidating environment, so.
Leo: Massively helps for retention and ultimately player lifetime value, which we all understand now, but maybe not so well back then.
DC: Yes
Leo: then you, uh, managed the Caribbean Adventure Tournament. around the same time I was in poker as well, and I loved the whole setup. later designed, uh, the player tournament for the first edition out. How was all of that?
DC: That was different. That was a nice change because coming from purely casino industry, the customer is normally, not very sophisticated. I think I never had a quality discussion with a customer about blackjack rules. You know, "Hey, what would you think if we change this and that, or if we do this commercial proposition or that?"
They don't care too much. They just want to be noticed and feel important and have someone to talk and be appreciated and so on. all of a sudden, I found myself in poker, which I played for a lot of years, and we started this in Latin America as well with, with the early, live poker tables, et [00:16:00] cetera.
And for multiple reasons, I end up working for PokerStars and running live events in Latin America and eventually the PCA. This was a totally refreshing career change because all of a sudden you have a customer that knows exactly what they want, that is very vocal about it, and you're working for a company that puts the customer at the real center.
So now it's so much easier, to know what the customer want, so straightforward that it's a lot easier to do a good job, you know? and for me, this was all of a sudden, because you're in the middle, you're just the organizer and facilitator, it was so much easier to align what we need to do and what the customer wants that to me, this was an amazing change.
So PCA was after the WSOP. It was the center of the universe of poker for 15 days every year in January. And for me, who I was a fanboy of poker back in the days, being at the heart of it was amazing. I mean, because we were really making a difference. I mean, if we decided to put something on the [00:17:00] schedule, all of a sudden this could become a thing, you know.
I remember when we did the first Chinese poker live tournament. That never got anywhere, but we did it, or when we did the first 100K buy-in. this was a platform to really, do things that had impact, and we were dealing with all the relevant poker players in the world at the time 'cause they were all coming.
I think, it's a little bit overrated that all these big poker players... It's nice to be around and you learn a lot, but they live out of the mass of the other poker players that are the real losing players that make these tournaments succeed. So it was nice to be just receiving both ends, the average Joe plus the professionals and the whole industry as itself.
And, and from a execution point of view, it was fantastic. I mean, this was really a ton of people. we spent about a month and ten days in Bahamas every year before and after the event, putting everything together. But a lot of very well-prepared people, and it really ran really smooth, to be honest.
we did it for [00:18:00] 12 or 13 years in a row. with me, I think we did it four years in a row, so it was already good when I got it, and then it was just a continuation of it. So it was just all you can eat poker. If you liked it, that was, like, the best of it. And it was also central for PokerStars during that period of the year, so you had all the support and all the attention of the rest of the company and everything else.
So it was TV production. It was the whole nine yards. One thing that many people don't know or, or may know, but probably not, is that we used to send people on a working holiday program to the PCA. So, around, I can't remember the total number, but it'll be somewhere between 60 and 90 people will come to PCA and spend 15 days, of which they would work seven days, and they would be on holiday seven days, paid by the company.
So we had to produce this event with the majority of the core staff being different every year, and being people that never worked on the event before. But the culture in PokerStars was so strong around the customer and was so strong around [00:19:00] poker that it worked really well. So we had people running the players' desk, for example, that was different every year.
We had people doing registrations in the cage, that was different every year. We had people doing payouts and, tournament stuff, that was different every year. Yet still, we managed every year to have the PokerStars touch, and people could really feel, "Okay, if I have a problem or if I need something, it's aligned."
We did this big approach where we really made sure that everybody understood that we were there to solve problems, and we took pride on whatever came up, who solved it the fastest, and we had, like, a daily board where we would say, "I had this problem yesterday, and I solved it like this."
It was really cool
Leo: Man, that's amazing. I think back to it a lot, you know, sitting in there in the middle of the night watching people play heads up or, or, you know, going deep in a tournament. Like, the guys being like legends, right?
They were, they were the
DC: They were.
Leo: They were, they
DC: Yeah
Leo: when I think about Stars as a business, the branding of it, like what you were just saying, that's exactly how I think customers, us as [00:20:00] customers would perceive it as well. I was on the affiliate side, and even on the affiliate side, we would perceive it as such.
And, on the customer side as well, the branding was phenomenal. the merch was phenomenal. Customer support was phen- right, everything. So does that, where does that come from, you think, David? Like, how did you working inside of the business and being part of that with PCA, like how was that...
Why was that so important, you feel? And because it's a massive contrast from what you were saying earlier, where it's all about like the mechanics, the military operation. Here, it feels all about kind of customer support and customer experience and player experience. so where does that come from, you feel?
DC: it was a testament to Isai and his approach to this. Isai and Mark both. I worked more with Mark than I did with Isai, and then the people they hired early on. when I talk about this with other people, it often comes to the same thing. This is the only company I have ever worked, and I probably will ever work, that was absolutely clear [00:21:00] about what the priority was, and that whenever we had difficult meetings, it always end up in the same value to resolve the decision.
Which was what is the best for the customer, what is the best from a poker point of view, period. No matter the cost, no matter the consequences. That was it. Now, a lot of people say, "Oh, it was easy. They had it easy because it was booming, and when the money is pouring through the door, then it's very easy to do."
there is some of that, for sure. When you have a lot of, success, it's easier to just hire the better person, even if it's more expensive, or it's better to hire the better agency, or it's better to hire the better celebrity. Sure. But you still have to have the vision to go after it that way. Now, in particular to this, I mean, if you look at the customer service, I lived in Costa Rica for a while, while I was doing the PCA in Latin America, and that's where we had a big part of the customer service at the beginning.
All these guys, th-they could talk about poker with anyone at any level for hours. So when you called in, when you had an issue, [00:22:00] they knew what they were talking about. And , I came to PokerStars after a previous stage in CISA, you know, having run Six Sigma programs and efficiencies
Then I came to PokerStars and I realized that okay, fine, you bring all of that. Great. We can do this cheaper. We can do this better. But at the end of the day, are we gonna run a great tournament or not? Are we gonna have players happy? Are we gonna do a really high-quality poker tournament? it's so difficult to do that well, but they did manage to do this because it is true that for a long period of time, you had to be a poker person to have a relevant role in PokerStars in some places, and this came through the entire culture.
And of course, there was a lot of people hired, very capable in every discipline of business. That was necessary, but somehow, the majority had some affinity to poker. And this just came down. It was very, very strong
Leo: I think you could see it everywhere and, that certainly wasn't the case for many of the skins that were happening at the same time, you know? And, yeah, I, I, I wanna talk a little bit about, Stars and you moving [00:23:00] into global marketing.
So, from live events into global marketing, a great transition, you know, like I suppose all of a sudden we're talking about far higher pace, right? In terms of online events. super interesting move. how did you make that move? and what were some of the things that surprised you the most in that transition from offline to online?
DC: This was a bit of a gate open by PCA because PCA was so important and so central for PokerStars that I had to deal with everything. I had to deal with CRM, I had to deal with poker room management, I had to deal with the planning and execution of the satellites, I had to deal with Brad, I had to deal with the TV teams.
Everybody sent the media. I had to deal with public relationships. At the end of the day, it forced you to deal with the entire company, both in the planning as well as in the execution as well as in the after. So this gave me great exposure to a ton of people. Obviously, it stretches you as well and it's a tough thing to do, but if you're up for the challenge and you put your elbows down, you can get a lot out of it.
So [00:24:00] when it was sold and when David Baazov and Amaya bought it and a bit of restructuring was done I was offered to come over to headquarters because of how long I had been in the company, because I knew the culture well and etcetera. And there was somebody running digital marketing at the time that was really good, but maybe from a leadership point of view could use some help, and that's how it was presented to me.
And I thought, "Okay, this is a great opportunity to get closer to the core business and really understand way better what really things are about. and if common sense has taken me this far, I am sure it can probably
Leo: Yeah
DC: me go farther." So here we go into the world of, pixels and, ROIs and, Google and, and tracking and etcetera, and all that technical part of the business which, I mean, I was absolutely ignorant to all of this in every sense of it, and it was a very painful learning curve. Very strong because this person that was there left six months after I took on this role, and I was left alone. I thought, "Okay, yeah, [00:25:00] for sure this is gonna be the end of me. they will hire somebody, more qualified and etcetera."
And Rafi came and said, "You know what, David? It's okay. Find someone to help you, and let's build a good team under you, but stay and let's continue." And I was surprised at the time. We did that and we made it work, and we built the entire future of the digital marketing. At that time we launched BetStars, we launched Casino, so we built a team and it was SEO, PPC, it was affiliate, so on and so forth.
Unfortunately, very quickly after that, the whole cost-cutting and second stage of PokerStars started. And so everything we had built, we had to stop. So we stopped PokerStrategy, we stopped all the deals with the majority of the affiliates, and we started trimming down all the communities we had built, the Team Pros and everything else.
I was still doing the digital marketing. I was just running the affiliates at the time that we had to shut down the majority of it, so that wasn't fun at all. but it was... I think that sometimes growth is for [00:26:00] sure in the other side of comfort, and you have to try. and it worked out for me, but it was tough.
If you ask my wife, she will tell you this was one of the toughest part of my career because I had to learn so much in such a little time, and the expectation is that you're gonna deliver and there is no time to wait. And this was big budgets, big expectations, but I enjoyed it
Leo: man, that's so funny how things, come around. I was on the other side of that. I was,
at Poker Strategy
at the time. So we were doing, you know, as after Black Friday, I don't know, I don't know how many of the FTDs we did at Stars with PokerStrategy. I think
something like six percent
or something.
And then getting, that getting cut and then Full Tilt dropping out and then the iPoker skins, it was, what a crazy time to, So on the other side of it, very stressful as well on our side. but tell me a little bit more about that, David. That moment where that person left after six months.
Because people react differently in moments of pressure and moments of [00:27:00] stress, what was your response to that person leaving and then you kind of being in that role for six months now, not having that same digital experience, feeling that this is gonna be the end of you.
What did you do?
DC: of all, there was already a decent team in place, so it's not like if you lose this person, everything goes out. But I think from an strategic point of view, he was very strong and very capable. He went to Miniclip and did a great job there.
I've always thought that there is, some thing that comes with experience and with formal education and with proper preparation that allows you to do certain roles and certain things.
Now, as I get older, I think I've come to think that it just shortens the curve to be effective. But a ton of what we do, there's a lot of common sense on it. There's a lot of leadership and delegation. So I thought, "Okay. let's have an honest discussion around what we think needs to be done here," which is what I did have with Morten at the time, with Gino, and with Rafi, and said, "Okay, what is it that we're [00:28:00] trying to do here and where is the gap, and where does the gap need to be filled?
Let's just, before you panic on anything, is really a real gap here or not? And if it is, okay, let's see where we need resources to fill it." And I think that the clear gap was more on the technical side. And at the end of the day, It was not for me to solve that part.
It was more for me to solve the organizational resources, the setup and the inspiration of the teams, ensuring that the ambition was, stretched enough, understanding the complexity of the group and the need to deliver at different days, prioritizing the spend and the resources.
But it was for other people that, yes, we did have... Because the person that was there before was filling that gap with their knowledge and et cetera. And as soon as we made sure we replaced that, no problem after that.
Leo: And especially something like, like, you know, Black Belt or Lean Six Sigma, all of those kind of things that will help you prepare for better processes, But it doesn't, fill the technical gap Um, you wrote about four specific transitions in your intake, before we started [00:29:00] recording, and, I love them. They're almost poetic, you know? you talked about doing to letting do, knowing everything to knowing very little, argument to context, and smaller to bigger picture.
uh, Let's talk about doing to letting do. what does that mean
DC: this was for me one of my first, transitions or aha moments. I was a dealer, My job was doing. Nobody could do it for me. All I did was practice on my hand skills, practice on my calculation skills, practice on my speed, my service, and just run that table the best way I could, and
I really was good at it. I think about it now, but I finish work, and I still practice at home. That's how much I loved it, and that's how good I wanted to be at it. So for me, it was a craft, and I devoted myself to it, so that was 100% doing. You have a supervisor. You have a pit boss. I took pride on being faster than everyone, calculating things before.
They couldn't keep up, you know, that kind of competitiveness and thing. And all of a sudden, I got my first pit [00:30:00] boss job, and now I, I don't touch a chip. I do nothing. They do everything, yet I'm responsible for how we perform on this pit tonight. That was the first big change.
So before, my resources were my knowledge, my ability, and how I practice on that. Now, my resource is the people I have here. I need to know everything about who's good at what, who goes fast, who goes slow, who gets nervous on this type of table, who works well with that, who has complex things at home, and they come tired.
So I, I wanted to get the most, and because I had done that job before, for me, it was very natural to say, "I know I hate to be three hours in a row on a table without a break when we're short of staff. I know I'm not good at blackjack, and I'm better at roulette. I know these customers like me, and these customers hate me."
And you know that about everybody else because you've been with everybody either chipping on a roulette or being a supervisor, whatever. So I, I introduced new things in the way I thought we should do. For example, because we had chairs at the time, when you were a supervisor, [00:31:00] sometimes you could get stuck for three hours, so three hours sitting on a chair looking two roulettes.
after 45 minutes, I would go to the chair, and I would send that person to replace another person on a table, and I would take that position for five minutes while they exchange. Now they can go to the bathroom, come back. Now they can sit, and all of a sudden, the productivity went up dramatically because people are...
First of all, they know they're being looked after, and, and you care about how they feel. Secondly, it's easier for them to do a better job, and so for me, this was my first real experience of going from doing to letting do that, the feedback I got was instant on, "This is great," and, and this i- this works, and, and, and, and things work better, and the productivity was there and follow through.
So that was my first big aha moment.
Leo: Love it. And it's such a great example of also still being involved, right? I think that's a leadership lesson through every single level of, where we are in an organisation, is being able to still do the job and people seeing that you're still doing the job as well, right?
DC: [00:32:00] Yes. Yes.
Leo: powerful.
DC: Absolutely
Leo: okay, so now from the second one you talked about is from knowing everything to knowing very little.
I think every single person can relate to this.
we believe that we're kind of super knowledgeable. And then the more knowledge that we have, the more we realise that we actually know very little,
so tell me a little bit about this in your own words. what-- When did you first realise that this, that your operational expertise had become maybe a liability rather than an asset?
DC: I think there is that saying that say there's nothing more dangerous than a man that doesn't know what he doesn't know,
Leo: Yes.
DC: there's been many times I'm sure like you and everyone else where we've realised that, but there was a particular time when I joined PokerStars to take over the live events in Latin America, the first tournament was in Punta del Este in Uruguay.
And so, okay, I arrived there, I'm meeting the team there for the first time, and I arrive, I think, two days before the tournament starts. We have, some 1,000 and something players are expected to come in. They're coming, they've qualified, everything else. [00:33:00] And we're having dinner, just catching up.
I'm straight from the airport somebody says, "Well, the chips aren't here." I say, "Okay, are they getting here tomorrow?" "We don't know when they're getting here because they're stuck in customs." I say, "Okay, and is that... Like, do we have a plan B?" "No, we have no plan B. If they don't get out of customs, we have no tournament, no chips."
This is two days before the tournament starts, okay? So I say, and why? Like, what's the problem?" "Well, you know, we have one chip set, and we have to send it to every country, and so we have to import it. It goes through a complicated importation, process. It's, considered gambling equipment. Here, it got stuck.
They want us to pay tax based on the face value of the chips." Now, in PokerStars at that time, that type of problem is okay. The tournament has to happen. Pay whatever you have to pay. Get the chips there, so on and so forth, which is what we did in the end. But to me, that moment was the moment I realized, okay, there's a ton of things that are gonna be happening here because of the scale and the way this thing runs, that I have absolutely no idea about.
I have no idea where we're getting the merchandise, how it's been imported here, what needs to be sent. I have no idea [00:34:00] how the money from players' accounts is transferring to the property and out of the property and money laundering requirement, this and that. I have no idea about, the media arrangement.
There were so many specialist areas at that time that I had absolutely no clue. But I realized that I didn't have to know either. What I need to do was organize, orchestrate, and facilitate for people. So what was the first thing I did about the chips? I found a solution to not have to import chips ever again, so that way we don't have that complexity in place.
So we made a deal with Copag at the time, which is a card manufacturer and chip manufacturer of Brazil, became a sponsor, gave us one chip set on every country. It stayed in the country, never had to leave the country, no importation, no shipping.
We saved money. The list would be quite long on things of that nature. So it was mostly saying to everyone, "Okay, what, where are your friction points, and how do we..." And just have the determination to say, "Okay, this should be better. Let's make it [00:35:00] better."
just focus on that. Focus on facilitating, organizing, and using the skill that us has because I remember Jeffrey Hess, who was my boss at the time, one day at PCA, we were talking, and, I remember he had a BlackBerry 2010, I think this was. And he had-- I picked it up because he forget it on the table, and it had, 517 whatever.
It was a big number on the emails. And I say, "Jeffrey, this is crazy." And he say, "David, there's a time in your career where you're always gonna be behind from that moment on, so you gotta learn to deal with that." And for me, this LAPT transition, this not knowing everything and always being behind, that's when it got real for me.
Leo: such a good example, good old BlackBerry. Um, third transition we're talking about was, was influence through argument to influence through context, right? I think, man, when we, when we're all, we all love arguing, we all love being right w- as we're younger, right?
And we, and then later on we understand that probably that's not really how we're gonna win somebody over. so [00:36:00] we get much more mature. So how did that, h- yeah, how did that work for you? give me an example of kind of that when an argument failed and, and context worked.
DC: I had a,a big realization slap in the face on this. There was the 10th year anniversary of PCA, and we had made a big deal out of this, and we wanted to break 10,000 players in the main event
I had found a ton of difficulty. That was my first year really in charge of the whole event and running CRM and running the satellite. It, it was very difficult. I had to deal with every country manager telling me why they don't wanna send players to PCA from Greece or from Finland because it just doesn't, you know, they're sending money out of the liquidity.
They're using media money. They have to send their journalists this and that. So Mark arrived, and we walked the floor together, Mark Scheinberg, and we were in the middle of the room, and Mark looked around and said, "It doesn't look very crowded." And I said, "Yeah, I think we're gonna just about make the 10,000."
he said, "Why, why are we not doing better?" And I say, "Well, Mark, it's difficult. [00:37:00] Not everybody's behind the tournament. some of the countries struggle with doing this or, and that. It's tough." and that was, one of the hardest, moments for me. He looked at me like the room stopped, and he said, and what part of that is my problem and not your problem, David?"
And I was like, "Wow, this guy just put the whole weight of this thing being successful in my shoulders because I'm running it." And I thought, you know what? he's damn right." I did not manage to convince all these people of how important this is for us to make it more successful, and if I don't do it, then who's gonna do it?
maybe it didn't happen in that second, maybe it happened a little later that day, but when I reflected on it, I thought, "Wow, okay, he's right." And from that moment on, I decided, okay, well, what's the problem here? Just arguing that the PCA was important, just arguing that the media eyes are on the t- it's just not enough.
For some people, it didn't really solve the friction and the problems [00:38:00] that mattered to them, and that's where for me the context was important. So from that point on, I made a list country by country, country manager by country manager. I tried to understand, okay, what's the problem here? Why people in Finland don't care about the PCA?
How can we find a way to make this relevant? What segment of customers could be interested, and how doing that can help create some liquidity for other things? How can I get some other country to help with something that's import- Like, it's a whole different approach. And it did get a lot better after that.
And ever since, I think that stayed with me that, it's probably one of the hardest things in leadership. I always thought the higher you are, the easier it's gonna be, but it's not. it's the harder it is to influence because I think the more senior you are, the more opinion people have, the less they're going to take a yes just because you say so.
and more often than not, you'll be wrong, and they'll be right. So, yeah, that moment at PCA was really life-changing for me.
Leo: I think the other thing about leadership is it, like the, all of the weight of those decisions there on your shoulder and that's why [00:39:00] maybe also that moment meant a lot because it takes you from kind of being at the receiving end, almost being the victim of not having a filled out room, to actually taking control and taking ownership of it.
And I think so many people that never make it into leadership, they are, like the victim of everything that's happening around them instead of taking control and taking ownership even though you don't fully control the situation. that?
DC: A-absolutely. I think, uh,I think I still work on that every day. You know, I think the natural behavior is to be a bit cynical sometimes because it's the easiest thing to do. "Well, how can you not see this? Well, I've told you 20... Of course, this is important," or, "We're never gonna be better as long as this and this is in place," and so on and so forth.
And I think it's a game of concessions. Nothing is perfect. You always have to give and take a little bit. It's like a relationship to a certain degree. But it's true that been parts for myself where I have been too lenient as well. So because I'm more of a people person, and I like to get along with everyone, I [00:40:00] give up sometimes on things I strongly believe on just to preserve the conflict, to not escalate, and et cetera.
And I've struggled over time with really separating what's important from, relationships and understanding that it's not really going to hurt the relationship. appreciate it for who you are and how you behave, and not necessarily if you think differently about something the business should do.
but it took me time to do that, and it still is something I have to pay attention once in a while because it's super easy, especially with the big topics, to just blame something else and complain and, "Well, what can I do?" You know?
There's always more we can do. I don't think always you can solve it, but a lot of the time you can have a ton more influence than you think, for sure.
Leo: And I think also that example of that comment of, you know, which part of this is my problem goes to show that that doesn't break the relationship with him, right? Him saying that. In fact, it actually does the opposite. It puts rocket fuel into you where you're gonna go, "Oh, no, I actually, this...
I'm not gonna let this happen again. This is now I'm gonna take care of this, and I'm gonna make damn sure that [00:41:00] that comment's not gonna get made again."
DC: I think that's a great transition to the next point, which is more around the bigger picture and the smaller picture. Because for Mark, he was the owner. For him, it was about the end means of this. Why are we doing this? it has to be meaningful. So everything else that has to happen along the way is for you to do so that happens, and you will have to do whatever you have to do to set it up so it works.
he was that type of leader and that's part of also why Poker Stars had the success that it had, whatever support you needed was there, but the accountability was strong and everybody was expected to deliver what they had to deliver.
Leo: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. so you've, like you've had a, great career really working all the way through, both offline and online, of different transitions. who did you lean on in all of those transitions? Was there anybody that could help you figure it out, that you could talk to in moments of doubt?
or was it you, just you powering through and figuring it all out yourself?
DC: There's been [00:42:00] a few people here and there at times. I figured out a lot of it, or I tried to figure out a lot of it for myself, but there's been a few people that called me out at times that helped a lot. Mark was one of them in this particular case. I worked with someone that's become a very close friend when I was in Cirsa, in the retail in two estates, and with whom I spent a fair amount of time in Casino Buenos Aires.
this was someone that had good experience and was very, let's say, higher management oriented. And so we talk a lot about the math of the business and the, the real more productivity kind of approach and how do you really make an operation better? How do you make more money? What things can you do?
Capacity, maximization, ROIs, and things of this nature. And it was somebody that I've kept a relationship and talk about the business a lot and talk about challenges. more from a technical and operational point of view than maybe from a leadership point of view, but it's also somebody I looked up to.
And then I was quite lucky also to work in Cirsa [00:43:00] at a stage when Joaquim Agud was there, who is the president now, was the CEO back in the day. And he came from General Electric, and I used to be part of the, committees, the direction committees there once a month, and it was a brutal one full day that we used to have.
But it was very educational because it was incredible. We had so many hundreds of operations, and no matter what we did, this guy always found a way to put the finger where it hurt and always keep us honest and accountable. And the relentless discipline with which this guy was about achieving results was incredible.
And it was a great bouncing board to have every so often to see that at the end of the day, you have to make it work, and You have to deliver. There is no space for not. And It shaped a lot of the way in which I see things, these days.
Leo: with Gaming1, you recently, launched in the USA in four different states, most recently taking it to as a serious cons- tender in Europe. But you, you mentioned those as really proud moments for you as [00:44:00] well. why were those such proud moments for you?
DC: I think the USA, I've been in gaming now six years. I was running the entire interactive operation until, a few months ago, and now I'm moving to a more strategic role and looking at the future. and launching USA was one of our biggest failures, and that's why it's one of my proudest moments.
First of all, because a relatively small company in our industry from Belgium to be able to be on the early wave of the United States being regulated, launching in four states, I thought that was something to be extremely proud of.
First of all, I wasn't the one that made the deal and the partnership in USA.
Somebody else did, and they did a great job on that. and I was only playing a part in launching, but we worked extremely hard. I mean, technically, the stretch that this was for Gaming1 to be ready to compete in USA and launch in time with a quality sports product, with a bet builder we didn't have at the time, with player props that didn't exist so much in Europe at the time, and so on
I mean, it feels like ages ago. This was only three years ago. But the endless nights and the... [00:45:00] we launched, I remember, Ohio or Tennessee on the 1st of January, so there was no New Year's Eve for anyone. And then we launched another state in August, so no summer holiday. This was really, really intense.
And talk about an organization on its knees on every element of it, from compliance to legal, to product, to marketing, to everything. This was it. So to actually do it in time, eventually we exit like a lot of other companies have had to do because it's really as competitive as it gets. We took a lot from it.
We learned a lot from it. for me, it was truly the strongest stretch of leadership I have ever went through because everything came together here in pressure, in knowing what you don't know, Everything we've talked about came there. And at points, it took the worst out of me because you just want things to work, and you push, and, you know, it's hard to have time and patience and delegate, et cetera, when things are not going and you're pressured against time.
but we did it, and we went live, and things succeeded And eventually, we decided, okay, too much effort, not enough [00:46:00] gain. we can use all of this learning for other things, and we did retreat, and it's worked out really well. And that's part of the situation and the pride also in realizing that and saying, "You know what?
It's time to do something else and do what we do really well better and focus on this." And now we have private equity that came with us five years ago with CVC Capital. They're almost on their fifth year now. We're doing really, really well. We're outperforming all the markets where we are, and, it's been a strong transformation on Gaming1 into, what is really gonna be a force in Europe in the years to come.
So it's been quite a journey.
Leo: It's funny, isn't it? How, like, the US launch you're talking about, state by state launch. I think it's so interesting that focus, like focus on a single mission, having a whole business focused behind one specific deadline and one specific topic,
That creates that feeling of pride and belonging and sense of everybody putting their shoulders behind the same thing. I think there's some, there's a lesson in that as [00:47:00] well. You know, how can we create in our businesses, how can we create more of that? It doesn't have to be a US state launch, but how can we create more of this same...
and ultimately, that's what mission, vision, what that's all about, I think, right? But just on a, you know, timescale.
DC: it's interesting you bring this up. I was having a conversation with Christopher, our CTO, not too long ago, where we're talking about this, that when we have a clear commitment to something, we often execute well on it. It's the challenge to get that commitment and everybody behind it, and normally has to do with a deadline, right?
When we have to do a migration, when a license needs to be renewed or something of this nature, there is no alternative because the consequence is too bad. I would say that the hard thing here, 'cause I've seen, for example, now during the summer, we've released collectible cards and some, very cool stuff during the World Cup that we needed to do it before the World Cup started.
And it started with a strong vision from someone that this is gonna be [00:48:00] transformational. This is really gonna be a step forward, and you can inspire and rally the people behind. And so you have that in common, and it's big enough that it moves the needle, so you have that commitment from everybody else.
And when you do it and it succeeds, it creates a muscle, right? And it starts to develop a muscle memory. So the more of those you can have, the more effective You become more credible when you're saying this is the direction for product, this is the direction for whatever expansion or whatever it is.
And I think that there is a risk there 'cause not always you get it right. But when you do, and if you get a few of them in a row, you can get a strong snowball momentum, and then it's easier. But I would not underestimate, the importance of focus. It's so easy to get distracted, so easy, and overestimate the impact of things that, capability-- Being honest about the capabilities we have in our companies is one of the hardest things I find
Leo: Yeah, we all have a tendency to overestimate, so, that makes sense. very last question, David, for you. If you go back [00:49:00] and you would meet that 18-year-old on the casino floor today, what would you tell him not to change?
DC: I'd like to think I haven't actually changing what I would tell him, but I'd say remain curious because there aren't that many superheroes out there. There's a lot of common sense and hard work Be curious and care about the people. These are the two things I would say keep that because I deeply care about the people from the beginning because I came from the bottom.
I worked with the people, and I developed that bond from early on. So everybody was someone to me as I grew up, and I just kept that with me. That has served me well. and I was very curious from day one, and I mean, all the good things that have happened in my trajectory, in my career are somehow related to the fact that I was curious about something at some point.
And then a time came where that came to be a factor. So I haven't lost that because I think that's just something innate in me. But it's easy also to suppress that at point. So I [00:50:00] would say just keep curious and keep caring about people.
Leo: Thank you very much, David. Great podcast. thanks for taking the time today.
DC: Thank you, Lee. I hope it's, helpful for people. I really enjoyed it, and, it's nice to do a little deed for the great work you do and the community that we have. I think it's very nice to have these opportunities and to learn from each other and to have, spaces to communicate like this. Our leadership, like everything, is very lonely, and in our industry, it's nice to have opportunities like this, so thanks.
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