Haha, I thought that sounded weird coming from you.

lol. when i was looking at john donkrad's posts and threads i couldn't believe somebody raking so much money was that dumb.... glad to see it was an imposter...gl to the real donkrad @ grinding flips or whatev. the f ur doing to rake that much

just under 200k hands at 6max 200nl thru 1k nl

wow ur a boss...gl man

I dont have a progress bar for lock lotto on the new site like I used to.. I feel like its not tracking or counting my points anymore because before the switch I was winning something from lock lotto a ton, now I havnt won anything and I dont see any progress. I've even had several admins tell me its not even running lol.

Sent a PM to Shane he got back to me in a timely manner. Thanks Shane

MGR is the same as monthly gaming revenue right? If so, I have only gotten paid for the first 3 levels and raked $115 yesterday. Am I missing something in the terms?

cuz you've only cleared 3. rake $5 more and you'll hit the 4th tier.

Yeah, the first 3 levels = $70 mgr (10+25+35). To reach level 4 you need $120 mgr (10+25+35+50).

Well, that's misleading on Locks part. I didn't know that till just now. Does it say that somewhere on the promoton page?

I know it is confusing, but the rakes and fees column on the BOTK page is per level, not total.

So you rake 10 dollars to get level one. Then another 25 dollars for a total of 35 dollars to get level 2. Then another 35 dollars for 70 total to get level 3 and so on. As has been stated, the next level is 120 dollars for you.

I would go by this if you don't feel like doing the math each time.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=200

It has been requested, but it is worth repeating, there needs to be a "total rake & fees" column on the BOTK page.

This.

I didn't expect to earn much from BOTK in the first place. There is a "total prize" column, but not a "total rake" column? It concerns me that this appears to be intentionally misleading.

Also, where is the announced leaderboard? I have asked in this thread several times about it, but have been ignored. If you made a mistake in calling it a "SNG" leaderboard Shane, then just say so. Why announce a promotion on a big US holiday weekend, that you are not prepared to pull off?

I know this promotion is worth a lot to some people, but for me, a site's transparency is worth far more than a few bonus dollars.

Just my 2 cents.

Shane, I am having this same problem and I e-mailed you about it. Could you please help me out? Thanks!

Has anyone found out who nickvanexel was? He/she was top3 (along with AustinS89) in the leaderboard in August. PTR says such player doesn't even exist on Lock/cake poker. Has anyone seen them play at all?

99% sure they were grinding the flips.

Perhaps he changed, but according to his own posts it sure doesn't seem that way. I freaking linked to his account on 2+2 already. He has made a lot of transfers from nickvanexel. I don't know him at all other than seeing him around 2+2 but via the search it was super-easy to find.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...17&postcount=2

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19.../#post33961044


He seeks a stake for low-level DON's on Lock at the end of June. He also lists AustinS89 as one of his references.

On July 25 nickvanexel posted this that certainly indicates he was grinding DON's up until that point at least:


Also, on July 26 he made these posts which indicates he is still involved in the DON's:


1200 games from July 1-July 26. So he's been around and not exactly in hiding for July at least. And that was just slow-blind 10-man's apparently.

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that he got into the turbos and 6-max ones a bit for August or something like that as he was getting better.

Saying you are 99% sure that he was flipping seems inappropriate. I don't think you even knew that he was a DON fiend in July and was on the site evidently quite a lot.

I don't know this guy at all. Maybe he really did ditch the DON's and went for flipping instead. But it's not like he showed up suddenly after not playing in July or anything like that.

Micro, look at how much he raked and then check to see how many DON's he would have play to rake that much. Pretty much impossible given the sng traffic on Revolution. He'd have to play 12k+ Don's to reach 20k in MGR. Even if he switched to hyper turbos, everything above the 30s rarely go off so he's have to play about 12k turbos(probably more since it would be impossible to 10+ table $20+ buy in level give the traffic). Nothing suggests he did that and his post earlier about not breaking the Tos makes it pretty obvious he was gaming the system by flipping.

Definitely don't think his funds should be confiscated but flipping to get ~120% rakeback indirectly screws the rest of us. If they take an extra couple thousand out of the system then Lock is more likely going to scale back some rewards.

If he or the other guy achieved the MGR through not flipping I'll gladly apologize.

I can't make this look as good as it should in this post but it might help anyway.

[PHP]Level Rake Total Rake Prize Total Prizes
1 10 10 2 2
2 25 35 4 6
3 35 70 6 12
4 50 120 8 20
5 60 180 10 30
6 70 250 12 42
7 80 330 14 56
8 90 420 16 72
9 100 520 20 92
10 150 670 22 114
11 200 870 30 144
12 250 1,120 40 184
13 275 1,395 45 229
14 300 1,695 60 289
15 325 2,020 75 364
16 350 2,370 85 449
17 375 2,745 95 544
18 400 3,145 100 644
19 500 3,645 125 769
20 600 4,245 150 919
21 700 4,945 175 1,094
22 800 5,745 200 1,294
23 900 6,645 225 1,519
24 1,000 7,645 250 1,769
25 1,100 8,745 300 2,069
26 1,200 9,945 325 2,394
27 1,300 11,245 350 2,744
28 1,400 12,645 375 3,119
29 1,500 14,145 400 3,519
30 1,600 15,745 425 3,944
31 1,700 17,445 450 4,394
32 1,800 19,245 475 4,869
33 1,900 21,145 500 5,369
34 2,000 23,145 550 5,919
35 2,100 25,245 600 6,519
36 2,200 27,445 650 7,169
37 2,300 29,745 675 7,844
38 2,400 32,145 700 8,544
39 2,500 34,645 725 9,269
40 2,600 37,245 750 10,019
41 2,700 39,945 800 10,819
42 2,800 42,745 825 11,644
43 2,900 45,645 900 12,544
44 3,000 48,645 1,000 13,544
45 3,100 51,745 1,200 14,744
46 3,200 54,945 1,300 16,044
47 3,300 58,245 1,400 17,444
48 3,400 61,645 1,500 18,944
49 3,500 65,145 1,600 20,544
50 3,600 68,745 1,700 22,244
51 3,700 72,445 1,800 24,044
52 3,800 76,245 1,900 25,944
53 3,900 80,145 2,000 27,944
54 4,000 84,145 2,100 30,044
55 5,000 89,145 2,200 32,244
56 6,000 95,145 3,500 35,744
57 7,000 102,145 4,500 40,244
58 8,000 110,145 5,000 45,244[/PHP]

Flipping is "gaming the system" or going against the spirit of the promotion. IF they did that then probably shouldn't confiscate all funds on first offense. But I would strongly consider taking back the prizes. And certainly they should be warned that future violations of not playing within the true spirit of the promotion will lead to confiscation and banned accounts.

Before I think you said 9k tourneys. Now it's 12k. Well, whatever. That would be 400 a day which is obviously a lot. On Merge I did 500 tourneys in about 4 hours a couple different times. If you are racking up the hyper turbos then I think it is possible.

But yes, the two of them know each other (one listed the other as his reference for the stake) and they both happened to move up to the same rake level (I think) so it's certainly not impossible.

But we are really dealing with unknowns here. Nobody saw them playing nonstop heads-up tourneys against each other (or has not spoken up) which I would think would be really noticeable.

Insane that there is no info on the leader boards yet. At least tell us that it's not going to happen this month.

There is no longer any mention of leaderboards on the BOTK promotion page. I think it's safe to say that it's not going to happen this month.

Maybe not being seen was part of the plan because they knew flipping was gaming the system. It appears no one saw them players anything of serious raking at all which is weird for that much rake over an entire month. I don't see anyone stepping up and saying they played even 2,000+ tournies with them let alone 12,000. I'm not accusing anyone, but the unknowns are what is keeping this topic alive.

Some of the unknowns are on Lock's head. For instance, within the Lock Admin page is a direct link to Sharkscope. If Lock is entering into some type of agreement with Sharkscope then maybe it should be illegal for Lock accounts to be hidden. Furthermore, I've received payments from both Pokerstars and Full Tilt when cheating has been found on their sites. I don't know of anyone receiving a payment on the Lock network when cheating is found. This is huge. If Lock is NOT reimbursing the victims of cheating, then as players we need cheaters on the Lock network caught even faster...i.e. the ability to player self police the games through Sharkscope and PTR. A lot of cheaters have been caught right here on 2+2 through player self policing.

It's also possible they just played a ton of HU hypers together to not appear like they were just grinding the 120% rakeback. That involves a little more work but would be safer route if you chose to bend the rules. However, if that was the case I'm sure they would've already came into this thread and said they played hypers and not flips. The silence is pretty damning since the one dude already posted once in this thread.

The way I see it this situation can be interpreted in two ways. Assuming that they got to that high amount of RB grinding flips or HU hypers they could :
1) register to any Coin Flip or HU hyper and play anybody that would sit with them, case in which I think they didn't do anything wrong. Yes, they were "gaming the system" but as long as this type of tournaments are available and there was no mention in the TOC of Ronin that you are not allowed to play this for the promotion, I don't see anything wrong or against the spirit of the promotion.
2) play a lot of flips or HU but only against each other, case in which I think they were colluding against the system and they should be disqualified and funds confiscated. By doing this they wouldn't risk anything as they could easily transfer back the amounts they lost one to each other and just bank on the 140% RB that they get. Even if they played other games too (like 10-man or 6-man DON's) but they played an unreasonable amount of games together (HU or flips) I think that they should be disqualified.

That being said I'm pretty sure that they were playing in a lot of games together as, excepting the lower levels of Ronin, everytime "nickvanexel" reached a level "AustinS89" followed up. I have the Leaderboard page saved on my PC if somebody is interested. It's important now to see what type of games they were playing before jumping to any conclusion. It's Lock job to verify this and reach a verdict.

Maybe Shane could bring this to who's in charge attention to verify it.