$1, $2, $360, and $500 are the old structure only.

The 360s and 500s havent been running at all the last few months so they arent really relevant. However I do know a few players who would start loading 360s and maybe 500s if they were offered in the new structure.

Everything except those.

$0.10, $1.06$, $2.12, $360, $512

Not sure why it's not offered in those formats right now. I'll try and find out.

While you're at it, you might as well pull out the $36 "2 minute blind levels". Seems they got left in there by oversight. (All the new games where "2 minute blind levels" but then switched to the current new format.)

At 1st this Post started to piss me off those of you who want this new structure and are regs I challenge you to agree to only reg the new games for the next week.

I will keep a eye on LB and if I am losing equity due to a few of you playing both I will be forced to do the same. Pretty F'D up Merge has put us in this position but now is the time we unite and agree to only reg the new Structure imo or we will be forced to play the old BS structure.

There is a simple explanation as to why the old games are loading more often than the new structure. The fish sit these games as they are the highest ones up in their lobby by default filters if sorted by name. Secondly, the name of the game isn't ***NEW*** which might scare someone away that doesn't know, they will stick to what they are comfortable with as they do not know any better.

That will cause the old games to load.

The real reason that merge is refusing to acknowledge as to why they don't want to remove the old structure, is because it is in their best interest to keep the old structure rather than the new. The old structure is higher variance and lower edge for regs which keeps the fish in the game longer, (more rake before busto), and the major point, the games conclude faster (6 min average over 40,000 games, instead of 8 min average over the 500 games I've played of the new structure).

This alone over any significant period of time will drop the rake generation on the network for all forms of SNG's by more than 10%. When you're talking $500k a month in SNG rake generation on the network, a drop of $50,000 raked is very significant and merge has proven that they are more concerned with their bottom line than with player satisfaction.

A great example of this is merge recently forcing their skins to pay a 5% fee for withdrawals for their players. This lowers skin profit, which in turn lowers affiliate profit, which in turn lowers effective RB that can be offered to players through deposit/reload bonuses, etc. I have been pretty anti-merge for awhile, despite having raked $57,550 on the network solely in SNG's and MTT's over the last 7 months. That said, I haven't raked more than $1,000 in the last 2 months as I'm sick of dealing with people that just dgaf.

Carbon clearly doesn't fall into this category, and neither do a handful of other skins on the network, but seriously, Merge needs to get their act together in order to maintain their player pool or they will be hurting hardcore once Lock makes adjustments to the Revolution software. Fortunately for Merge, a software rollout didn't take place quickly on Revolution or they would already be in a world of hurt, once it does though....look out.

If Merge is willing to grow a pair and remove the other structure from the lobby, I'd be happy to jump back on the network and help get the new structure loading (which I did already), but in the mean time, I'd rather not spin my wheels as they are clearly still reserving the right to remove this new structure on a whim and have no interest in removing the old structure from the lobby.

I for one am not going to play on Merge at all until the old structure is gone. The new format has already proven itself (under FT). Why can't Merge give the new structure a chance to run by itself? The network is actually hurting these games by not supporting them properly.

I say lets have a one hour boycott by as many regs as possible to show Merge how important keeping the regs happy is to their business.

But merge just doesn't care...similar to leaving MTT guaranteeds @ 30% higher than they expect entries for. The skins are the ones that get hurt, not so much the network...eventually this will hurt the network as well, but from what I've seen, they really just don't care. They are much more concerned with maximizing profits now, than planning at all for the future.

To be honest, your theory doesn't hold water. If Merge didn't want to institute a change, they would simply say no. On this issue, they asked for player feedback, our thoughts, then explicitly asked for a poll to be created to gain a firm sense of players thoughts. As soon as the results of the poll were obvious, the new structure was in place within hours. If they were SO against change as you suggest, they simply would have told us no when we inquired about this issue.

As assertive as your post is, you can't really throw out a line like 'The real reason that merge is refusing...' because quite simply, you don't know. On top of that, they aren't refusing, they are simply asking for some time to evaluate play at the tables.

i disagree with those who seem to want to treat merge as the enemy. it's seems better to try to find a win-win solution, than to try to threaten or manipulate.

i agree that the new structure along with the 65/35 payouts are great for the health of the game, and i think we should look for honest ways to demonstrate it, which is exactly what most people here are doing.

but trying to force someone to do something is often the most effective way to cause them NOT to do it.

So they half listened. They added another structure rather than taking player feedback and replacing the old terrible structure with the structure that all players are clearly saying they would prefer.

But even after seeing the overwhelming response they still haven't removed the old structure and are saying that they want to gauge the two structures and compare them traffic wise. I can tell you unless every reg refuses to load the old games which would be suicidal for their short term hourly as well for competing on the SNG LB, that the old games will continue to load and continue to load more frequently due to the fact that the games conclude nearly 30% faster.

My apologizes for the wording if it seemed like I had actually spoken to merge and they told me of their intentions. I'm simply stating, that it's pretty obvious to me, that merge has always shown themselves in the past to be very concerned with their current bottom line and not the long term sustainability of their games/network. It is also very obvious to me, that changing to the FTP structure, which will make the players happy, will cost merge money both in the long term and in the short term.

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So these numbers that you guys have been using to gauge traffic in the different structures, what exactly are they gauging?

Unique player ID's per game, total # of games? Do they include a breakdown by stake and rake generation, or are they simply saying more games of the old structure have run since we added both, which is no surprise as the highest volume games ($1 and $2) don't even have the new structure available? Silly to me that they are telling you they are leaving the old structure in because it's more popular by what's actually loading, when they haven't even given the new structure a chance to stand on it's own.

If they really want this to be a fair contest between the two structures, first off, they need to even out the # of games appearing in the lobby, 6 of each for each buy-in would likely be just fine, but having 6 of the old and only 4 of the new will never cause the new to load faster. They also need to change the name of the new structure to something that doesn't say **NEW** in the title as that looks like an experiment to the fish and they don't like to get involved with what they don't know.

Regardless, I simply feel that weighing the games in this fashion is absolutely pointless. If Merge is trying to determine what will run the most and generate the most rake, the answer is the old structure. That is not what the 50 of 52 players on 2+2 requested though, nor what Logan has spent hours co-ordinating with your team about.

If Merge is planning to just compare the volume in the two games, might as well just remove the 300 chip games right now and save all the regs the time of learning the nuances of the changes between the two games.

I agree with this for the most part, however since Merge is a business sometimes the only way to see the light of day is sometimes to refuse to give them our business.

I think the real problem here is that the people making these decisions are not poker players. Carbon Chris or Ryan are you able to tell us if the people in charge are reading this thread? Maybe if they could see things from the players perspective things might get the ball rolling.

All I'm trying to communicate is that it's not as simple as you're trying to make it sound. You've repeatedly said that Merge is ONLY concerned with the bottomline, while also saying that the new structure would hurt their bottom line, yet they instituted it anyway. They are not only concerned with the bottomline, and this is an example of exactly that. While again, I agree with going with just the new format personally, there needs to be a little more patience for something that was JUST implemented.

I guarantee that people in charge of making these decisions are reading this thread.

i don't know if it has been talked about, but i think one of the really good things about the new structure is it lowers variance in 2 different ways (slower structure and 65/35 payouts) while still truly being a super turbo, and this reduces the percentage of players who try these games that will run so bad at the beginning, that they never really give the games a chance.

bottom line: with the new structure, more players will end up liking the super turbos and will be more likely to stay on the network, which is good for both merge and merge's players in general.