ya seriously dude, its like "oh u created an account before u knew anything about how online poker worked, haha F off u get no rakeback!!!"
If I dont get rakeback then stars gets all my action since thats seems to be the only US site worth playing now.


Here is the email I got back from them from Lisa.


Hello,

Thank you for your email. I apologize but we can not add Rakeback to an
existing player account. However we are looking into organizing
something that will help people with accounts that are not tagged to an
affiliate. We have added your username to our file for further
consideration. Please be patient.

Best regards,

Lisa
The Affiliates Team at Full Tilt Poker


Original Message Follows: ------------------------
I found out that u guys are now selecting nonrakeback players to sign up
for rakeback at ww.rakebackpros.com, Id like to take part in this.
Please e-mail me back how I can go about doing so.

is there any update on this issue? or has everyone given up on Full Tilt already?

just an advise
for people that got offer rakeback
play like maniac for the time being.
because FTP is using small sample size to see how correct is they Mathmatic.
if you guys don't play enough to justify ftp give rakeback on current account, then nobody else would get anything in the future.

OMG, the fact that there no FTP reps replied in this thread sickens me.

FWIW i haven't seen an ftp rep participate in any threads (other than the update thread and thats only the op) in a long long time

We might as well let this thread die, from all the info I gathered they were just going for a small sample size to see how it goes. After that its up to ftp to choose whether or not to give everyone or everyone who requested it rakeback.

no, must remind the poeple that got it, play longer hr
otherwise, FTP may just say, it's not worth it.
so we'll need this thread up

I sent Full Tilt an email saying:

"I play about 35,000 hands a month on Full Tilt and if I were to get a rakeback account I would play at least 100,000 a month. If you don't believe me put me on a 90 day trial basis."

I got the same generic response already posted on here, "we will put you on a list for future consideration."

LookAtMyNutsAA posted on the Full Tilt forum a month ago that he received a rakeback account, and I have been checking for him everyday online and he has been on twice in 3 weeks playing one tournament at a time. Haha. That is not good news if they are doing research to see if rakeback motivates people to play more.

I don't understand what you mean by "see how it goes". The math is very simple:

Current amount FTP is making: $X
Amount FTP will be making by giving rakeback to players who aren't playing on their site due to no rakeback: $X + $Y, where Y is some positive number.

Incorrect.

$X + $Y - $Z, where Y is the extra play they get out of those they give RB to, and Z is the 30% they will lose from what those players were already playing BEFORE they got RB. So they might want to find out not only if Y is greater than Z, but also if it is a big enough margin to make up for the hassle and pissing off some of their affiliates.

I'm not saying it isn't big enough, but these things are never as simple as people assume.

Another thing to take into consideration is the people who have quit playing under their original SN and started under a family members name. If rakebackpros.com is run by full tilt they are saving the extra 8% or whatever portion they are paying the affiliates that isn't getting kicked back to the players. They catch many people trying to do this, but I'm sure many slip through the cracks.

Sorry, but I have to disagree.

Firstly, the Y value from above is huge. There are a ton of players not playing on FTP because they signed up before they knew what rakeback was and now won't play on the site. I think you'll agree that there is no downside for FTP to give this group of players rakeback to get them to play on the site again.

Secondly, I'd guess that the number of players currently playing on FTP that know about rakeback but aren't getting any is not huge. Those players who don't know about rakeback aren't suddenly going to get rakeback. Thus I'd estimate that your Z value isn't that big. At the very least it certainly isn't bigger than Y.

Lastly, why the hell should FTP care about affiliates and how could this move piss them off anyway? Maybe I don't fully understand the relationship between poker sites and their affiliates, but it seems to me that an affiliate has pretty much zero power in this relationship. Even if there is something I'm missing that could cause issues between the affiliates and FTP, why can't FTP just allow existing players without rakeback to create a new account through an affiliate so they can get rakeback. I'm sure raketherake would be thrilled if I could link my FTP account with them to get rakeback.

FTP cares about affiliates because they bring in a substantial amount of the new players.

If FTP just allows any players that don't currently get rakeback, but signed up through an affiliate link on a banner or a forum somewhere, then that affiliate is going to be pissed because they spent money to get that player to sign up, but are now getting no credit for their play, thus the affiliate won't spend money to try to sign up any more players at FTP for fear of losing them at a later date.

And these players that signed up through an affiliate without rakeback can't win the argument by saying they aren't going to play without rakeback because some (most) of them do still play anyways and the minute that they hear that they can sign up for a new account with rakeback they'll say that they won't play anymore unless they get rakeback, which will cost FTP and the non-rakeback affiliates revenue.

Letting players that signed up directly through FTP get rakeback on their accounts is a different story since affiliates aren't involved and obviously FTP is trying out letting them get rakeback on their existing accounts.

This is the boat I'm in and honestly I am sick of waiting. I'm a lazy bastard by nature and so far have used the excuse of possible rakeback on FTP to take some time off. I think I am just going to grind stars and see how far I can get with the VIP program.

Giving rakeback to untagged accounts who currently aren't playing at FTP seems like a no brainier to me and I'm stunned they haven't rolled this out faster. Oh well, sorry FTP.

Quite frankly, if FTP cares at all about their customers (the people who only make them money when they actually play and generate rake) they need to rethink this. The fact that I had a cookie from a site I probably spent all of 5 seconds on now means I do not play on FTP. At all. (This site didn't actually turn me on to FTP, I just happened to visit it shortly before I finally decided to sign up).They refuse to let me do anything about this, so now I have an account I don't use there, and 2 other poker sites (which I would rather not play on, but at least I knew about rakeback before signing up for) get all my rake.

Who does this system benefit? It doesn't benefit FTP. It doesn't benefit me. It benefits a "middleman" that actually didn't have a damn thing to do with me signing up at FTP in the first place.


I would be interested in hearing if you actually have numbers or if you are just speculating. If I were to speculate, based on the handful of players I have talked to in the same boat as the one I described above, almost everyone I know does not play on FTP (and those who do do not use it as a primary site or nearly as much as they would if they had rakeback).