Why aren't aussies allowed to play on merge? and usa players are

I think they have plans to open up in Australia and it just hasn't happened yet.

@etothemc2 I've had it happen to me more than once and it really sucks. LOL not necessarily AA but other hands I've doubled with and lost chips with because I wasn't able to insta rebuy while others had.

Just wanted to give a shout out to Hero CEO - contacted him on the last day of the "bonus trade for double up coupons" - he responded super quick and had the coupons in my account in next to no time - thanks man, that's awesome service!

agreed with etothemc,
would be nice to get the rebuys available right as the tournament seats, also it appears if you get stacked on the final hand before the break/add-on period you are only allowed to rebuy once, I mean this is equally as tilting as having 1 chip over the initial buyin and not able to rebuy, so your starting the 2nd hour with 1 buyin + addon instead of 2 full rebuys + the addon.

Also, whats the deal with this hand for hand w/ two tables left, some tournaments begin H-H w/ 18 left all the way down to 10(LOOOOOOOL?), and others are 13-10, and once it gets to 10 handed theres no hand for hand??? Does not even make sense, since there is a larger pay jump from 10-9 rather than 18-10 and or 13-10 and its the abso. final tables bubble. Can this please look into these problems David?

Okay I know I'm wearing out my welcome in this thread so please forgive me but...

I would think before Merge opens back up to the US market they would want to get some things fixed first before they get flooded with new accounts and start having even more problems. Isn't the first rule of business to satisfy your existing and paying customers before taking on new ones?

In my opinion these things need to be fixed before re-entry is even considered:

More timely cash outs - all cash outs should be in the players hands within 4 weeks

Hand history and in game replayer updated to something more like Stars or FTP had/has

Rebuy and addon situations mentioned above corrected

Hand for hand play fixed to only the minimum number of players necessary, final 18 is ridiculous

MTT payout structure really need to be fixed, paying top 15% with the bottom 10 not even getting their buy in back makes little sense and the top 5 distribution as is is pretty bad

David I know you're doing everything you can to get these improvement made and much of this is out of your hands but it makes no sense why Merge isn't listening to it's customers and fixing these things before even considering re-entering the US market and getting overrun again.

I wanted to chime in about something I thought was "extraordinary".

I had been playing on Hero and I was going to cash out some of my funds because there was a few live 1k's coming to town I wanted to play. I didn't realize that my account had not been fully verified due to some missing information and by the time I realized it would be to late to receive the cash out in time to play the live mtt's.

I emailed David Jung the CEO of Hero Poker about the situation and he wired the $$ from my account the very next day directly into my bank account!

Thanks so much for helping a grinder out!

Congrats! Dave, you continue to set the bar in the industry for customer service

I have been playing on line and lurking here for awhile. I have never seen another like Dave.

One question (rhetorical I assume) for the Non-paying skins, that cause good Reps to have limited comment rights. How committed is your skin, if you won't spend the money for your employee to do some PR and perhaps pump your image and send some potential players your way?

The fee must be immense!

TMI

Huh wut????

I assume he is talking about the sponsored forums section where sites, such as RPM, have their own little forum. If not, I am not sure as to what he is referring. I don't think he has limited comment rights, by the way. Looking at the number of posts Dave has and his near constant accessibility on the forum (although that has declined in recent weeks), I would say that Dave is 100% committed to all his current/potential players.

Aussie players are allowed to play on Hero right now.
We've made an agreement to use Moneybookers only, but I'll get into more detail about this in the next week, but basically all Aussie player funds are held within Moneybookers for Hero.

I have forwarded a number of documents and even have another very highly regarded poker industry ex-ceo, who plays on our site, sending in some very detailed info on this and honest, this a host of issues are in progress to be sorted. And for the rebuy issue I agree, in terms of the hand for hand, I'm aware of this as well, so for the tournaments I set up, I purposely try to coordinate the payout schedule to be as simple as possible that matches the tournament format etc. Again, I'm sure when the network changes happen, they will happen in a flurry of action.

What I will do is forward this on, but they are aware of these issues and are just ramping up to take care of them- again when more details are forth coming I'll let you know- this is an issue where this is such a crappy response from me, but as a network partner, it really is out of my direct control, but I am supporting them with some other things. At this point, I finally have most of my core executive staff up to speed and settled in, so instead of just forwarding these responses on, I may have my staff assist more directly with clear recommendations etc.

I guess it is about business models and what is your general business background when it comes to network sites/skins. I mean even myself I don't like to use the word 'skin' to describe the intentions of what Hero is trying to achieve; for us being part of the network is more like outsourcing certain aspects of the business rather than just a full on turn key type of operation.

But yes, I think for the most part, when players look at where they are playing, they need to look at the more holistic view of things: do their promotions change month to moth, are they active on forums, is there a clear contact point, what is their response rate, etc.

And this ebbs and flows as well, for instance, in Hero's case, I have had a pretty brutal month of non-stop travel, crappy hotel internet, to the point where I had buy a monthly contract for a mobile internet device just so I could get basic work done and carry it with me and work in the car between meetings. The fact that I have 2 full-time staff living and traveling with me 24hours 7 days a week still hasn't improved productivity yet, simply because they were getting up to speed, but most importantly were doing a lot preparation work for the last quarter of this year on some big media projects for Hero.

That being said, as in every industry there are the mom & pop stores and the big brands and the professional boutique brands and for us at Hero it is essential that we focus on our corporate player communication, as well as look to aggressive enter into new markets. So it is a huge cost, but again, you don't come to play with the big boys with just a water gun.

This is completely true about the decline in the constant accessibility, which I will address in my next post, but I have a very senior staff now who has a lot of authority in our company to be able to sort customer service issues on the spot to the same level I have. So, this will free up more time for me to address forum related issues and general player communication. Of course my initial level of accessible wasn't going to sustainable by myself over the long term and so this was always my priority to get a senior staff to jointly handle this with me. The issue was for the type of support that Hero wants to provide above that of the base line support, that person needed to have the authority enough to simply solve problems as well have the maturity and high level of customer service that we were aiming for. In any case, I've been very very lucky to acquire him and will introduce him in my next post.

Best regards always,
I know it's a frustrating period for many of you and I thank you for your patience, and sincerely, we really appreciate it and I can say that Hero is up for the challenge without any excuses. When we are wrong, we'll do better and figure it out, so again, thanks for the chance to do so.

Dave

HERO POKER CEO’s AUG/SEPT 2011 PLAYER’S UPDATE

I’d like to first off apologize for the lateness of this CEO player’s update. While I’ve addressed this via some of my posts, Hero has spent August really preparing for the last quarter of 2011, and what that has entailed is a lot of meetings with a lot of potential casino and media partners. We’ve also secured our executive core staff at this point and I’m proud to introduce Dan Sing. He has a Master’s in Commercial Law and was at KPMG (another major accounting firm) for a couple of years. He has a wealth of poker experience as well as his strong accounting and business background. After a month trial he has accepted the position of Senior Marketing Manager and has been given a great deal of authority in the company to directly deal with customer service issues.
Moving forward, marketing@heropoker & rewards@heropoker.com will be managed by both myself and Dan and will be designated as ‘Executive Support’.

A majority of our efforts was to shore up existing outstanding issues as well as do a number of feasibility trials for new market entry as well as continuing to restructure internally. The reality is that when we decided to make Hero the ‘premier boutique poker site’ we didn’t just tag on ‘World’s’ just for fun. So much of our progress has also to prepare Hero for taking on more of an independent position and autonomy in our operational scope.

Once again, I’d like to thank all our players for their patience as we still consider that we are still much learning as we go along, but again, we’ve got a strong professional team and we are pressing forward. In terms of additional hires, we’ve push this back for general community support and if you’ve already sent us your resume, just not that it is still on file and once we’re ready to launch our next phase of player community development/support you will be contacted.

1. EXISTING PROMOTIONAL UPDATES
1.1 Triumvirate hero $100 Daily US CANADA ONLY *NO CHANGES*
-Client Location: Tournaments: Scheduled: Special
-7pm PST, 10pm EST (21:00 Game Server Time)
-6 handed, 8min blinds (antes), 3,000 starting chips ,Top 3: $50, $30, $20, Registration: 1 hour before, no late registration; 300 Max Players

1.2 MTT hero $99 Daily US CANADA ONLY *NO CHANGES*
Tournament Details:
-Client Location: Tournaments: Scheduled: Special
-4pm PST, 7pm EST (18:00 Game Server Time)
-9 handed, 5 min blinds (antes), 5,000 starting chips; Top 9: $11 each
-Registration: 2 hours before, no late registration; 300 Max Players

1.3 Micro Hero NL, PLO, Horse $30 Guarantee
-Client Location: Tournaments: Scheduled: Special
-Buy in: 0.33 (0.30 cents plus .03 admin fee); -10 handed, 12 min levels, Top 10 payout; 5pm PST, 8pm EST (19:00 Game Server Time)

1.4 PLO hero ARENA $5 US CANADA ONLY
REVISED TO
$5 RAPID FREE PLO HERO ARENA *Country Restricted*
6 max, 18 start
*Revisions:
-6 max, 18 player start format kept,
-Simultaneous games increased from 3 to 4
-Blinds reduced from 10mins to 7mins
-Starting stack decrease from 3000 chips to 2500 chips
-Prize payout increased from 3 (50%/30%/20%) to 4 places (50%/25%/15%/10%)

Eligibility profile now to include the following:
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria & Switzerland
Location: Sit N Go: All : All (priority listing)

Essentially what we’ve been finding is that due to global nature of the site that it is not detrimental to open this format up to our other key markets as they are in different time zones and the promotion is not being maxed out during the North American time zone.

Due to player feedback, we recognized that a lot of players were just sitting out and waiting to get through the first few levels then started to play because the tournaments were too deep. We’ve corrected that by reducing the blinds to 7mins and the starting stack was reduced by 500 chips to 2500. What that means is that the tournaments should be about 50% faster (about 45 mins to a hour, rather than the 90 mins to 120 mins range). By increasing the number of simultaneous games from 3 to 4, we hope that when there is an overload of players during peak hours that with the shorter turn around time and the additional simultaneous game, it shouldn’t decrease player wait periods.
This will be reviewed by the week’s end to find an ongoing optimal format.

3. NEW MARKET PROMOTIONS – Australia & New Zealand
Starting from September 1st, there will be a $500 daily freeroll at 10pm New Zealand/8pm NSW&VIC/6pm Perth time (single daily tournament), which will pay out the top 10 players $50 each and will be capped at 500 players. So it is a pretty consistent value tournament for a freeroll.

The main purpose is obviously to diversify as well as extend the time zone of the player liquidity on Hero.

Hero Poker has always had the intention to take on more operational scope in a planned strategy, so this is our first step whereby Hero Poker has made a direct relationship with Moneybookers that they will be our only 3rd party payment processor for Australia.
In a move for further corporate transparency, all player balances from Australia will be segregated by being held in Moneybookers. So any player deposits will be always been held in Moneybookers and not moved to another interest bearing account; thus player funds will always be liquid and accessible. For the Australian market, we have moved to only a licensing software model with the network.

By October will be announcing our sponsorships of live tournaments in Australia.

4. NETWORK PROMOTIONS:*NO CHANGES*

4.1 SNG Leaderboard: 10k prizepool for top 25 network players & 2k for top 5 SNG streaks * please note the leaderboard charts on HeroPoker now are just for HeroPoker only and not for the network. This will be adjusted.

4.2 Tourney King: Combined 20k prizepool for top 250 high stakes ($20 + buy-in) tourney players and top 250 low stakes (less than $19.99 buy-in) players. Basically a coupon will be automatically issued for special freeroll tournament with your chip stack based on your points: the tournament will be the second Sunday of the next month.

4.3 100 Seats to the 100k Promotion: Earn 250 VIP points from Sunday morning to Saturday at 15:00 each week to qualify for a tournament on Saturday 15:00 (server time). The top 100 will win a $109 coupon for the Sunday $100k Guarantee at 15:00. *RB players have had their VIP points generation increased from 20% to 25% on Hero


5. GENERAL CEO THOUGHTS

Due to the delay in this update, I’ve put in my general thoughts in the introduction and throughout this update. So I’d like to share some thoughts as a conclusion.
Well, there is nothing to hide that Hero is going through some teething issues, in that I am always aware of a standard we are not maintaining and where we need to be. Key to this is always going to human resources, even though we are very securely funded, I’m not one to simply expand for the sake of expanding.

Generally a company will do so to capture market share, but really there isn’t much room to simply grow in this global market environment. While certain sites are no longer operational that hasn’t meant that suddenly there are a ton of new entrants. The bar has been set very high by sites like PS and this entire idea of a ‘smash and grab’ is clearly a fantasy. In fact the opposite is true whereby, just the like price of gold is skyrocketing to heights unheard of, when player confidence is low in the corporate management of sites, players will act in a conservative manner.

In many respect, much of the criticism that Hero may get for our managerial approach may be perplexing to many players. The reality aside from clearly stating our position, I don’t feel there is any benefit to get into a discussion on these points when our goals are very much long term and I do have a conservative style of management. I don’t care about short term gains, but much of our actions can be interpreted as such without taking into consideration what Hero’s true goals are. We are aiming to be the best in our position and dealing with the most sophisticated players and market is where we are going to learn the most and develop our own operations, process and ultimately our company’s reputation. Our players know poker, they know good service, and they have high expectations, even when the options are very limited. And the reality is, if the situation wasn’t what it is, Hero and many other sites wouldn’t be in the position that we are.

We honestly recognize that and appreciate the choices our players have made to be with us and the truth is, even with our current player base, we are still not servicing them the way we aspire to. So the real value has always been for Hero, establishing our reputation based on serving the most sophisticated market and learning from that to create a great solid foundation.

When I was gov’t negotiator for technology transfers/joint venture agreements, there is something called a ‘test bed’ market that was always a key consideration why certain companies want to work with Korea in commercial technology. So certain markets have early adopters or sophisticated market tastes for a particular product, for Korea it was telecommunication devices. But the general theory was, if you could successfully launch your product or technology in Korea in this field then you will have a hit global product.

In very much the same way, I look at what we have, with our player base in very much the same light. For the players we do have, if we can make it here with you, then we can make it in the world. The reality is that I want our existing players to feel special to know that they have the best management behind them and that we always appreciate them as individual players and as a community. You, our players, gave Hero a chance when we just entered the market and we will always appreciate and reciprocate that as we constantly learn from you as well. Rome wasn’t build in a day, and I don’t say that as any excuse, but just saying that is what we will achieve, just a question of when cause my life (and now Dan’s life haha) is dedicated to that.

Best Regards,
David Jung
Hero Poker CEO
*Outstanding Reporting issues for players: Progress on VIP system, Merchandise (Will addresses before end of September)
**Please follow us on Twitter @HeroPoker, Starting in September will we be actively tweeting daily!

Cliffs:
-General promotions & network promotions unchanged
-Summer PLO adjusted to on going ’$5 rapid free PLO sitngos’ with reduced game time (reduction in time for blind limits -7mins from 10mins and starting stake from 3000 to 2500 & additional simultaneous game from 3 to 4)
-$5 rapid free PLO sitngos player elibility extended to summer’s promotions elibility (Aus, Can, US, UK, NZ, Germany, Ireland etc.)
-Launching marketing promotions for Australia & New Zealand, typical Hero style: $500 daily freeroll, with top 10 getting $50.
-Hero is going independent for the Australian market with a direct relationship with 3rd party provider Moneybookers only and keeping player funds with Moneybookers for segregation and corporate transparency purposes.
CEO General thoughts:
-Not going to get into a debate about our business decisions that are more long term oriented and conservative, our focus is taking care of existing players first
-One point is that our biggest benefit from our player base is developing our reputation and foundation for the future which is what every new company should be focused on first, not just revenues or short term gains
-apologies for the overall reduced response times, we have confirmed a new full time executive, Dan Sing, who is senior marketing manager of Hero and will be jointly managing customer service issues a the highest level.

David I know this is a touchy subject and I asked a version of this question in another post but I'm sure with all the questions you had to answer it got over looked.

I understand that Merge is required to keep players funds separate from operating expenses, or at least that is what I was told awhile back by Carbon customer support. Would you please verify that this is true.

Since the banking/cashier is joint with all the Merge skins (correct me if I'm wrong), do you have a plan in place in the event that one or more of the large Merge skins are indicted as Stars and FTP were for protecting and paying out Hero players funds?

Who approves withdrawals, Hero or Merge? How long does a typical InstaDebit withdrawal take for a Canadian? Thanks in advance.

It is a very necessary subject.
1. Yes, I can verify, the player funds are separate from operating expenses on the network.

2. For the most part, it really is a matter of the funds that are in transit that are at risk in most situations. In the case of FTP, the reality is coming to light that they did have some cash, but due to accounting issues it wasn't possible for them to simply pay out until those accounting issues were resolved as they seemed to not know what the true player balances were (meaning there were still many outstanding banking deposit that were not yet collected and just pre credited to player accounts and if FTP cannot secure those initial deposits then they may be paying out balances that really are just credit).

This is not to justify their situation, but as an example. Whereas PS would have a had an accurate account of player balances as there would have been not 'credit' issued. But there likely would not be a spill over effect in the network in the case of issues with other network partners. We are all different companies.

3. In the event of any issues, Hero does have a plan in place to take care of all our players first then deal with the situation afterwards. Basically we have enough investment funds to simply cover player balances without any issues as a major point for us isn't the revenue now or that we are dependent whatsoever on cash flow, but our corporate value in in our long term brand equity/reputation. As for the distribution of player balances, that will depend on the particular situation at hand, i.e. to do it independently or via a 3rd party.

As an aside, I am 100% sure had FTP didn't have such an 'accounting mess' they would have diverted all operational funds to sort out US player balances. So another key to this is that we don't give out credit in our system and our funds are liquid, they aren't in a time deposit that we need to break to get to the funds. That being said, there would be the logistical issue to distribute these funds back to players, but it would be more along the lines of length of time to do it rather than an inability to do it at all.

It is difficult to take my word on this so that is why, in the case of Australia where we have taken an independent position from the network, we've strategically decided to keep all player funds within Moneybookers and have them as our sole 3rd party processor.

That is why Moneybookers is the only deposit method for that market. Which can be considered a pain to players who want to deposit via a credit card directly, but this is far more transparent as the player would know that all money is being sorted via Moneybookers and not being redeposited/transferred by Hero.


For all markets except for Australia, it is the network, but in Australia, we have our 3rd party payment provider Moneybookers. In terms of a InstaDebit withdraw, it would fairly instant (as with all online wallets), but you will need to have your account verified first to do the withdraw, meaning you'd have to have your photo ID and verification form uploaded and verified. So it should be the first thing to do or else the withdraw will be deemed pending.

Cheers,
Dave

David, thank you so much for your prompt and concise reply, as always you're the best!

If anyone has any Aussie or Kiwi friends, please let them know about our $500 daily at 8:00pm Vic/NSW time and 10pm NZ time.

Thanks guys.

David

Does Hero Poker allow third-party programs that auto-timebank for cash games? I keep getting timed out at 8+ tables.

do you get a playthrough bonus too along with instant cash for merge monthly sng leaderboard

Will you be adding other deposit options for Australian Players (Specifically Neteller?)

Regards.

I wish you would just play fewer tables if you can't handle it instead of slowing down the games.

Merge keys from runbetter poker. I believe it is RunBetterPoker.com but it comes up easily in a google search.

God, SOOOO this. Multi-tabling is for those that can multitask accordingly, if you can't do it without tanking over a standard preflop raise when you're just going to fold your big blind, try not over stretching your skills.

I believe it just the cash, but you do have a play through on the cash before you can withdraw it. But you can use it immediately (its in play)

We will not be adding in any other deposit options because of transparency issues, if we have only 1 3rd party processor then all deposits can be kept within the single processor and only a single transaction of monthly player balance reconciliation needs to occur.

If we had more processors, we'd have to take out the deposits, put them in an another aggregation account then do the reconciliation from there. Which is actually better for us because we can make money off the interest. But for a new market entry, we simply want to be as transparent as possible that your funds are being held separately in an company that is already reputable for holding player balances.

It was always going to be either neteller or moneybookers, and we opted for moneybookers. I know it's a pain, but we've also worked out an arrangement that moneybookers will also provide additional support for our players, etc.

Cheers,
David

In defense of the guy timing out, I rarely timed out on Stars but I cascade my tables and on Merge they don't always pop to the front when the need action so I time out more than I ever did on Stars. The software also tends to lag more and sometimes this causes the time outs. Because of these problems I generally do play fewer tables than I did on Stars.

I'm going to look into this RunBetterPoker link maybe that'll help.