Had me here pretty much on everything - minor disagreement here, though.

A good player, too, realizes the period of time when late reg is about to end, or maybe even some time before that. They know what's going on, watching the leaderboard here and there. Patience - maybe sitting on your hands for a bit, toss the range guide out the window, and picking a spot or two is a better strategy during this time. You don't have to stay hardcore on the game plan every minute, unless I just described your game plan.

I don't mind the late reg's - whether they are fish or great players. I'm building my stack in the first two hours (using WPN as an example here specific to me - three hours late reg in their Big10 MTT's) and then in hour three, it's a little bit of wait and see. Once late reg is over, give it another few trips around the table, and things shake out more. I'm not going to stay programmed on my range of hands - I'm feeling it out based on my reads and what some of the shorties are doing. Some of it is feel, I feel.

I'm no pro, and I'm only a semi-decent player. Just my take on it, sir.

It takes more than marketing when you have a pretty bad product. I'd guess it has more to do with having normal games, fast payouts, and not splitting their network up.

And they don't employ a greedy 3 hour late registration/reentry policy to maximize rake. At least that's a couple of the reasons I left carbon for bovada even though I hate anonymous tables. Also the payouts on bovada not taking over 3 months before the wsop help also

It has very little to do with winning or losing and everything to do with what Clutch said in his post. Who's making excuses? I was in the top 15 for MTT winners on Merge last year.(not that it matters much) I'm just not naïve enough to think this absurd model is sustainable for the long term and I'd like to play Merge for the long term.

You can say it's because marketing or w/e you want, but Bovada is destroying the competition and they are doing it with a sub par offering. Is it because there marketing is better? Maybe it is, but I doubt having normal rake and normal structures for the tournaments aren't a huge factor. The fact is they have the worst rewards and software of any of the sites and players are flocking there. You could be blind and see why that is.

Is the sky falling at Merge? Most likely not and I never said it was. You can't make an argument about the sun shining either because it isn't. Facts are facts and Merge is far worse off than a year ago and a year ago is much worse than it was 2 years ago. Numbers don't lie........

Been almost a year since payouts on Merge took 3 months.

I'll say it again, the part that sucks about 3+ hour late reg/reentry is that in fixed limit games, it makes them a crapshoot to cash. I played a badugi MTT a few days ago where I went from chip leader to almost out because the blinds were so high and people were able to just reenter for less than 1bb over and over. Eventually the late reg was ended early because enough people busted at once that we hit the money.

As for NL games, it really sucks when you're getting close to the end of late reg because typically, if you have a big stack, you can put pressure on the table. Now, you can't do that because you're getting shoved on over and over and over by people willing to shove ATC to try and double up. It just takes away the advantage of having a larger stack near the bubble.

Oh well, it is what it is and it's clearly never going to change. It's either deal with it or pack up and move somewhere else. Personally, I don't want to play on anonymous tables so it's either stay where I am or fork up the money for Parallels or a new PC to play on WPN.

There isn't much we can do Old_Timer you're right. Completely agree with your thoughts on bubble play at the end of late reg. 1 thing we can do is voice our concerns in hopes of it getting changed. Knowing Merge, it's very doubtful, but it's better than saying "wgaf about late reg? I have an edge because I'm better than everyone!" News flash, your edge is only going to decrease as the fish go elsewhere or go broke. Any winning player should be intelligent enough to see that.

We don't all have options to play elsewhere, and if we do they are limited. That doesn't mean we should accept the Merge management destroying this site because they have no idea how to make poker profitable for them.

Well, since low level mtt are my bread & butter, Merge is not dead to me. Though it did seem dead Sat night in the $11- 6 max. Couldn't understand why only 72 entries until 12 were left. Then while wondering why no overlay, discovered I mistakenly registered in the $60- 6 max. Obv not thinking very clearly. But with all the late re-entries with 30 minutes left the payouts increased from 6 to 10 places. Hung around long enough to cop 3rd pl. So Merge not dead to me and looking forward to playing the higher buyins when bankroll allows. Just sayin...

^curious what you thought "just sayin..." added to the substance of your post?

Plenty of action on Merge $4NL to $50NL full ring, 6 max, and HU cash games at the moment since late November ...

Serious question, how can cash under 50NL on Merge possibly be profitable over a decent sample with the industry leading rake? The $1 cap on HU is twice what Bovada and WPN are. I wouldn't think anything under 100NL would be worth playing on Merge, but I'm not sure since I've only played 100NL+.

Have never thought about it adding anything to substance of any of my posts. I just march to the beat of a different drummer. Just sayin...

I used to troll my dad with "just saying!", brings back good memories.

Don't know about BELOW 50NL but i can tell you 50NL is easy as hell.

Tourney was cancelled. New tourney addressed your concerns by reducing late reg to 2 hrs 50 min. Just...nvm...

It's supposed to be easy, it's 50NL, but how beatable is it after a significant # of hands with this crushing rake? I'm talking over 15-20K hands. Just because you can beat the players doesn't mean you can beat the rake. I'm really curious about this.

I'm sure I could just get on PTR and look around, but somebody in here has to have already done that.

I'm beating $4nl for about 8bb/100 ATM. Course it would be higher at other sites with lower rake, but still very easily beatable.

$ Frenzy just cancelled again. More changes???

The sky is not falling on Merge, but the network has wrecked itself. There are maybe 5 tournies a day over $22 worth playing. Before the new schedule came out 4 months ago there were 20 or so. The player pool was also very good. The player pool is thinning, some people will still make enough to justify playing on this site. The bottom line is the tournaments are not fun. Merge had a really great thing going for it & was positioned to really blow up. Instead they added a few good new tournaments & slashed all the fun tournaments on the old schedule. The lack of volume and recreational players in tournaments speaks for itself. Marketing has nothing to do with why Bovada is succeeding.... Everyone left merge because it's just not fun any more, Not even for a full time reg. Merge is still an attractive option to play on because it's probably the most legit of all the us facing sites, that doesn't mean people are going to continue to play there. There will always be some games and a big enough player pool to grind, but I will never understand why management made the decisions they did. There is still room for black market poker before regulation fully kicks in across the board. There was a void to fill, pretty large demand the ball was on the tee & all merge had to do was hit it.....Merge either realized their time is fairly limited & decided to maximize short term profit, slashed everything to stay under the radar from pursuit of legalized facing us sites(maybe they didn't want to blow up), or they are just purely incompetent & hate making money. It was a really great run I had with you for 3 years merge, but it's over, I quit, I hope others do too, but the reality of the situation is we don't have many options as US players. Just pure sadness... I really liked Merge.

How many hands though?

+1,000 to SSDEX.

30K? I know it's not a bunch, but if I were grinding $4nl for 8bb/100 for 100K+ hands then I'd be the world's biggest BRM nit.

Bottom line, the players are definitely bad enough beat the micro stakes.

30K is sufficient enough to be able to get a decent idea. Thanks for the response. Interested in what others have achieved still.

cancelled again , this site is soooo goofy

Pretty sure hu 50nl is not beatable. That's what many hu reg's believe anyway.

That's what I have heard as well. Maybe it is in 6 max/9 max, but I've never seen more than a marginal winning 50NL HU graph that was over a significant amount of hands. Most I've seen are slight losers do to rake. I'm very familiar with HU cash but not so much with the other variants.