I have been extremely loyal to Carbon despite all of it's recent moves. A recreational player model is certainly a more profitable long-term decision, but they are going about it the way wrong way. They should just stop offering rakeback to new players and just suck it up and not back out of agreements with existing players.
Unfortunately I just don't have the time to put in serious volume to make this move make sense for me.
I had a feeling getting in on BCP at %35 before it was too late was a smooth move, hopefully they roll out the new software soon and can get some PLO traffic going. Either way, unless something amazing happens with a new VIP, I am done with Carbon.

In all honesty, I'd be happy to give up my 35% rakeback if the affiliates also had to give up to their 40% of players revenue at the same time. After all, the affiliates lured many players to sign up through them by using this 35% rakeback offer. Now that it was taken away from us I believe it only fair to take away the 40% of revenue from the affiliates at the same time.

Then maybe we can get a decent VIP system in place. Right?

The existing VIP program is pretty close to what you would earn as a medium and low stakes player with rakeback, maybe they will even improve it, I've done the the VIP and rakeback and either one is fine with me.

Here's the details of the VIP program:

Where is Heart and Captain Planet?

Um...keep waiting for that email from RPM

Great, my primary tracking system is HM2 -_- hope this turns out good

So it looks like if you play 50nl or higher you're probably ether?

Maybe some high volume 25nl players too?

I guess it's not too bad, but the micros are already a raketrap, it will be harder to move up now.

Back before they reinstated rakeback, there were a lot of good promos on RPM.

Hopefully they can bring some of that stuff back eventually.

GJ Carbon, you wanted rec players and small timers, but you make the rewards system tiered towards high volume players. Makes sense.

Lolol

I was gonna sign up for carbon for sngs but i guess i wont now.

Wow.. the new VIP system better be good because otherwise i think this will be one hell of a way to kill such a big brand.

Well, HM2 is working on bringing support to the Winning Poker Network. How long until they finish that? I'm not sure. I'm also not sure I'm a fan of the software. Carbon's seems to be the simplest, and smoothest imho.

everyones gonna leave and migrate to cake now. The sites gona be empty they made a bad move taking away rake back. I am a reg ad i play everyday i am alerady cashing out some of my funds. I will cash out the rset on the 31st. Bye carbon poker...

Just FYI I got the same email from Aced. Not a huge surprise as they are basically the same site, but just thought I would mention it.

Lol at migrating to cake

Yes, let's see a sick VIP program

Cake, or what it is now for US (Lock+Juicy Stakes) has problems paying its customers. I don't think many people are going to be moving there.

I think the best thing may be to move to ACR or BCP, but for some, people who use HM2, I'll probably be playing on Carbon. Lets hope their VIP program is good.

RPM is gone, they transferred players to Carbon and Sportsbook/PlayersOnly.

Email merge support to get that straightened out.

It's not 40% of rake, it's 40% of revenue.

As of now, the only people on VIP should be people that get over 35% in value from it (otherwise you would be better off on 35% rakeback).

So say you're getting 40% of your rake back on $1,000, you're getting $400. I'm not sure if anything else is deducted, but that leaves $600 in revenue (less if more is deducted). The affiliate would get up to 40% of that, so they would get $240, or 24% of your actual rake.

The caps for rakeback are a little lower than that, or at least were at one time (I've heard that newer accounts are more like half that amount, but I can't verify that).

There's no reason to sign up with an affiliate if you're not getting anything.

But on every room there are affiliates that will offer you real value. Whether it's free coaching, gear, electronics, rake races, videos or gift cards, that's the incentive to sign up to an affiliate.

While some do it anyways, the reality is that if an affiliate gets x from your rake, you'll be able to find one that gives you some % of x in value back. Most do it with the room's blessing (rake race or products for example).

You would really be happy to give up your value if another person had to too?

Affiliates lured many players with the rakeback, you're right. But they did so for specific %s agreed upon for those players.

If you're talking about a % for new players, then I would think that is fair game, rooms can lower, raise, change %s on future players at any time and that's totally fine. But if you change %s on affiliates prior referred players retroactively, without warning, that's a pretty shady thing and sets a terrible precedent. It basically means that at any time the room can say "we're just going to pay you less than we agreed, we think 1% is fair" and there's less trust and accountability and value in using that poker room.

Put it this way, if you ran a business, are these the sorts of tactics you'd want to use to build long term relationships and encourage good business?

I won't use affiliates because I don't think they deserve 40% of my revenue for basically doing nothing. The sad promotions they offer to entice the poor suckers to click on their banner links is lower that zero, at least in my book. I'm not saying they are pond sucking scum right now, but I have said that many times in the past. To each his own. Each person has to decided for himself if he wants to suck the pond or be the pond or just refuse to swim in it. See what I'm saying? It a personal choice.

No network really ever promises a symbiotic relationship between player and affiliate anyways. They should expect the relationship to be ended at some point in time. I say Merge should do it now at the same time they stop rakeback for players. Or do you think the affiliates are untouchable but the players aren't? Who do the sites really care about, players or affiliates? Which one makes them the money? Which ones just mooch?

I'll start by saying I'm not addressing this post to anyone in particular.

As discussions about affiliates almost always tend to become here, the one in this thread is pretty simplistic. Mooching affiliate, does nothing for me, the poker room should give us that money instead, etc., etc.

Affiliates are paid by the poker rooms to bring them new players. Even affiliates who give nothing to the players have spent some money to set up, maintain, and/or advertise their site; money the poker site didn't have to spend to get those players. Some of those affiliates give back a lot of value to the players, and not always in the form of rakeback or other direct payment. Other affiliates give back nothing, and spend it on marketing their site, bringing the poker room more players. And I'm sure there are plenty who give nothing and spend very little. But regardless of what model they follow, if poker rooms were to shut down their affiliate programs tomorrow, don't assume they could just plow all that money into player rewards - I would expect a significant amount would have to go back into marketing.

All that said, the affiliate model is far from perfect. Some of that is because many poker rooms do a very poor job of ensuring the system works well, and policing the rules they have set up.

Are there scummy affiliates? Absolutely. And who knows what the future will bring when it comes to affiliates - some say it's a dying model. But in the meantime, don't assume that every affiliate is a leach and that if they were done away with, players would necessarily see a huge boost in VIP programs all of a sudden.

Bobo, I understand why you had to post that. No hard feelings.

Heh, I wondered if anyone would get that impression. While we have affiliates that advertise with us, we have a lot more poker sites. If they were to do more direct marketing and less working with affiliates, it could very well be a boon for us. And AFAIK we don't have a lot (or any) affiliates advertising with us that fall in the category of giving nothing back to players - affiliates like that would be wasting their time advertising with us, as 2+2 posters are pretty well-informed about what they can get at poker sites. So honestly, I didn't post it out of self-interest.

I'm glad you don't post out of self interest. I don't either.

So you say there are absolutely scummy affiliates? Who and what makes them scummy?

A few alleged to be scummy: