We're trying something new here at STTF in order to allow everyone to find the best games, best networks, discuss rake, ROIs(OVER VERY APPROPRIATE SAMPLES (2k+ games)), and more. The Mod team will work to make the appropriate sites aware that we have these threads and that adjusting the rake, structure changes, etc. are probably needed in a lot of cases to bring a lot of volume rake players to their sites.

Is it likely nothing will improve? Yes, however, we still want to give everyone the ability to find their best game if they are sticking with STTs/SNGs.

With all of that in mind, there will be NO tolerance in this thread or any other network thread for inappropriate samples, BBV, trolling, attempts to derail a thread, or inappropriately badmouthing a network. Reviewing a site negatively is fine, but in a constructive way. There will be 0 warning for infractions or bans if necessary regardless of whether its your first post or 20,000th.

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Started playin there recently, here are few thoughts, it is possible that i may be wrong in something. Also, sorry for bad english.

Pros:
- biggest volume after stars/ftp/party, up to 30k in peak hours,
- skins are reputable, majority of them at least,
- good end easy to clean bonuses.

Bonuses vary from skin to skin, in rakeback terms it's from 50% to 62.5%. All skins also have VIP cashback program, and some of them allow to have both (bonus + cashback) simultaneously. Also there are affiliates who are offering kickback bonuses on top of all, so with little bit of research you can find pretty decent cash return deals.

This leads to two effective strategies of extracting max value from ongame:
1. Bonus whoring - you can have account on all skins, when you clean bonus on one, move to another.
2. Some affiliates offering under the table deals, so you can have nice cashback staying with just one skin. Check out internet bonuses forum for more info.


Cons:
- rake is high (10+1, 20+2, no difference between regular and turbo tournaments),
- no good ahk scripts, though you can try something with free tools like placemint or stack & tile, but they're not working on all skins,
- awful and resource consuming software,
- anything over $22 is hard, if not impossible to fill, for 10mans at least,
- non-US site.


And some thoughts about game structure, not sure should it go under pros or cons

- 10mans instead of 9mans,
- reg speed is 8 min/lvl, with 3 levels before 100 (i think lvls are 10/20, 15/30, 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200, 100/200/20, 200/400/40...),
- turbo speed is 3min/lvl. This means there is 9 mins and usually 8-10 players at table when showtime begins. I'm stayin away from these for now.
- from my experience, games are softer than Tilt/Stars but tougher than Cereus or iPoker. It's just 100 games for me, so I may be wrong.
- due to bonus whoring strategy mentioned above lots of players are changing SN's regulary so sharkscoping is not effective as on "one SN only" sites.

Thanks for the post, Corto!

How do you feel about the following - the player base will change significantly very soon, once bwin merges with Party and takes their customer base away from Ongame with them?
Their customers were a big part of Ongame - I am not sure how big % wise.

Don't feel good at all about it

Yeah, i guess Bwin is skin with most players, and also important, as it is bookie site, a lot of them are not good at all. I guess I'm going to stick with Ongame until it happens, and then will see how it's going to reflect on games. If numbers drops significantly, probably will move away. Not sure where though

IMO, Ongame is pretty good, if not best, choice for low/mid volume lowstakes players. Im playin around 400 ($11 and $22) games monthly and, someone correct me if I'm wrong, there is no better deal in terms of rake/cashback ratio for players of such profile.

The merger was supposed to be done by 31st of March; so I guess even with the delay it's pretty close.
And that means bwin recreational players will meet German grinders to form the new player pool.
I'm not even playing at Ongame, just considering it - and even I feel bad about that.

FWIW Im pretty sure that the merger intended to happen by 31st of March (first Q) was always about the Bwin and Party merging as companies, not combining their poker player pools. And indeed the parent companies have merged already.

Im sure that Bwin wont hurry with the move away from ongame as they surely want to make sure that there is some plan for the Ongame network (which they own and plan on selling). Always I dont think Bwin leaving the network behind will harm it massively, there are still Betfair, Betsson and Betsafe - all of which bring a decent amount of casual players.

I play on Ongame as well (turbo SNGs, not a huge amount by any means), and pretty much echo Corto's thoughts. Hard to say what bwin's move away from Ongame will mean, since little is known of how big a part of the player pool bwin supplies. I suspect it may mean the death knell of SNGs on Ongame, since traffic is already pretty slow and it's hard to fill 9-12 table sets outside of peak Euro hours. If traffic slows down considerably, I'm probably moving to FTP or quitting altogether. Can't see myself going to Party, where I believe the games are pretty meh with worse software and rakeback for low volume guys.

On the structure: the very fast turbo structure means it's more random, but still definitely beatable. Currently running at 3% @ 20s (waaay below EV) for 1k games and 7% @ 10s for 1.5k games on my current account. I've played some at the 30s and 50s as well, where there are a fair amount of randoms but games are pretty hard.

There are a lot of breakeven regs here, and at times the games are very reg-infested, though they can't be compared to FTP or Stars. Some table selection is possible, but the relatively low # of tables going means you can't select too much.

The software is buggy is crap. There is a TableNinja-type software available, but apparently the provider has stopped supporting it so it probably won't work for too long. There is no way I'll play without something like that, so hopefully the new effort started by a new guy (currently freeware) will improve.


ETA: the rake is pretty bad, but as Corto explains there's a fair amount of rakeback-type deals/bonuses available making it less worse. Like all SNGs though, the rake is tough on everyone.

Any feedback on cashout success post Black Friday?

Cashed out last week to MB without any issues from Redkings.

From what i know, Bwin will sell Ongame Network. They haven't decide yet if it will be sold as a network or skin by skin ( i think that they want to take Betfair along with Party+Bwin )
http://www.egrmagazine.com/news/8761...-be-sold.thtml

Also from my skin support i've find out that already Ipoker and Prima are intrested to buy Ongame.

Would actually be pretty awesome if it's sold to Ipoker. Prima, ugh. Not so much.

Are all Ongame skins now accepting US players, or just some of them?

No Ongame skins accept US players.

Wondering if anyone can provide a link to the rakeback-type deals/bonuses, and wether or not these are for new accounts only. Currently play in bWin

So, I switched to new skin today, and wtf:




Yup, that's 20 + 0.75, 30 + 1.5, 50 + 2, etc.

Some skin (Betsafe) related bug, or they really introduced tables with such low rake? Am I missing something? Kinda suspicious that there are for example both $20.75 and $22 options, and people keep registering at $22 instead of $20.75.