So just saw a banner ad on 2+2. by singing up to lockpoker through TheNuts and raking $1000 in the next month you get an ipad2 and on top of that 35% rakeback and singup bonus. Seems like an awesome deal, but on first glance the site looks a little shady (just my first impression). just wondering if anyone has history with these sites? and whether they're reputable. Cheers

TheNuts is legit. Lock looks like its on Merge. Merge is legit and Lock is prob fine. Why not try a search.

And yes this does look like a very good promotion. That is, if you want an ipad.

yeh did a search on lock , but couldn't find anything on the nuts so needed the confirmation haha. cheers

ok- TheNuts is a merger of the former Rakebreak and ThisIstheNuts. I've had no problems with them. They also do free Cardrunners for $500 mgr/mo, something that RaketheRake doesn't. They do the standard freerolls and rake races too.

Actually looks even better than posted - signups in April have until May 31 to rake the $1k. Not sure I have any use for an iPad though.

Appears you have to sign up in April - so don't jump too quick.

alright cool. i also have no use for an ipad, but i guess ebay could fix that lol

I'm curious how many hands it would take to rake 1000$ at 25NL FR for example?

Thank you for help

According to my last 15,000 hands at 25NL FR on RPM (same network), it would take just under 81,000 hands to rake $1000 at 25NL FR.

Question for current Lock Poker players:

How many hands of NL 25 FR or 6max do you need to play to earn 75 VIP points?
$1200 bonus = 90,000 VIP points.

I'm also guessing that there's a rakeback deduct of 35%, so you're only getting $780 in bonus, effectively. Is this correct?

Okay I just found this online:

This would mean when you rake $1,000 you earn 10,000 VIP points. To earn 90,000 VIP points you would need to rake $9,000 and they give you 3 months to clear the bonus.

To use the 81,000 hands to rake $1,000 at 25NL FR from above as an example, you would need to play 729,000 hands to clear the $1200 bonus. If you 8 tabled and got 600 hands an hour, that would mean you have to play 1215 hours in 3 months, or roughly 100~ hours a week, lmao.

No, you're very wrong. Merge bonus is both very abundant and not worth very much; by raking $1000 on a rakeback account you'll clear only $85 worth of bonus. I wouldn't be worried about the back half of a $1200 bonus, as there will be plenty of reloads before you're even close to getting there.

Merge also doesn't do rakeback deductions; instead rakeback players earn only 6.5 points per dollar of contributed rake, as opposed to non-RB players who earn 10 points per dollar.

Thank you for posting. Earning only 6.5 points vs. 10 points is sort of a rakeback deduction, I think we're disagreeing on semantics.

So you rake $1,000 and b/c you have rb you earn 6500 points. That means you clear $86.66 of the bonus.

Doesn't that also mean you'll need to rake a total of $13,847.22 to clear the $1200 bonus in entirety in the 3 months allotted?

81k hands x 13.874722 = 1,123,853 hands of 25NL FR to clear the $1200 bonus in total.

This makes it basically impossible to clear in 3 months playing NL 25?

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Also how many of the cash games on Lock (Merge) are bad beat tables? Bad Beat rake is kind of disgusting as well, killing winrates. I'm guessing that they start at NL 50?

Merge bonuses are worth 13.3% rakeback without rakeback and 8.7% with rakeback.
I don't get why you are talking about clearing the whole bonus? This promotion is about raking $1000 to get an ipad2 not clearing the whole bonus (which always takes ages on merge but they have lots of promos and 35% rakeback to add).

You will rake $1000 and get:
- $350 in rakeback
- An iPad2 = $499
- $85 from the deposit bonus
- 6,500 points to spend = $65 of tournament entries.

So you get around $999 in value for raking $1,000 which sounds like a decent deal to me.

Edit: Also if Lock is anything like RPM, they give away bonuses all the time so you are always working off a bonus.

Thanks for the clarification on everything MilkFi5h.

You can take out that part of my post Bobo Fett, I was misunderstanding the deal.

It looks awesome now.

Yea this does look like a too good to be true deal honestly. I saw it this morning and I'm glad there is a 2plus2 post on it already. I guess I'll wait for a few people to try it out first rather than me being the guinea pig, but it looks legit.

Also does anyone know how the soft the games are on here. I'm assuming they have to be pretty easy. Although I could see a lot of bonus whores (such as myself) clogging about that site for the next month and being complete nits. Even so, still very much worth it imo.

i've signed up and deposited to give it a shot, maybe i am just not use to it but the software tilts the F%@# sheetz out of me. Signed up using the code and can see the ipad bonus but no signup bonus, mayb i have to do that manually or something?

This looks like a really good deal.
Do anyone know what countries they ship the iPad?
Does it ship to EU for example?

How good is the action at merge?
Is it only a few going tables at NL50 it can be though to clear this one.
Merge have average contributed rake right?
And if I understand that right everyone who sees the flop shares the rake, or is it everyone that VPIP?
And with that I mean if someone limps and another one raises and another 3bet and I fold and the other one calls and they see the flop.
I wont get any rake, but the two other who saw the flop shares the rake equal?

From support:

"Hi there,

You are not eligible for the deposit bonus until you meet the iPad requirements. You are getting 35% rakeback and also you are in the rake chase which in addition pays up to 32%.

Once you clear the iPad bonus you can then use the 200% bonus up to $1200"

That's from thenuts support or lock poker support!?

Now I'm confused again.

Well even so the deposit bonus is very small. And after $1,000 in rake is generated it only works out to $85, am I correct?

Lock support.

Either way, the deposit bonus is the smallest factor in the equation.

If that's true then you are getting $914 value, plus the rake chase which could even put you over $1,000 value for just $1,000 raked. Slightly different to what I commented on earlier but still excellent value.

I just thought I'd point out that you can only have one rakeback account on merge at a time, as this might affect some peoples decision.
This promo is their way of making sure people choose them for their main merge account. If you like merge but couldn't care less about iPads check out RPM. They have a forum here.

I just heard back from TheNuts support:

No sign up bonus with this promo, just the iPad 2 when you rake $1,000.

Also:

So I guess you don't have to actually get an iPad 2, and can get $500 instead. So this is like a bonus that clears at 50% rakeback on-top of your original rakeback with no deductions. That's 85% rakeback (not including VIP points) for your first $1,000 raked on Lock. Sounds good to me!