Less then an hour ago I received the following e-mail from PAS (Poker Affiliate Solutions):

This basically hits CarbonPoker the most - however I have some concerns to the point if this is legal at all to do, maybe you guys could give me any comments.

We are a long-term (8 years) affiliate with them and as I understand their business decision and don't question it (it's they call to make) I'm concerned about being cut off from the profit the players are brining, especially if their company continues to profit from the players themselves after 31/10/2015.

As far as I know their direct competition (chipsplit) continues to pay affiliates revenue on carbon players, despite ceasing to operate at all, and not only on illegal US market.

I think this is kinda disturbing, but is this even legal? The fact that this news comes less then 2 days before the final date is just another story.

I'm very surprised by this. I'm speechless and hope that I completely misunderstand that quoted section. If I understand it, they just brought all existing U.S. offshore players in house with two days of notice.

They updated the T&Cs a couple of years ago with this:

I don't suppose you have any recourse with that in the T&C. Maybe they will transfer your campaigns to you? I guess at Carbon that won't happen since it is basically closed but maybe the Bodog, WPN and others can be moved.

I think it is a safe conclusion that this also means that all of the grandfathered Bodog/Bovada rakeback deals are now dead. They were probably the last affiliate that dated back that far, at least with legitimately grandfathered Bodog rb deals.

Bodog/Bovada deals were more or less dead for at least 3 months now, as all affiliates were asked to remove those rooms from their sites back in August:
"Please remove any and all promotion of Bovada/Bodog Poker. The PAS links were disabled on Tuesday, August 4th. I apologize Betting Partners would not let us wait to do this. The removal of this offer is due to Betting Partners no longer wanting ANY poker traffic."

The main concern I have now is the fact that IT SEEMS(not 100% sure though) that PAS is still going to earn revenue from Carbon on the players that they are separating from affiliates, which seems completely out of line to me. They are not terminating the entire cooperation with affiliates as well, they are just cutting the gray-market rooms from US basically.


Also, I'm not sure I understand the terms of termination perfectly: as I understand from the above statement you pasted, the shortest notice should be 30 days, unless I breached the agreement, is that correct?


Using the "fraudulent traffic" as a reason to terminate the deals immediately here would be insane - their marketing put a huge focus on Carbon deals using the fact that they accept US traffic. That would also mean that they openly admitted to committing a fraud themselves, and will continue to do so by earning commission after the players are cut from affiliates.

I wouldn't even care that much if they were going to transfer the players and separate their activities, but it doesn't seems to be the case.

It also worth a mention how ChipSplit handled the full closure of their affiliate site few months ago:

I meant that there are players that signed up to Bodog in 2010 and before that qualified for rakeback and are still getting it through PAS. Bodog/Bovada still pays rev share on existing poker players, casino and sports. You just can't promote poker anymore.

I was also thinking about that 30 day term. This is only 2 days' notice, not 30 days like the T&Cs say.

I emailed their support for clarification but have not heard back yet. Another thought I had was how they are three months behind on Carbon. I guess those months aren't going to get paid if Carbon does not catch up quickly.

It looks like all players were just brought in house and the referring affiliates just won't get paid anymore. I hope I am wrong.

This is exactly the same way I understand it.

I asked them for clarification, however my contact there wasn't sure and told me they will get information from higher-ups. I haven't received any answer so far.

I talked to them. I am a former employee and know them well. That is why this surprised me so much. They are working on several solutions that comply with the new legal standard. I would contact them and discuss the situation and how it applies specifically to your account.

I have gotten a lot of feedback from the above post. First, it seems not everybody got the exact email posted in OP. Some have no mention about losing all players at U.S. sites effective today, it seems. Nobody has successfully gotten players transferred that I have talked to about this.

It is my understanding that all of their subs are SOL moving forward...

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Kahn

My understanding is they can still take money from the "illegal" sites but if they pass it on it is considered promoting. They claim they will be compensating sub affiliates in some way. I don't really want to discuss it publicly.

The more I talk about this with PAS sub affiliates, the more I feel that this is a true statement. I'm not going to conclude it to be the 100% outcome. I encourage anybody affected by this to contact me privately or post here. I think this may be a very important story for the online poker industry.

I've had 3 pm's so far asking about the "did not want to discuss publicly" comment I made in my previous post. I said that because I didn't know if they were offering my friend one deal and other sub affiliates some better or worse deal. My friend hadn't told me what he had been offered (it was one of those I'm out the door will talk later type Skype conversations). Turns out nothing specific was offered, and Pas' plan was to sell the various US facing accounts and then all the sub affiliates would continue to receive what they are getting from new owners. Lets use Carbon as an example, the way I understand it every time a sub affiliate sends a player to carbon via pas they become part of one giant account that Pas has with Carbon. For reasons I haven't been told Pas can not split these players up and send them back to the sub affiliate that they came from. They would be allowed to transfer the entire Carbon account to someone. This was offered to my friend but they wanted more money than he had and even if he had the money he thought the price was unreasonably high.

I do understand why Pas is doing this: The New Jersey law they mention is this:

http://www.nj.gov/oag/ge/docs/Bullet...Affiliates.pdf

Among other things it says

"completely cease promoting or marketing, directly or indirectly, any illegal online gaming site accepting wagers from players in the US"

Pas claims their lawyers tell them they can still receive the rake back but if they give it to the players or sub affiliates it would be considered "promoting" and violate the law (ain't that convenient).

To me that sounds like bull**** but I'm not a lawyer nor did I read the law at the link above.

Returning to the Carbon example, what makes no sense to me is why Pas wouldn't be desperate to sell the Carbon account and ask a reasonable price? If the players no longer get rakeback wouldn't they all leave and go play somewhere else?

Perhaps I am mistaken and since Carbon pays the players their rakeback directly it isn't considered "promoting" if existing players continue to receive it. It's only "promoting" when Pas sends the sub affiliates their piece, (if that's true ain't that even more convenient for Pas).

These last couple of paragraphs I'm getting into pure speculation, I haven't been told any of this by anyone I'm just speculating.

If what I just speculated, Pas keeps all the existing RB players and tries to justify simply stiffing the sub affiliates that's clearly unacceptable.

That's all I know and sorry if my quick note in the previous post led anyone to believe I knew more.

There is no rakeback at Carbon. It is a very lucrative deal for affiliates because they get commission with no deductions. Players won't leave or even know this happened unless maybe the affiliate was giving under the table rakeback. The same goes for Bovada and Bodog with the exception of grandfathered rb players.

True

False. There are plenty of deductions. In some cases, much more than other rooms.


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Kahn

You are correct. I meant specifically rb/bonus/VIP since there is none of that. Well, the bonus is impossible to clear. The other stuff is a nightmare. It wipes out a good chunk of it and isn't easy to determine what it was.

Are we the only one concerned by all this, who will lose a fair amount of revenue?

No you are not the only ones concerned by all this. Has anyone spoken to their CEO Chris Carlson about this? Is anyone being compensated?

There are rumors that they are trying to sell the account of subs, anyone have insight they'd like to share?

Also, this should probably move to NVG for more eyes to see. While I don't know the true details about why they are doing this (no transparency in this industry) I think their way of telling the subs is preposterous. Anyone who ever does business with PAS should know about this situation.

I'm inviting everyone concerned to PM me so we can create a group on skype to discuss of the issue.

I discussed this with Bobo. If anybody wants to start a thread in NVG, feel free to do so.

As far as anyone getting compensated, I've communicated with about a dozen affected PAS subs. None have received anything to compensate for the players lost or had the players they referred moved to their own account at any site.

Anyone have any updates on this? We have a Skype group open right now if you'd like to chime in.

It seems to me that they have moved zero players and have stopped interacting with subs. There is a thread in PAL (affiliate forum they own) that has gone on for days with no comment from PAS.