Hi there,

at the moment I am a little frustrated, but I don´t want to name the affiliate´s name here. I think it´s one of the bigger affiliates out there. I signed a nice deal there 4 weeks ago with one of the major poker sites, which included a rake race that added about 30% rakeback effectively. Now after 4 weeks I just got an email by my affiliate, basicly saying, that the pokersite I signed with will no longer take part of this race from june.

As they don´t give me a concrete reason for this, I assume, that they just decided to skip the race in order to rise profit and that this has nothing to do with an intervention of the poker site involved. The race will keep going, but my poker site won´t be included anymore.

So now my question?

Are they allowed to do this? I mean, of course they are, but is this ok? It looked like they were running this race on a regular basis, so when I signed my deal there, I seriously assumed that this race was a major part of the deal. Actually without the race I end up getting about 18% and I rake about 2,5K per month on average. So the race was 60% of the deal.

So the race was basicly the reason, that made me sign there.

Now the problem is: I really would like to play there on a regular basis, but unfortunately I am stuck with my affiliate that offers me absolutely no value.

Are there any suggestions what I can do? Is there any possibility that I step back from that contract? What´s your opinions about this?

if you mean with "stepping back" untagging your account I doubt it

it sounds like a miserable situation but I dont think anything can be done other than change to another site on that network. if it was just a single site i can see how it sucks even more :/

ive heard about affiliates doing this too tho. its just impossible to maintain races when sites traffic/income change radically

Each room is different, but it is possible the poker room was sponsoring the promotion entirely, or at least subsidizing it. I seriously doubt the affiliate would drop it for more profit as you say, because the direct result there would be players leaving, which would then make them nothing.

There is no set rule on how long races last, and the total prize can vary from month to month. They could end next month without notice for a variety of reasons. It is a bad situation, but all you can really do is play somewhere else. If enough people leave, the race may suddenly reappear a few months down the road.

Yeah, I think it's pretty standard that affiliate rake races can change on a month-to-month basis. I'm sure there are lots that stay stable for a long time, but others tend to fluctuate or even be pulled altogether. If an affiliate can't generate enough rakeback at a room to offer a rake race, they're going to pull it rather than lose money.

the race actually still exists. it was a private race where players from different sites competed in. So it was only my site that was excluded from the race, and I am not sure in what way it affects the price structure.

I don't think anyone has mentioned that the affiliate might have been forced to cancel it by the poker room.

This happens quite regularly and if the race was a shared race and OP signed up to somewhere like 888 or Party then it's quite likely that this is no fault of the affiliate and a decision that has been taken by the poker room.

Jamie