I think you are confusing the situation here. You are playing on a ****ty scumbag skin, not a ****ty network. Well, you know what I mean.

Expekt stopped their deal I had last day of october. Affiliate promised rb to appear 1st november, still nothing. Anybody else with this problem?

Actually the whole network is a scummy piece of ****, do you think VC Poker is the only skin doing this? lol

There's not really much scummy about holding cashouts in this situation, iPoker suddenly changed the rules on them and now they're trying to avoid getting hit with giant fines. All of us are complicit in trying to cheat iPoker out of money by participating in under-the-counter rakeback deals which are against the rules, so it's a bit rich to start bitching and moaning now it's blown up in our faces.

I don't think there's much scummy about the rule iPoker introduced either, but the sudden introduction is a bit scummy, it leaves skins scrambling to try to change their business models.

doing what exactly? closing accounts? messing up withdrawals and making people wait 3 weeks for something that should be done within 60 minutes on a slow day? they are probably not the only ones at it though I am not overly familiar with other skins who are doing similar.

that should obviously raise the question of how stupid are the customers who put up with it?

anyway with a bit of luck, and if my hopes come through, then discussion of VC will be moved to another thread - maybe the entraction thread or something like that. Themselves and NoIQ will be well suited given their business models.

BigCityBanker: you do realize that after iPoker started fining all skins that have too many winning players you are at risk or getting your account closed no matter what skin you play on (as long as you are a winning player)? I don't think blaming VC Poker is right in this situation, they are forced to act like this because iPoker is a steaming pile of ****

ChrisV: do you work for iPoker maybe? This is utter bs no matter how you look at it. Have you heard of any other networks with a significant player base kicking out winning players or holding withdrawals because of some bs rules?

Yes, Party did it back in the day when people were playing on Empire for rb, and FTP will close your account if you opened a second one specifically to get rb.

Also, fwiw, i agree mostly with what ChrisV said.

DaGrunt, iPoker is not kicking out winning players or holding withdrawals. The skins are doing that. They're doing it because they have no choice given their abnormally large numbers of winning players, but why do they have an abnormally large number of winners? Because they attracted them using methods that were against the rules of iPoker, including opening accounts for people who already had iPoker accounts elsewhere and offering rakeback deals that are not allowed under iPoker rules.

Basically if I can sum up your position:

1. VCPoker acts selfishly and unethically towards their business partner iPoker by signing you up for a deal that is against the terms of their contract: That's awesome! Thanks, VCPoker!

2. VCPoker acts selfishly and unethically towards you by kicking you off the site when not doing so would lose them money: What an outrage! Who could possibly have predicted they were the type to act unethically?

DaGrunt - do you realise that I am the Operations Manager for one of the bigger skins on the iPoker Network? I try to only post on 2+2 about poker in the PLO forum but I keep an eye on most sections. So you do realise that I am far better placed than you to understand what is going on?

FWIW - your assertions are mostly incorrect. I can assure you that blaming VC is 100% correct, this has nothing to do with ipoker other than their attempts to maintain the integrity and ecology of the network.

Is it PPP?

fyp

ChrisV, do you think it's the customers' fault for playing on a skin that has a lot of winning players? Am I incorrect in assuming that even if you have a 100% legit deal if you just happen to be unlucky enough to be playing at a ****ty skin ie. VC Poker there's a chance you get kicked out (and on top of that get your withdrawals held for weeks lol)? I didn't know about VC Poker kicking out winning players, they seemed like a big reputable skin with a trustworthy name behind them. And now suddenly my acct is closed. Yeah, totally my fault.

BigCityBanker, you are free to explain what's going on instead of assuring us to blame VC Poker instead of the whole network. Although I'm not suprised to see you do this, I wouldn't want my skin to lose customers either if I was the Operations Manager on one.

Can someone tell me what is VC Poker doing differently than basically every other skin? They are offering under the table rb deals and letting people who previous have iPoker accounts play there. What skin isn't doing this? Besides Paddy Power Poker I've never heard of a skin that doesn't have under the table rb deals available, and they them let me play there despite having a previous account so it's not like they are following the rules 100% closely either. The fact is that there's a bunch of really shady **** going on with the whole network but nobody wants to talk about it. I mean, what kind of a network is so ****ed up that they have to start kicking out winning players and holding withdrawals? If it's about the illegal rb deals, why not kick out losing players who have deals that are against the network? Oh wait, they are losing players. Sorry, I forgot.

I am done with this network as soon as VC Poker gracefully decides to process my cashouts (hopefully within next two weeks!) but anyone who wants to keep playing on this rotten network, feel free to do so. Just don't be suprised when they screw you over.

I dont know if I have the will but I will throw together a brief syopsis of the world as I see it

In before someone states this thread has officially gone wrong...too many big complicated words for me to understand...

completely tl:dr but FAO of DaGrunt mostly.

In a perfect world each skin would compete on their marketing expertise. Product is the same so each skin uses their brand and marketing capabilities to promote their bottom line. The world is a happy place, each of us can see a ROI on our marketing and acquisition investment. Lets add one more skin to the mix, say for example NoIQ. They decide that there is a competitive edge to be gained by exploiting certain aspects of the thus far perfect world. They don’t plough money into marketing or acquisitions – they decide to get a bunch of affiliates who will spam and PM the world of some under the table rakeback deals.

What happens? Well there is a migration of players from other skins to this rogue skin as the players seek to feather their own nest. What are the effects of this. The ‘good’ skins lose winning players to the ‘bad’ skins, the winning players are more valuable than losing players so the player value and ROI at the good skins reduces, whilst the bad skin in essence reaps the dividends of the good skins marketing and acquisition spend. In this situation the bad skin becomes a parasite to the good skins.

What next? Well other skins (possibly a former good skin) decides, il have some of that please and it decides to compete on the basis of rakeback also. But, they need to gain a competitive edge – so they have to offer whatever you can get at NoIQ + 4%. Then someone else joins in and they have to offer whatever you can get at NoIQ + the 4% that they are giving you and then il throw in an extra 4% in order to attract you to my house for tea. Whats happening here? Well we are in a dutch auction – we are racing to the bottom and you actually have a prisoners dilemma of sorts.

Way back (early 2007 I suppose) when rakeback was first (illegally) used as an acquisition tool on the iPoker network 30% was a cracking offer – the current norm is 50%+ and I am aware of many 65% deals and I am also aware of one skin who gives a total 75% package to their affiliates although I don’t do as much on this now as I used to so there may be multiple skins offering 75%+ deals to affiliates. When I assumed my current role I was quite an active poker player and the drum I banged from day 1 was iPokers failure to address the issues that existed. One of the senior management who will probably read this would rather smugly tell me that I needed to provide him with proof – *** me but im your customer – do your own work, get your own proof and weed out those cnuts yourself. Him being smart arsed and smiley telling me that I had to give him proof did nothing to help the problem that was fulminating under his stewardship.

So I guess NoIQ step aside (lol) and then there is a vacuum to be filled and if anything the situation got far far worse after this as greed lit up the eyes of many poker room managers. They were challenged to maintain revenue, player acquisition etc and instead of using their brain and trying to work smartly (and infuriatingly) against the tide they decide to swim in the same direction and join the rakeback game.

Why do or why should iPoker care if a number of the skins are parasitic and offering rakeback? Well they are no good for the network – it could be argued that iPoker are getting their cut irrespective of whats going on out there but there are wider implications. Well these parasites are not attracting new players to the network, not only that they are affecting the good skins who are now disincentivised from attracting new players to the network as they see it that their marketing and acquisition spend is being robbed by the parasites – over time the net result is you end up with a network like Cryptologic – i.e. no longer in existence.

So why are VC and other skins closing the accounts of winning players? Well iPoker have a duty of care to protect their network and also to protect the good skins out there. They do this by forcing all skins to sign up to and adhere to a network policy which is for the good of the network. If the ‘world’ was a happy place, acquisition would be organic, your mix of players would be varied and balanced and on average your players would lose to just the rake over time – as assuming your skin is big enough you have a good wash of winning, losing and breakeven players – essentially any skin should be a mini me of the network as a whole.

So if say one skin has a ratio of Wins – Bets of say 103% when the long term norm should be in the region of 99% this is highly indicative of something being amiss – what exactly? Well they are clearly offering rakeback and have attracted all the savvy winning players to them. Things are so bad that I personally got a PM from an affiliate offering me 55% rakeback on VC, in the PM I was given the email address of the poker room manager at VC and told to email him to finalise my rakeback deal – so when a skin is so blatantly spitting in my business face as to stupidly offer me rakeback (despite my personal profile stating my occupation) I have nothing but contempt and blatant lack of sympathy for them.

So how can iPoker use this as a means of policing and enforcement? Well simple – if your Wins – Bets ratio deviates from the mean by X amount over a period of time then iPoker will slap a fiscal fine on your ass, the greater the deviation the greater the fine. Also if you withdraw more from the network that you deposit its indicative of a problem and an additional fine is slapped on your ass.

How does a skin correct this? Well close the accounts of winning players and delays withdrawal requests from players? So whos fault is it that a skin is closing the account of winning players? Some may wish to blame iPoker but personally I think you should place the blame squarely at the foot of the skin? Their business model has brought with it some consequences that they are not willing to live with and they then make the customer suffer for this. At the start it looks like it could be a beautiful relationship – you get 55% rakeback and it appears that they adore your custom and want you so badly that they will stretch so far to woo you, yet when the alcohol wears off the reality is that they couldn’t give a *** about you

What is special abt ppp? And are they also in on the whole ''kick winning plrs off'' thing?

Epic post! Thanks!

hi there, what is your sn on ipoker. i am afropower.

i play quite alot recently, and am always either sitting at HU tables, or trying to find people to play me, so it should be easy to play each other.

pm me if you want to sort something specific out, although i don't really think it is necessary

I've had nothing but bad experiences in the iPoker network so far besides Paddy Power Poker. The customer support was very fast and entertaining, cashouts were fast, my affiliate was super friendly, I got extra bonuses out of the blue just for playing. Funnily this is the only site on iPoker network had nothing but legit deals available (afaik). I would still play there but I found out it's not taxfree on my country and had to switch.

BigCityBanker, thanks for the post. Made me understand the situation a little better. I'm not naive, I understand that nobody cares about anything besides their own wallet and well-being, that's how it goes. But it's still frustating to see how certain business decisions can lead to something as redicilous as what to VC Poker had to do.

So, in summary, the best way to avoid getting ****ed like VC did to it's players is to stay off the sites/skins that has those insane rb deals? How would you advise players when they are deciding what skin/site to play on and which affiliate to choose?

thanks for this, im glad to hear the good feedback as this is the skin that i work for.


yea, basically Rakeback is not a long term viable option for skins as it should eventually lead to them having their balls squeezed.

as far as advising players? well firstly, you dont need an affiliate, do your own work and as a big player you should use the fact that your account is not losing money to affiliate payments as a means of bolstering your bonus payments. As a serious player I can bet you that the ops/vip manager knows who you are even if you dont know who he is - so make sure that when you are querying this with support that you demand that your request gets escalated to the person who makes the decisions - I guarantee you that your requests will be taken seriously

secondly - spend time to study and understand skins loyalty programs and promotions. there are some insanely designed schemes out there and you just need to be capable of finding the weak point that suits you. There are also some mad promos run by skins which are majorly exploitable. I spend hours on end examining the VIP schemes and player promos of skins on the network so i know how ill thought out some of them are.

Once you have proven yourself to be a loyal and fully engaged player you then have a grounding upon which to contact the skin and look for something extra i.e. a milestone bonus, entry to a live event, or a tweak to the current program which is specific to just you etc etc. Basically, you should look long term, that may mean that your short term bonus return is not competitive with the gratuitous under the table offers out there but the long term relationship will be one that you will benefit from.

what the ****?

all the skins should lick our fingers for us playing on such a **** network with a **** software.

We are your customers. You have our money. Just get a reality check and think about what if MY BANK kept 50k away from me for more than 5 days because "lots of people cashed out" or I won too much.

You are so ****ing lucky we cannot just get a lawyer and get your ass to the court.

There is just NO excuse you can bring up here

I need to change banks, what kind of stuff can you win off your bank? that's be sweet

555

You don't remember all those times i won free money off the banks? They always wanted it back though...

Nice speech Banker, but there are two problems with it.
Some of us can't play every ipoker site in the world due to tax issues, so if we get kicked off a few, then it is game over with regards to ipoker - but this is most likely irrelevant to your interests.


The main issue it, that while it's a nice long story you give about parasites and so on, the truth of the matter is that competition is NOT evil or a bad thing. Most goverments spend a lot of resources figthing monopolies an cartels, since they hurt the consumers.

Basically what happens is that skin lower prices and ipoker tries to intervene and keep the price fixed at some sort of monopoly price.

The thing is that the premise seems NOT to be figthing parasites, but to keep the price for playing poker at an artificial high (monopoly or cartels style), which might drive some players out, but ensure a higher overall profit, since the remaining players pay a higher price.

It hurts consumers in when we are talking clothing or similar (a random example). Here it has the added benifit, if you remove the winning players, the remaining players will donate more to the network.

All in all it is a question of ipoker as a network provider wanting to maximize their profit, which conflicts with the interest of the individual skin wanting to maximize their profit.



If ipoker wanted to fight parasites, the solution would be easy, just lower the rake 50% (actually less than this would most likely do the trick) network wide making rb obsolete.


It is a nice bedtime story you tell, but as most fairy tales I think my daugther will enjoy it more than I.


Cliffnotes: Competition is a good thing that benefits the consumer, figthing competition might be in the firms interest, but never in the consumers.