sure wish it was a sports book bonus instead of a casino bonus...at least then it would be fun to lose the monies. I wish Marge would ease up on this a bit...at least make the play through ez.

really great post, MB, thank you for the really useful info.

fingers crossed the play through won't ruin us pit game newbs.

how about a playthrough with POKER? still paying rake on it. dont need to make us degen gamble. we are poker players not gamblers. learn this and then maybe Congress will learn it as well and legalization might have a chance.

ridiculous to have more than a 1x playthrough. this is not a freaking deposit bonus free money. this is a REBATE on excessive rake.

Why so high for roulette? American roulette should only be like 2.3%, and Euro roulette is half that

+1. I dont want to bust another roll on BJ again. :-)
I'm really close on cashing out and settling somewhere else... This is getting ridiculous.

Zack, American roulette is 5.26. Euro roulette is half that. Look at wizardofodds.com or Wikipedia.


"The house average or house edge (also called the expected value) is the amount the player loses relative for any bet made, on average. If a player bets on a single number in the American game there is a probability of 1/38 that the player wins 35 times the bet, and a 37/38 chance that the player loses their bet. The expected value is: −1× 37 ⁄ 38 + 35× 1 ⁄ 38 = −0.0526 (5.26% house edge) For European roulette, a single number wins 1 ⁄ 37 and loses 36 ⁄ 37 : −1× 36 ⁄ 37 + 35×1/37 = −0.0270 (2.70% house edge)"

I would prefer this or no playthrough at all as was the original program, but we've been asked to make this a true casino bonus, and unfortunately that means we have to put a play through requirement on it.

Sorry, i'm not trying to pass the buck, this is our problem for not making everything clear up front both publicly and with the network, so I'm not trying to lay blame or pass it along, just saying the reality of it is unless we make it a casino bonus we have to get rid of it because it is rake back above and beyond what other rooms are allowed to offer.

I am looking into being able to offer some 'double points' promos similar to RPM but haven't really heard back on that.

Just to be up front, the final details aren't out yet, but the PT requirements I'm hearing are on the high end. I just want to be straight forward and honest about that, even though I know it isn't something people will want to hear.

I realize it is little consolation, but believe it or not we really DO want to offer as much value as possible for our players. We will do everything we can to take care of our players while staying within the network guidelines.

-Rizen

So if these casino bonuses are already "above and beyond what other rooms are allowed to offer", then maybe people on here should stop complaining and take what is being offered...

Nah, actually I get the complaining. Regardless of it being above and beyond what other rooms can offer, a few weeks ago they were getting one thing and now that has been drastically altered. As a player I would be pretty upset too.

It's just a part of my job that at times is no fun. I really like working with Lock, and they really do have a great philosophy in terms of player rewards and trying to do as much as possible for the player. They brought me on board as someone who has PLAYED poker a lot and has a player's perspective, and they actually listen to what I have to say and do their best to put it into practice.

It's very rewarding, but it will never be fun delivering news that I, as a player, would not want to hear. Unfortunately there is really nothing I can do to change it in this case.

It is nice though, because they *DO* listen. When everyone was complaining about Merge payouts and I asked them if there was anything we could do to make them faster for our players, and they came up with some innovative ideas. Some of them, like WU, didn't last long, but it's still really nice to work with a room that listens to the concerns and really makes an effort to address them, even if the end result isn't always perfect.

-Rizen

Hi Rizen,
just want to say that you are the primary reason i ended up on lock poker. I remember playing with you nl200 back on cake a year or so ago and after doyles left cake (CEO gone) and doyle left doyles, i was looking for another room where i knew that had a person which would listen to the players needs, as you are a player yourself. And i see that i was totally right with my assumption.
I wonder how come the other skins all have deals with their affiliates so they can offer rake races. And i havent seen any of those for Lock. And those rake races are representing a nice extra value for the players.
Why arent you doing anything like that?

Best regards,
Mike

We dont get any rake race (carbon and pdc etc). We dont get reloads. We dont get 2x points days like RPM.

We get less of our rake returned than everyone else. Also, we were promised more.

But we have casino cashouts. I'll take it.

Still though, alot of players are going to go bust trying to play through their 20% casino bonus. This is really bad for the poker room.

Merge basically sucks. Lock is good.

Thanks for bringing that up, I actually need to talk to them about the rake races. We were working on the casino stuff and focused on that, but we are allowed to run some limited rake races and I know we're goign to. I want to get the double points thing too, but I haven't gotten any confirmation on if/when I can offer that yet.

-Rizen

carbon and rpm offer those every month. how come you are limited there?

We are limited on how much money we can offer in the race, not that we can't offer them monthly. Poor wording on my part. Basically they would be roughly the same size, nothing Ronin like.

-Rizen

I had an affiliate rake race when I was playing on PDC. Pretty sure this is still going on. Think this sort of thing is bending the rules heavily, if not breaking them.

For Lock, people did not typically sign up through this sort of affiliate with a rake race. Might be something to mention to Merge to help negotiate?

I will definitely bring it up...

The rules are pretty clear on what we can do via rake races and I'm talking to our CEO about getting one implemented ASAP. Affiliates are allowed to go above and beyond if they want, but the extra money has to be put in by them and not the room if I remember right. I'm not super familiar with all the affiliate rules, but I believe this is the case so it's quite possible that they were perfectly within the rules.

It's kind of like the iPad promo in a way, if you break that down into what it was rakeback % wise it was super close to 100% between rake back, the iPad, and the other promos offered at the time, and I'm not sure exactly how it was structured in terms of affiliate vs us, but I know we were able to work with the affiliates to make sure it was within the rules even though it clearly went above and beyond what is normally offered.

-Rizen

BTW - I do appreciate the ideas. I'll use any logical argument I can to do what I can, so I definitely hope that response didn't come off as a dismissal because I will definitely bring it up when I'm talking about it.

-Rizen

How about the logic, "We promised this to our customers. We represent the network, you have to let us deliver on a promise."

Even if you end it AFTER you find out it won't work, you still need to pay us for the time in between when you told us we would get an extra 20% and when you informed us it would not be happening.

This is really pretty basic in terms of long term credibility.

For the long run, I could care less about bull**** casino play-through bonuses, and I am 100% sure almost everyone agrees with me. Those casino bonuses will do nothing good for players and are NOT a reward, they are going to hurt poker on Merge. All they are is a way to get more people to degen gamble in the casino. This is how people become compulsive addicted gamblers. I am pretty angry about the mixture of poker and casino play, because this is an issue of mental health and wellness.

++++++++1

I totally agree with this, but at the same time, I'm sure that most of the poker grinders (the ones who aren't complete fools) won't turn into degen gamblers. If I'm given x amount of dollars in casino bonus, I will give it a couple spins on the roulette wheel, take what I get, and call it a day. But yeah, all of us would rather it not include anything that is considered gambling.

i agree with both u and ka. i personally wont have any problems with playing casino games for a little to try to clear a bonus bc ive never had degen gambling problems. and this is probably the same for most poker players. But i can def see it causing problems for some poker players who try to stay away from casino games bc they know they have a problem, and this "bonus" pretty much forces them to play casino games to get their money. just comes off as pretty shady to me on merge's part.

This seems like a good way for Merge to generate money on the casino side which means the cashouts from the casino shouldn't be in jeopardy of being canceled as an option in the future. Or at least that makes sense in my head and I didn't articulate it very well.

Merge doesn't have a casino side this is just exclusive to Lock. I can also be 100% sure this isn't an attempt to turn poker players into degenerate gamblers.

That being said, I think at least a few people in this thread are underestimating how many poker players have serious gambling problems. Based on my experience playing professionally I would guess that over half of actual 'winning' poker players have other gambling leaks, be it table/casino games, sports betting, or something else. It is actually a VERY small group of players that both beat the games AND don't have other gambling leaks.

-Rizen

I didn't start playing until the Casino bonuses were removed/suspended, could someone clarify how Casino bonuses work? Are the bonuses bought with VIP points?

I know the play-through requirements and final details aren't worked out yet but I'm just trying to get a little better understanding of how this is going to work because I'm most likely going to reach Black VIP level pretty soon and I can't find anything on the Lock website about it.