The stock market is either rigged or operates under perfect information (all prices are accurate at all times). These are the only two theories that meet with reality. You have no proof its not rigged, and I have seen market manipulation happening in real time.

I am not saying noone can beat the market. I am saying essentially noone who picks a financial advisor has any of the necessary skill to do so successfully.

I also made alot of money in the market at various times. Check out SNDA and FMCN. All it takes is one mindless action or freakout and its all down the drain though. Welcome to life tilt.

I probably should still be day trading but the prop shop here in Austin, Kershner Trading, was basically complete ****.

How the *** are you not paranoid these days? Hows that FTP money coming?

Seriously you are a bipolar freak.

BTW I know another person with a ton of money on the site that had cashouts messed up for apparently no reason.

Kagame, lots of people who beat the markets also have financial advisors. My dad would be one such person but there are many others of course.

What is the anticipated value of these casino bonuses? Does it correlate with exactly how much you pay in rake, or is there a flat bonus for hitting black/black elite? Or do we not know any of this yet?

I believe what we can expect is a 10% RB bonus for Black, and 20% RB bonus for Black Elite. They will have play through requirements, although I don't have a number on what that will be. Hopefully we can get this confirmed and set up ASAP for you guys, it will also be retro-active so you are receiving credit for it.

Wow okay so there's actually a good bit of incentive for me to hit black elite (not this month, but next month lol).

A play through requirement is kind of senseless since the people getting the casino bonuses all either play a lot, or for high stakes anyways, but whatever.

Yes, don't hold me to that as I am not sure if anything else has changed since they were originally offered. And the play through is required to be able to offer this so hopefully the customers can understand.

I will try and get you a 100% answer in the morning, we understand communication is important.

Yeah I don't see how anybody would have a problem with a playthrough. I'm just excited to be getting any extra value. Between having the VIP levels, sng LB, casino bonuses, and a rake chase (even though we don't know the details yet) I don't see how I or anybody else can complain!

People have a problem with the proposed playthrough requirement because its on the Casino side and not the poker side. Casino games vary from slightly -ev to mega -ev, and its just kind of weird to have to playthrough a bonus earned through poker play in casino games. Originally the bonus was being credited to player's poker vault, but apparently the Merge network has a problem when things are done too rationally and conveniently . Therefore, Lock is having to come up with an acceptable alternative, and the process has somehow taken over two months.

You don't see how anyone can complain? The month is almost a third over and no details about this rake race have been released? What exactly takes so long to figure out? Casino bonuses have been promised but we have no idea when they will be implemented and we have idea on the play through requirements. And it won't be playing poker hands which is what you are thinking. It might be place $250 in casino bets to unlock $10 in casino bonuses for all we know.

I'm happy merge is still serving us and Rizen and the others here have been very helpful but there are some pretty frustrating issues that still need worked out.

The good news with the casino bonuses is at least they will be retro-active so you are not losing out there.

I do hope we can quickly get the rest of the issues you mentioned sorted out, I can also promise it has the attention of Lock and hopefully we can give you some official details shortly.

Okay nevermind. If the playthrough bonus means having to play a certain amount of casino games, that is ridiculous.

Yes, that will be the case. It has been mentioned here, just figured since you are on these threads alot that you knew, my bad.

Basically I don't know how much I can say regarding this so I will try to explain simply... Lock (like all Merge skins) has to meet certain requirements to offer something such as this.

Welcome to 6 weeks ago? We've already discussed this aspect a ton.

Lol, but i kinda wish i was like him and not checking this thread for the last 6+ weeks

Casino bonuses I believe will be awarded thsi week, will be retroactive, and from here on out will be awarded at the beginning of every month. Unfortunately the play through requirement I heard was 40x

Also, while I'm delivering bad news, the rake race went up last week and had to be taken down 5 minutes later. Merge basically told us we weren't allowed to run it. I was nearly positive we were allowed, but apparently we can only offer the rake races through affiliates as an acquisition tool and not just site wide. I'm working out double points with them now.

-Rizen

So as a black elite my casino bonus is a min of 1k a month, that means i have to wager 40k? Sorry, but i honestly have no idea how any of this works.

Tclark, yes.

If you have a 2% disadvantage at a game like blackjack then that is $20 you lose for every $1000 in total bets. That can be 100 bets of $10 each for example.

If you bet $40k total then that is an ev of -$800. So getting any money at the end will be a victory.

I am going to hope and assume that the playthrough doesn't carry over after going busto. If I bust my $1k before reaching my playthrough requirement then thats it. On my next payment of $1k I still only have 40x and it can't become 63x if I busted my last bonus super quickly or something. If that is the case then I guess it is slightly better than a true 40x on everything combined. Multiple 40x on each bonus with it resetting every time is a little better than it looks because of the times you bust before reaching 40x.

Rizen, can you clarify is this is correct at some point?

should be 20+% for both levels not 10% rizen!

lol not much of an extra value if it's 40x aka I'll never see it been checking this thread nearly every day since it was started and hearing it'll be 40x, sigh, is pretty disappointing.

I don't blame Rizen, other Lock pros, or the site itself; clearly this is a Merge mandate.

LOL...joke. So these awesome casino bonuses require us to bet 40x the bonus amount and the rake races we have been hearing about are not going to happen anymore? Sure am glad I switched to VIP instead of sticking with RB. Maybe I'll just spend all my points in the store...wait, umm, where is that again?

Don't blame you personally for any of this but we have been hearing so much leading up to this and reading your post is pretty disappointing. I have also had a check request stuck in "requested" phase for 19 days now. In my eyes, Lock has gone downhill pretty quickly.

Rake chase=bust

Casino bonuses=joke/trying to turn us into blackjack and roulette monkeys

So basically 100% moving to play on Stars at this point. Merge = genius. Its actually kind of unbelievable how short sited these people are. High volume grinders like us who signed up for Lock for the ronin promotion instead of some off-brand skin through a buddy for a high RB % can go **** themselves according to merge. Lovely. I guess we just have to take it because we have no other options...OH WAIT. Anyone who can grind $5000+ rake on some super marginal network can EASILY move to play on a site that actually cares about its high volume players. Do the people running merge even REALIZE that they currently have a very small fraction of the Pstars/FT US grinders playing on their site because their rake structure to rewards ratio sucks, and that the ones they do have are all working on plans to get off their network because of these absurd decisions that make it even worse?

well guess thats wrong. Merge isnt the ones that say they do offer something and then figure out its against network rules. Thats a problem of lock and they are probably the only ones that can really be blamed.
I dont know but by the look at it, in my eyes they did everythign on a hastle. 1. Said they would offer casino bonus when they couldnt if they want to follow the network rules.
2. Said rake race would be up and running and keeping ppl play for a race which will come for sure and then is being cancelled because its only allowed over affilates.
3. wheres the store?
4. where are our ipad?
5. coachings?

i mean i havent tried to cashout yet :-) so cant complain on that, but everything i see from lock regarding promos just seems to me that they do offer things and then think about the handling when its there or too late.

I didnt have any good experiences regarding all the promos - completed and cancelled - i went through this far except the ronin challenge.

have a nice day

Sorry if this just seems like a bunch of Merge bashing, but its just been extremely frustrating to have been strung along for months and promised incentives to one day be told "lol those weren't actually real. you've actually been wasting your time grinding black elite on our network".