Im sorry but you are making no sense.

It seems it has everything to do with 888, as Ive been told by my affiliate that they disallowed their affiliates paying a share to their players....where before they allowed it.

Special One,

It may be hard to follow as a non affiliate, but Jamie makes complete sense here.

1) They never allowed people to pay a % of their affiliate share to players, they just tolerated it or did not police it as hard as now (hence why Jamie says it's not 888's fault).

2) They recently seemed to shut down many, if not all, of the affiliates that were doing it.

3) Affiliates there weren't doing it were more likely to keep their previous agreed upon rev % of a player's rake.

4) I'm not 100% on this one (Jamie probably knows, I don't work with 888), but future signups for everyone are CPA (one time payment per player signup).

So what your affiliate told you was likely correct, as is what Jamie is telling you.

The point I was making is that if a player had signed up with an affiliate under the agreement that they should get a % of their rakeback.
Then it is completely unfair if that affiliate is then forced to stop paying that player, yet the affiliate still gets the percent of the players rake, since the whole reason for the affiliate from the players point of view is gone.
I asked my affiliate if this was the case, their apparent incapableness to give me a clear answer speaks volumes.

The whole affiliate thing in poker is a joke...full of scams/lies and spam. The whole poker economy would be much better off if the whole affiliate system was scrapped across the board and instead of paying these affiliates rake...the players themselves got the rakeback in the form of lower RAKE.
There you are poker sites. The best marketing you can get, lower the rake and scrap the affiliate BS.

Oh, most of the time the deal ends it means the affiliate does NOT get a % of your rake anymore. On 888, I've heard from many affiliates that were giving out the rakeback deals that they no longer get any % on their players.

One exception might be a Merge Network situation. Around October 2012 all the previous grandfathered flat deals given by skins ("illegal" but they were tolerated for a full year by management, so effectively legal under old management) were ended. Skins paid them out direct in many cases I believe, so that's how they ended. Affiliates could choose to then go against the skin and network if they wanted to keep paying out privately, but in my experience that's where I would draw the line as an affiliate. If the room and network sanction a private deal, I see no reason to not take advantage of that. If the room and network are both against private deals, it is difficult to justify the secrecy and jumping through hoops + risk to make it happen.

But there are always those that will take risks and there are always those that do not understand basic business sense (IE treating your customers well and keeping them informed).

I do find a lot of guys that offer the "best" private deals tend to not inform their players of the additional risks associated with certain skins and certain poker rooms (even some well known poker rooms that have extra risk attached to them that the average uninformed player may not see). Always beware of tail risk as a player (and certainly as an affiliate). An extra few % is not worth much if you're on a skin that has a higher chance of shutting down, taking your bankroll and wasting a lot of your time and patience/stress.

And as a player, you shouldn't have to do it, but reality is that you do because hardly any affiliates that offer private deals will let you know: Ask before you take that great looking deal if it is a deal sanctioned by the poker room and the network. Most likely it's just the poker room if anything, and that carries some risk. Research the poker room and don't take your deal for granted, know it can be gone at any time.

As far as scrapping affiliates, the system doesn't work like that. Affiliates bring in new players, they market rooms to additional players. If they did not, rooms would not offer affiliate options. Full Tilt is really the only place that does not and that is a very unique situation due to their previous massive branding and traffic, it makes sense (and imo will not always be that way). PokerStars even offers affiliate signup. If it didn't make sense less rooms would do it.

Now, there are of course ways to improve the affiliate system, but if you could just give a player another 10-20% rakeback to draw in all the players, rooms would simply do that and scrap the affiliate system as you suggest. It's not that simple though.

Further, poker rooms are not exactly upstanding citizens themselves in so many cases. How many rooms have stiffed players or affiliates on promos? How many have gone under, irresponsibly using player money to run extra promos hoping to get out of a hole? Too many. Affiliates aren't the bad guys. You can argue humans are, but affiliates are not particularly bad when you look at scamming players, thieving poker rooms, not just dishonest affiliates (and there's plenty of good poker rooms, players and affiliates).

I disagree with you. There was a time when affiliates were usesful at bringing in new players through advertising on large and popular websites. That was fair enough and I had no problem with it.

But nowadays it seems most affiliates are specialising in offering "extras" to players who sign up with them. This was never the way poker sites intended the system to work.
But now dodgey sites turn a blind eye to this, for as long as it suites them. They let it bring enough players and then pull the plug on it when they have benefited enough, because they dont want to share the rake.
888 poker is the perfect example.

I filled out one of those form requests for 888 poker and I have received 3 posts from people offering me their 888 deal. Do you know what the deal is?, they have basically offer me up to 38 percent rakeback...i.e what everyone gets and regular deposit bonuses....i.e what everyone gets and brandished this offer as unique.
Now if thats not misleading and scamming I dont know what is.

At the end of the day I do agree with some of your points. But I still don't see how you were hurt. You got a deal that was not allowed, you benefited from it, and now you're back to being able to use the maximum rewards within the rules.

It's like you loving burger king burgers, you buy them every day. Then you find a buddy that works there that gives em to you half off. He gets caught and warned and can't do it anymore and now you're complaining that you only get the burger for the regular price. But if you love the burger, you buy it, if not, it's not like you're missing out on a better price, discounts aren't given anymore.

Eat your burger and relax

Look, I just dont like the whole situation with affiliates, as Ive made it clear.

In this specific situation I signed up with this guy under the agreement I would be getting rakeback. That was the only reason I signed up through him. 888 poker knew this and decided to turn a blind eye in order to increase their player base.
Then, when it suits them they decide to cut the rake. Fair enough I guess, its their site. But I am tied to this affiliate now, if they want to end the deal they should allow me to create a new account. I certainly wont play on their site if I think the affiliate might still be profiting from my play, just out of principle, since they are no longer serving their purprose to me.

But the whole affiliate thing as a whole just irritates me. I dont want to have to sign up with an affiliate to gain the same rewards as every other player on the site. I dont want to have to waste my time dealing with and researching these third party sites/people, most of which are liars, scammers or spammers.

I just want to play poker, but Im forced to have to deal with these people because of the current setup.

I'm trying to move my action from pokerstars as I'm getting bored or grinding zoom for bonuses and want to get a better top line. I was looking at 888 but if the deals are poor then where is the best place to go?

I wanted to know rakeback deals are out there for 888, disappointed to read this thread .......

Yeah, I would be interested in deals on 888/Luckyace as well. Too bad it seems the only deals are on less stable skins?

What skins are on 888 that are not owned by 888?

So nothing better on 888 than the 5 free poker books 2+2 are offering? No affiliates offering any rake races or promotions to sign with them?

Did you fill out the rakeback form in this forum? Lots of affiliates, I'd imagine someone offers something there, though I'm not sure if they offer better than 5 free books. Depends a lot on what games you play and what you value as a player.

I would be interested in a rb deal on 888 but seems that no-one is offering anything over and above that 888 doesn't already offer directly. What incentives (if any) are there to sign with affiliates if hey cannot offer anything?

Affiliates offer anything from free software to free poker videos.

Those incentives are likely a bit on the lower end versus what the average affiliate offers to sign up on rooms in places such as the iPoker network, for example, but you should find reputable affiliates with incentive offers for all rooms including 888.

what is the best rakeback deal on 888 poker, I thought that rakebrain is offering a deal as an affiliate? is the site really bad that you can't beat the rake should I not get rakeback?

I remember when i started playing poker was at LuckyAce with UTT deal ws great
I think those days are over

Hey ConspiracyPoker,

As you quite rightly point out those days are now over. No skin on 888 pays affiliates based on rake so paying an under the table deal would be impossible! This was also always a risk as it was against the network policy from day one.

Hope this helps to clear things up!

Chris