***The tournament is up again, and the password is the same.***

So what happened:
This time Merge stepped in and helped me sort it out,
basically, there is the $100 cash and the $100 play through bonus,
I had assumed it was the $100 play through bonus that had caused the issue,
when it fact it was the prize pool.

Outside of setting up tournaments, bonuses are considered separately and not as cash;
but within the tournament system they are considered to be part of the prize pool.

I had assumed that the $100 bonus would be simply automatically applied as if it were a deposit bonus,
but the tournament system saw it as part of the prize pool, so when the number of participants hit 300,
the tournament basically imploded because the tournament program was then looking for $60,000 but only found only $30,000
and then did an automatic shut down.

So a couple of things:
Once again apologies, sometimes when these things happen in life when I was younger I thought I was being punished by some higher power or that evil forces of life were trying to keep me from doing something, but the reality is, every time you do something new, you take a chance.

It's great when it works out, but when it doesn't work out, you realize two things: 1. either you need to pay a helluva lot more attention and it's a reality check or 2.I've got to get this fixed right.

I'll say that yesterday, I freaked out, was at my in-laws to pick up my son and then this happened and I got back into my car, let my son stay with his grandparents and then sorted it out. And I thought, 'wow, that was such a sick beat'.

Today I was with my son and in-laws to pick up my son from yesterday,and got the message from the Merge tournament staff that this had happened and I felt the blood drain out of my face and then emailed Merge back and confirmed that they exactly saw the problem in how I set it up and were in the process of setting it up for me. I then still drove home like a maniac, nearly gave my mother-in-law a heart attack and came to the desktop to get a skype message from Merge that they had set everything up again and informed the players.

And when I was driving home, I, of course hit every red light, and my iphone's touch screen stopped working, I guess it was because of the amount of bio-electrical energy I was generating and so I ended up cracking my iphone case cause I was that upset.

Will this ever occur again? If this occurs again for this tournament I serious may have to consider ritual suicide. Should I have asked to ask the Merge tournament staff to review this with me first? Normally I would have but I was trying to be considerate because they were so busy lately and I arrogantly assumed that I knew the answer.

Do I feel like an idiot? Yes. Do I look like an idiot? I mean it's the second time! Yes
But, I guess part of all of this is that, ok, while I did pull out some hair, destroy my iphone case and scared my mother-in-law into thinking I was a madman. I'm still committed, I'm trying and I'm not perfect, but I'm going to keep at it until it is as good as it can be.

Again, apologies for it, please register and if these are birthing pain to herald something great, then stick with me guys, my life is this company and you as players and with my family's support we will be great together, even if I have to choke on my own humble pie every day.

Sincerely,
Dave

Don't worry Dave.

Hey thanks Gavin for coming in to save my bacon as well.
Cheers and appreciation,
Dave

I have a few questions regarding Hero Poker.

1. I've been an ether level on carbon for a while now, and I remember that Carbon was allowing players to discontinue their rakeback a little while back. I would actually be getting more bonus $ if I cancel rakeback with them (if they still allow it?), so I was wondering if I would be able to open a rakeback account through Hero if i had my carbon rakeback removed.

2.My greater concern is the safety of funds. Are player funds stored differently among different skins? After seeing what happened on "black friday", I personally would feel safer having my funds on a bigger skin. I'm not really sure how funds are stored, but would I be at all worried about keeping 5-6 figure bankroll on Hero with the current climate of US legislation?

3. How are payments processed to US players? Are there any differences between skins?

Dave is the only person who I truly look up to as a 'big brother.' I first met him when I was 19 years old and was over at Elky's house trying to learn poker and in walks this huge Korean guy brandishing some wooden sword doing Judo-esque moves on Elky. I was thinking 'wtf who the F is this guy I better be nice to him.' I quickly realized that he is as real as they come. Dave is endowed with the sort of confidence that allows him to wear his feelings and intentions on his sleeve as he knows they are always in the right place.

While the poker climate for Americans is indeed hazy and mere avouchment of his character from his friends/sponsored pros can seem meaningless, Dave will be able to give real guarantees on the safety of playing on Hero. I've never seen him give up in anything and he has always put others' concerns before his own.

I mean, he's one of the few people that will not give up against me in drinking battles. WTF?

THANK YOU very Much!!!

I believe that if their LMT Holdem rake structure was more in-line with the industry they would attract an entirely new/additional segment of business to their network, (including many international (outside US) LMT players.

I believe that for the Merge Network to grow and be competitive with #1 and #2, they have to cover all of the bases and be competitive and strong in all areas. If they do, they will grow and rise to the top!

Thanks again!!

Truly appreciated.

I just downloaded the mac version of your software. I wanted to check things out and take a look around. Unfortunately, it seems I can't do that without logging in. So before I create an account, I want to make sure that I can get rakeback. Obviously. Do I need to sign up through an affiliate, or can you help me out with this directly?

This a million times. I am holding off on any deposits until I see that the rake structure is no longer a trap for limit players. Merge must move to industry standard rake to ever have a sustainable long term structure. Failure to adjust will give the appearance of reaching for a short term money grab.

I could have posted this in any of the Merge skin threads, but David you are good at getting back with answers. I also welcome anyone else to answer.

How is Players/Flop calculated on Merge? I think it was recently changed, so if anyone answers, please make sure you are talking about the current method. I am seeing a lot 11% to 15% tables. No matter how it is calculated, numbers like that make me want to barf. But I am curious.

I'm starting to think modern day online poker needs to be played with antes.

Hi, sorry for the late response, trying to manage 4 forums nowadays and not running good with tournament set ups lol.

1. rakeback will always be the best rewards and in actuality should be reserved for VIPs, but since Merge was small, it was used as a competitive advantage, it can't be beat, don't give it up. If you have it on Carbon, you can't have it Hero, so its a network rule, but you're welcome to join us for anything and if you really feel strongly about it then you can email carbon support, but that is up to you, again, I'm not the CEO of the network, but of Hero.

2.Its held within separate accounts in Merge for those sites who do their processing through Merge, but my straight forward opinion is simply wait; you have nothing to lose by waiting, trying things out at a small amount. As I've said, even I'm reassessing the situation every day and at this point, while we operate as business as usual, the environment has obviously changed considerably.

3. Again, if the cashier is with Merge, as with Hero, the payments are processed from our end with the correct online gaming code, for those other sites that do use their own cashier, some of them have already exited the US market and the others I am not sure who does use or doesn't use Merge.

Thanks,
David

Thanks Rek for posting, much appreciated.
Dave

Yes, its fine,
just PM your username and if you don't have RB account on another merge site and I'll sort it out for you, no worries.

Dave

Hi, my initial reaction would be that players are just naturally more cautious to playing now because they only have small bankrolls online and want to carefully build it back up and so they are playing a lot less hands as it is just harder to reload. But, for this I'll need to forward you question to Merge directly for an answer, so please be patient, but I do not have the exact answer and I don't want to speculation on a technical side.

Thanks,
David

From the offices of Merge:

1. Change to Players/Flop % Calculation in the client

We have made a change to the way the client calculates the Plyrs/Flop percentage in the Merge client. Previously the formula was:

Players/Flop % = Total Percentage of Players to each flop / Number of Flops


The formula now is:

Players/Flop % = Total Percentage of Players to each flop / Number of Hands


The key difference here is that the players/flop percentage will go down because it will include hands that did not have a flop. As well as this adjustment, the percentage will read as 0 (zero) when action ceases at the table.


Thanks & Regards,
Dave

you've made a few offhand references to really small differences, etc and I'm just not seeing it. Even if I could still get RB on Hero I'm pretty sure many players would do much better on some of the other skins. The current rewards structure on Hero actually gets worse with higher volume at a certain point.

I haven't calculated exact percentages at different volumes, etc but I would be very surprised if it were only a 2% RB difference in my situation. And since I can't even get RB on Hero it ends up being way more than even that.

I wish you well as you seem like a decent guy. I was kind of hoping your rewards program would be strong enough for me to consider your site. But it doesn't appear to be the case unfortunately.

I was just throwing out the 2% RB difference because actually I had a player said he got a 37% base rb offer and he was going there and I was fine with it after I answered about 8 emails from him but 100% there are much better base rb offers out there, even 40%.

My point is that over and above what is there, I've given us more leeway to this regards for our players, and I just can't compete and don't want to compete on a cost basis because those types of players will leave for 2% etc.

But the rewards system was set up against a range not on level by level basis, that being said, that will not be a competitive rewards system by itself, for our boutique model it requires us to go over and above that to tailor on going promotions for the divisions as well ie, valued added tournaments, packages etc. But thanks for going through it, no doubt that you are 100% that there are better values out there for return off the bat and more so that 35%-37%.

Cheers,
David

I'm going to start calling you Micro%o% from now on. Just stay away from the freerolls. I remember what you did on this network when it was standalone poker.com. Wasn't it a monthly 50k one? The first one you every played in there? I remember. Took it down with no problem.

Yeah. I honestly didn't even know (or remember) that this Merge thing was the old poker.com until I started playing on Lock. Then I saw the software and it seemed familiar....and then I saw a couple old poker.com player icons. Oh yeah. I won that freeroll thing here! LOL.

Yes, I finished first (I think) for $5k in some weekly or monthly freeroll they had on that site (probably involved earning 500 points that week to qualify for the tourney or something). Not sure. I had some silly trophy next to my name on the tables after that. Probably was 2004 I think but it might have been 2005. I was invited back to a couple "Tournament of Champions" type events after that and maybe cashed for $100 or $200 more.

That was back in the bonus-whoring and neteller days of moving your money around all over the place to every dinky site that would give you a $200 deposit bonus of course. Oh how times have changed.

Those were the days MicroBob. Poker.coms freerolls were something special. I remember you had me refer you to the site and when I offered to give you the $50 buck refer a friend reward you said keep it. Then a few weeks later you hit for that nice freeroll score. Nice guys do finish first.

David,

I recently made an account with Hero Poker and have not deposited yet. Is it too late for me to get rakeback? If its not what can I do about it?

I read on another thread that a Merge pokersite cashed out a player and sent them a discover gift card. Any thoughts of using this method? ( Visa, Mastercard, Discover giftcards?)

Just wanted to post and say that I was curious about receiving rakeback on Hero Poker and e-mailed support asking about it. 4 days later I had no response so I went to live chat. After 45 minutes of waiting, I asked how I go about getting rakeback because I didn't see the Hero Poker on the affiliate site I use. I was told that if I wanted rakeback, I would have to sign up through an affiliate... Then when I asked if they had a list of affilates that I could choose from, I was told to google it.

This was all before seeing this thread and realizing I can't get rakeback on Hero because I have rakeback on Carbon... Darn?

You could of saved lots of time and Pm'd the ceo from this thread or emailed their support, who got back to me in about 10 minutes actually.

But yea merge live chat sucks haha

Can't create a new account, when I click continue at step 1 I get the blank Step 1 form again