TL;DR: Deposited $1,000 on Ignition with $1,250 Bitcoin Poker Welcome Bonus. In the next 28 days, I played ~45k hands at 50NLz, 50NL and 100NL and paid $2,502.95 in rake. I should have unlocked the entire $1,250 bonus, but instead only received $732.58. Customer service was downright unhelpful, bordering on obstructive. I'd have to assume I'm not the only person this has happened to. Either they are deliberately underpaying rewards, or their software sucks and they don't care. Either way, I can't play on the site, despite how much as I would like to for the Zone tables. I'd love to know if anyone else tracked the rake they paid during the bonus period and whether it was consistent with the ignition miles earned and the amount of the bonus you received.

Well I was hoping I was going to have a better resolution to report when I wrote this post (which I was going to write whether they paid me or not), but it is what it is. If anyone from Ignition reads this, give me my money please.

The relevant bonus terms are:
1. The bonus is for 125% of your first deposit, up to a maximum of $1,250.
2. For every 150 Ignition Miles earned in poker, you will unlock $5 of the bonus funds.
3. The Ignition Miles earn rate is 15 Ignition Miles per dollar of rake in poker cash games.

1 and 2 are from https://www.ignitioncasino.eu/promot...-welcome-bonus, screenshot:

3 is from https://www.ignitioncasino.eu/contents/ignition-rewards, screeenshot:


So, this bonus is equivalent to 50% rakeback: you earn 15 Ignition Miles per dollar of rake you pay, so after paying 10 dollars of rake, you earn 150 Ignition Miles, which unlocks $5 of the bonus money. So, to unlock the full $1,250 bonus, you need to earn 37,500 Ignition Miles (($1250 / $5) * 150 Ignition Miles) which is equivalent to paying $2,500 of rake. One caveat, they don't specify precisely what they mean by "per dollar of rake", but it seems like the most reasonable interpretation is that it means per dollar of rake paid from pots that you win.

On 10/3, I deposited about $1,008 with the Bitcoin Poker Welcome Bonus, so I got the maximum bonus amount of $1,250. Between 10/3 and 11/1, I played 45,418 hands. I downloaded all the hand history files from Ignition and loaded them into PokerTracker. Here are the stats (bad reg, I know, I know ):



You can see Rake Attributed (the amount paid out of pots that I won), Rake Contributed (the amount of rake taken out of my bets, whether or not I won the pot), and Rake Share (the amount of rake taken divided evenly by the number of players at the table). If they're going by Rake Attributed, I should have received over 37,500 Ignition Miles, but if they're going by Rake Contributed, I should have received only 36,213.75 Ignition Miles. Obviously nobody cares about how many Ignition Miles they have earned because they are so pathetically worthless it's insulting, but since the bonus unlocking is tied to how many Ignition Miles you earn, I was monitoring it. On November 1, I had earned only 23,560 Ignition Miles:



And on November 1, the total amount of the bonus I had unlocked was only $732.58:



Going by their incorrect balance of 23,560 Ignition Miles, I should have unlocked $5 * 23560 / 150 = $785.33. Their math here only shorted me 50 bucks - not bad compared to their usual standards. The bigger issue is that I was shorted 14,000 Ignition Miles, which should have unlocked $466.67 of the bonus.

I first contacted their customer service about the bonus funds not unlocking as they should be on October 6. In the following 4 weeks, I exchanged dozens of emails and spoke to their customer service on the phone 3 times, and every experience was positively enraging. By far the worst customer service experience I've ever had. A couple of good things: during this time I downloaded a couple of hand history files that were corrupted, and their customer service was very prompt and helpful in resolving that. And at the end of my attempts to get them to fix this, I forfeited the remaining $517.42 of the bonus that I am entitled to, and withdrew my account balance from the site. That withdrawal went through in about 12 hours, which absolutely shocked me since I was expecting to be put through the ringer after all the grief their customer service gave me about the bonus issues. So I have to give them some respect for not giving me a hard time withdrawing my money.

Here are the cliff notes on the communication regarding the bonus problem. Almost every email contradicted the one before it. It took from October 6 until October 13 for them to finally make a manual adjustment to the amount of the bonus I had unlocked, and that adjustment actually seemed to bring the number close to the correct amount. But after that, it continued to accrue slower than it should have, and the Ignition Miles were not consistent with the amount of rake I had paid. On October 12, I asked them to confirm the total amount of rake I had paid on the site, and they told me it would take 24-48 hours (their favorite time estimate to give and subsequently miss) to calculate the amount of rake I'd paid. By October 19, I still had not heard back from them, I pinged them again, and after that they essentially refused to talk to me, answering every email with "I see that we have already helped you with this issue". Absolutely made my blood boil, and eventually they told me to call if I needed further assistance.

Album of emails in case you want to read, it's actually pretty funny just how unhelpful they are: https://imgur.com/a/a9YsqUE

I called 3 times. First time, November 2, 55 minutes on the phone with someone who didn't understand the way the bonus worked, and eventually said she would need to escalate it to the Promotions team and I should hear within 24-48 hours. I gave her as much information as she could understand to make sure they understood the problem, since they refuse to let you talk to or email a supervisor or the Promotions team directly.

Didn't hear anything, as usual, so I called again November 6, 24 minutes on the phone and the guy told me to just monitor my account messages and there was nothing to be done. There was a ton of static on the line so I couldn't really contest anything since I could barely hear him. Finally, on November 9, they send me an account message that just says it's correct, with no further explanation whatsoever:



Infuriating.

I called a final time on November 11 and it took 39 minutes, again trying to explain the problem to some guy who didn't really understand, and at the end he told me he needed to investigate further and potentially talk to another department, and would send me an update by the end of the night. Refused to let me talk to any supervisor again, and I told him that I was fed up, that I've seen this routine before, and that if his "update" was just that he had investigated and found that the account was correctly adjusted, with no further explanation, I would stop playing on the site and withdraw all my money. If the update was that he needed to escalate it to the Promotions team or anyone else, I was going to give it 48 hours to hear from them, and if I didn't get an ACTUAL EXPLANATION of why my math is wrong, I would stop playing on the site and withdraw my money. He said he understood, and here's the update he sent me later that night:



Well, Ignition, you wore me down and wasted my time until I gave up. Please spend my 500 dollars on something cool.

I actually really like playing on Ignition, but I obviously can't play on the site after this experience. Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt that they're not up to anything malicious by underpaying the welcome bonus, if they mess up by 40% on paying a bonus, how can I have faith in their technical ability to implement any of the much more complicated functions a poker site needs, like randomness or security? Especially when it's so difficult to get them to take any feedback seriously and escalate it to the right people.

Of course I'm happy to answer any questions about any of this, and I actually have screenshots of all the bonus payments I received in the time the bonus was active if people want to see that, just didn't bother posting them because this is long enough anyway.

If anyone else who was tracking hands when they first started playing on Ignition with the Poker Welcome Bonus, I'd love for you to chime in with how much rake you paid in the 30 day period, and how much of the bonus you unlocked if you can still find that information. I actually remember searching 2p2 and other poker forums before I deposited because I was trying to estimate how many hands and how many hours of 2-tabling 50NL Zone I would need to play to clear the bonus, and I read multiple posts where people said they were multi-tabling 8 hours per day and couldn't come close to clearing the whole bonus, which seemed strange to me since I was able to comfortably play enough hands while having a full time job and taking a bunch of days off completely. I guess it makes more sense if you're only earning 60% of what you should be. I find it tough to believe that I am an isolated incident, so again, it would be great if anyone else who claimed the welcome bonus could confirm/deny that this happened to them too. And if you're considering signing up and claiming it ... uh, normally I'd tell you to just make sure you're being paid the correct amount, but obviously that didn't work for me, so I guess I'd have to recommend finding another site to play on unless you're okay with being stiffed on the welcome bonus.

I was not able to clear my entire bonus, but the $5 increments were dolled out consistently and accurately. You can bring this up directly in the Ignition forums, rollover confuses some folks (still me as well). I did not play enough volume to clear the bonus. However, My bonus was 100%, not 125%.

https://forum.ignitioncasino.eu/

I can confirm it is all pots, not just pots you win. But, if you fold your blinds, and the pot is won pre flop, then there is no rake.

Also, Rake contributed is what they use. Here is definition from poker tracker:

Rake Contributed is: Total amount of money removed from the pot as rake divided proportionately by the amount of money the player contributed to the pot.

Thanks for the info - so my rake number would be $2414.25. But there’s still a big discrepancy with the number of ignition miles and amount of the bonus I actually received. There’s no rollover on the welcome bonus, which was true for the $732.58 of it that I did receive.

It sounds like you actually received it 5 dollars at a time, which wasn’t the case for me. Instead it was paid in uneven amounts each time I ended a session (screenshot above shows that), which isn’t what their site says but it was the least of my concerns haha. Was it a long time ago that you claimed it? Maybe they’ve made some changes to the system that have messed it up, or maybe it’s just the Bitcoin Poker Welcome Bonus and not the normal one.

Thanks for the suggestion to post it on their forum, should be interesting at least to see whether they remove the post, ignore it, or actually do anything to address it.

Hi. Sorry to hear about your issues. I've also had various infuriating customer service experiences with Bovada/Ignition over the years.

Here's some advice I can give you:

1) Don't ever do e-mail customer service, except for super simple things (or when they require it for an official request). The e-mail support is run by monkeys who skim your e-mail for 30 seconds and fire back a canned response.

2) When calling, go directly to a supervisor. I know you were eventually denied one, but if that happens, hang up, call back, and claim you want a supervisor for some BS reason unrelated to what you're really calling about. Their front line phone reps are powerless and are basically just gatekeepers.

3) This problem needs to be solved by either the promotions team or the financial services team. You should press for those teams to call you if possible. If they refuse, at least demand an e-mail from a manager from one of those two departments. Those are the people with real power.

4) Be aware that customer service just sucks, and you often will just get screwed. (Threatening to publicize the screw job can sometimes help, as it's gotten them to reverse awful decisions against me.) This is just an unfortunate fact of live of that network. On the plus side, they are super-reliable with payouts, and also quick, as you saw.

One question: Even if the bonus was getting cleared at about 2/3 the rate you expected, why not just continue to play anyway? It's not like you will have many bonuses behind that, and it will eventually clear. (I know it's too late, just wondering that.)

Haha, thanks, Kilowatt! I just wish I had heard that advice before. Unfortunately now I'm pretty worn out of dealing with them. I thought it would be helpful to have the correspondence in writing since they flip-flop so much, and I thought it would be easier to explain the problem in writing vs over the phone ... even though it's not complex math, on both phone call #1 and phone call #3, they were telling me that I should earn 2000 Ignition Miles per dollar, and when I clarified that 2000 is the redemption rate, and I'm talking about the earn rate of 15 Ignition Miles per dollar, it felt like they were just nodding along. So I thought that there would be a greater chance that the Promotions team or whoever it gets escalated to would actually get the relevant information if I sent it via email, instead of literally playing the telephone game.

I guess I would need to be more demanding to talk to a supervisor or receive an email from the manager of the actual departments, but I actually did try both those things! For about 5 minutes at the end of the first call I was trying to get her to let me contact someone with more power somehow. She told me there was no way to speak to a supervisor there, and that the Promotions team doesn't talk on the phone or send emails. So, gate well-kept by her I guess.

I considered continuing to play, but I wouldn't have been able to make it in the 30-day period anyway. Strangely the bonus said it would have expired in a year instead of in 30 days, but I assumed that was a clerical error or something and that if I took advantage of it, it might come back to bite me when I tried to make a withdrawal. Plus, it's just that the terms are the terms and Ignition is supposed to abide by them too. But even if I had done that, I still would have shared this because I think people considering depositing should know that there's a chance they're going to be underpaid on the bonus, if possible I'd like to find out if others experienced this, and I want Ignition to actually take it seriously and fix the root of the problem, not just give me 500 bucks and forget about it. There's really no way for a player to know if they're getting underpaid without monitoring the rake paid during the bonus period with a HUD, which I'm sure many people don't do. It's "only" 500 bucks from me, but if it's happening to everyone, it's a large amount of money that is getting taken from the players.

Just a heads up, I’m on the same $1250 deposit bonus right now and mine also says i have a year to redeem it. Where are you getting the 30 day notion from? Also fwiw mine is also coming in random (not $5) increments. I’m not tracking my play yet so can’t attest to whether or not the rake is being calculated correctly

It's on this page: https://www.ignitioncasino.eu/promot...-welcome-bonus, the second to last bullet point in the fine print where it says "All issued bonuses are based on the Ignition Miles you earn in Poker within 30 days of your qualifying deposit." But who knows, it's possible that you could play right through the 30 day period and keep going and unlocking the bonus, and never have any hassle about it. I did not notice any change after the 30 days expired for me; from the looks of it, if I had kept playing beyond the 30 days, I would have kept unlocking the bonus in the same fashion.

Sounds like everything is the same between you and I, so I'd recommend downloading your hand history files and saving them so that you can load them into your HUD later and see how much rake you've paid and whether it jives with the ignition miles and bonus you receive.

Bovada/Ignition is REALLY BAD is when it comes to understanding/accepting that something nonstandard has occurred.

For example, before they had BTC deposits/withdrawals, their payment processors were constantly skimming on both ends. You would get charged extra for deposits, and you'd lose $ on withdrawals.

They would always blame this on "bank fees" and "exchange rates", but even when I proved to them that my bank had zero fees, and even when I showed that the amount charged/sent in foreign currency was incorrect BEFORE CONVERSION TO/FROM US DOLLARS, I got nowhere.

First they would truly not understand (usually a front line customer service monkey).

Then I'd get someone on the phone who had the capability to understand but purposely tuned me out and gave me BS answers.

Then I'd persistently keep explaining it, and they'd pretend not to understand.

Then I'd still persist, and they'd finally admit I was right, but that it was not Bovada's policy to make up for any skimming by their processors (lol).

Only when I threatened to use my website and poker radio show to publicize the matter did they back down. But I thought about how most people don't have such leverage, and also most people don't scrutinize their statements like I did (or don't understand bank fees/exchange rates well enough to call Bovada on its BS).

Keep in mind that Bovada wasn't gaining anything here. It was their payment processor stealing. However, they chose to close their eyes to it, instead of make it right for the customer.

Interestingly, Betonline's processor did the same crap, and they instantly credited me when I called up and told them what happened.

Anyway, you just have to understand Bovada and its idiosyncrasies, and then decide if you want to bother with it.

Yeah it made me laugh how they manually adjusted my account on October 13 to supposedly fix the bonus balance, and then in the final message they sent me, they said the bonus "is calculated automatically by the system and no manual intervention is needed at any time."

But good God, that payment issue is an order of magnitude more complicated than this bonus problem, I can't even imagine trying to explain that to them. You must have the patience of a saint, because I thought I was pretty patient with them before going the route of publicizing it. Idiosyncracies I'm fine with, like the ignition miles themselves being significantly underpaid. But when I'm being shorted $500 on a bonus and you're being stolen from every deposit and withdrawal you make, those are serious issues that they should take seriously.

Use BTC, as far as can tell, does not go through processor. However, in my state, that is all that is allowed. @aconnors they have responded to your post in the ignition forums.

PS, I forgot, but when the bonus was initially released, it was over $5 per deposit. The upfront deposits seemed to be more heavily weighted (unsure of the math). It was as we were closer to the end, the it was even $5 increments. (could be something like 5.21, but it was closer to $5).

To share an update on this:

After posting this thread on the Ignition forums as well, I received a message on the Ignition forum from one of their moderators, Foster, which said that they investigated, and they did see that the bonus was not unlocking according to the description on the website. Therefore, they credited me the rest of the bonus, $517.42, despite the fact that I had forfeited it in order to withdraw the balance that I had on the site. By forfeiting it, I was basically accepting that I wouldn't get the rest of the bonus, but I definitely appreciate it, as it seems like they are earnestly trying to do the fair thing.

They also said they apologize for the miscommunication and incorrect information in previous customer service interactions, and that they "will deal with these issues in house accordingly."

More importantly than my 500 bucks, they do not yet know why the bonus was not being awarded correctly (nor, I presume, how many accounts it may have affected), but promised to continue looking into it and share updates when they have them. I asked Foster to share that information publicly on the thread over there when they have it. I'll make sure to post them here as well so that anyone who reads this thread will have all the relevant information. At the very least, this issue should be on their radar now, even while they are investigating. So if anyone else notices this issue affecting their account, perhaps it will be easier to get it resolved through their customer service email or phone number by referring to this thread on the Ignition forum: https://forum.ignitioncasino.eu/t/ig...come-bonus/666

Very nice work, thanks for posting and congrats on the successful outcome!

This issue never really seemed to gain any traction, but for anyone who might find this thread, it's been about 3 months now with no update so I'd assume they haven't made much progress in the investigation of why this was happening. I prodded once more in the thread on their forum but I'll probably be giving up entirely and moving on from ignition soon, so if anyone has this problem in the future, I'd suggest going to the thread on their site (linked above in post 11).

In most of these cases, it is way more likely incompetence rather than bad faith.

These bigger sites make much more money off of running fair businesses(With high rake) than to try to scam you out of bonus money.

The smaller sites can get desperate and try to steal.

Glad you got your issue resolved.