Not sure where else to put this, but traffic the last several days appears to be through the floor. Normally at this time on a saturday, there's as many as two dozen full ring tables running between 50 and 200. Tonight there is one NL50 FR table up. Any ideas why? Was there some news I missed recently that altered things?

Fair Play Technology

The traffic is dying.



Are you a winning player?

Maybe you also just got bumped into the top tier.

I'm on juicy not lock, didn't think it would affect me.


....and yes

It's network wide.

If you want to confirm you're in the top tier, then download another skin's client where you don't have an account and see if the lobby looks different than yours.

Did most of the limit holdem players leave?

If it's network wide, then it's probably a tier problem. Sigh. I've even been downswonging lately. I am a long term winner, although not a crusher, so that's probably it. I guess I just need to start more tables. It ****ing sucks to open the lobby and see literally one fullring table running up to 3/6 (which is way above my roll right now).

What's worse is I'm not even a bumhunter, I've always just sat where ever there is an open seat.

Yeah, you're probably top tier.

A lot of breakeven and losing players have also reported being in the top tier.

Basically, anybody who's capable of making regular cashouts is in that tier.

You'd think they would realize they are killing my ability to generate a respectable amount of rake for them.

I'm also a long term break even/loser at plo, but I can't even see those tables :/

They don't need it only deposits. Deposit 300 and no withdraw = 300 in rake.

New Jersey needs to hurry the **** up.

I will be happy for the people in the States once something gets regulated because these sites, with all of their bull crap, are going to be biting the big one.

Even more so than they are now.

Tier systems, no prompt cash outs....what a waste.

fyp

There are quite a few sites with very respectable withdrawal times. Most the ones on Revolution and available to US players do not qualify but heh. The Intertops thread here is full of happy US players

Also, I'll say this again. Regulated US poker may not be the huge ball of awesomeness everyone makes it out to be in their minds. No P2P, no rakeback, direct (and possibly high) taxation... There are a lot of hidden mines that could be stepped on in this process of bringing about regulated US poker. Read up on how successful France/Spain/Italy are with their models...


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Kahn

I agree that regulated online poker in the US may not be the utopia that some think it will be. It all depends on implementation.

However, net, it's gotta be better than the current environment. Look at B&M poker rooms...they are regulated and taxed, and overall most provide an enjoyable experience. I know this is somewhat comparing apples to oranges, but still...

At least Italy is really successfull. It is probably the biggest poker market in the world now. The thing is that Italians have long term history with tax evading, additionally for a long time legal it rooms couldn't offer cash games. For that sole reason the Italian market is divided between the legal it sites and illegal mafia related coms.
There are huge financial problem in Italy right now but it will be back there cause poker is extremly popular there.

On the contrary France is an example of totally ****ed up structure where literally 95% are losing to rake and tax. It isn't sustainable.
I have a huge database there and the rake is killing the games (there are like 2 fish per table and yet almost no one beat the games pre rakeback).
Because of the poor liquidity there is very few nl200+ tables where the rake isn't that significant there.
So basically France is an example how to **** up regulated online poker.

However I do believe that US market will be huge and really profitable simply because it is still rich economy. There might be fewer tables and poor liquidity but there will be proportionally more small and medium stakes tables simply because there is more people willling to deposit 200-300$ in Us and just have fun which hasn't been the case for com market all that much lately.


When it goes to revolution it can't be really different. In current climate costs of processing money to US are huge. Offering huge rakeback deals, having affiliate system that take another 20% or so and you are left will almost nothing. Having good deposits/withdrawals for Us players is too costly these days.
Thats the reason why bovada is good cause they don't offer anything to regs but because of that they have huge margins so they can spend s lot of the money they get from deposits to offer good cashouts. There isn't any skin on revlution that can do this (except Intertops maybe because they are big sportsbetting site).
If you have 5-10% margin there is no way to offer reasonable US cashouts.

Thats the reason they created the fair play technology- to improve their margins but it will crush them. They don't have the money to survive till the long run and their network is totallly unbalanced. For many months they were activelly promoting to get regs by offering huge rakeback. Thas the only reason that they had ok player base. Other US networks have superior software,better deposits/cashouts, more fish. **** the regs they will leave and you are left with nothing.

Seriously?

No its not. Its full of angry disgruntled US players that, if they are still playing there, are doing so just because they are almost out of options.

In fact, I cant think of one player thats happy playing on that joke of a network that fixed the games in an effort to try to make every player a losing player.

Regulation>the deteriorating status quo and its not even close.

Of Note: B&M rooms the players often avoid/underreport tax. That won't be happening in online poker.

I agreed with much else of what you said but I wanted to single this out. So even in a regulated market, there is room for "underground" sites.

Quite serious. Players love Intertops. Intertops is not responsible for FPT, and solely judging by their public posts on the matter, they do not care for it.

I do see your gripe though, and I agree with what you've said. When I quoted his post, I was referring more to the part about no reasonable cashouts on Revolution... which is false... and which Intertops provides for players no matter what part of the world they are in.

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Kahn

Fair enough. You are obviously correct in that regard. I apologize for misunderstanding and or accidentally taking your statement out of context.

For what its worth it could be MORE and MORE and MORE of is have just finally reach our breaking points.I mean i havnt been depositing lately on ANY site because all you have to do is simply read the cash out threads on revolution rooms merge rooms and sure you can read about a couple of people who are somehow satisfied / tolerant of the level's of "customer service" (roll eyes) as well as weekly money caps monthly money caps WU games!LOL
Turning a simple WU option into some secret game based on how many times you deposit..REALLY.
And then for every semi happy player you find on these threads you find 5 more who are RAGING mad about checks bouncing, checks cancelled, 2 month + wait times (in some but not all instances).
I love poker.And even after black friday i continued to play under the illusion that the remaining larger poker sites would not bend over backwards to kiss our %$%$ but would treat us like freaking human beings.
Well its become apparent to me thats a big fat crack pipe dream.These sites have no incentive to change.And go crazy and call me what you want but for myself ive certainly come to the collusion (even though i think i always thought this" revolution dunno but merge is screaming ponzi every single time you read the cash out threads.
So with that said im done.
All save up a few hundred bucks each month and maybe roll up a g here and their and take my chances with the floating "charitable" poker nights here in my town playing 1/1 NL.
So to go back to your question of low traffic i personally believe its gotten to the point where "some" are either a) Just quitting all together b) Heading for the brick and mortar c) Sitting back biding their time for real regulation even if it takes years.

I do agree with you on your points Kahn no doubt.

I also do not feel that once the US regulates it, it will be a walk in the park and picture perfect.

That being said, I would love to see people trying to hack into other accounts, multi accounting and doing all kinds of other nonsense once they have the U.S. authorities to contend with.

Some of these people try to pull that crap because they feel that they are above the law but something tells me we will be seeing some people facing massive amounts of prison time for committing Federal crimes and that will be a huge sense of security for the players on those sites, knowing that if people try to mess with them OR the site, the perpetrators will be dealt with swiftly ( I assume anyway )

Some toolio may feel he can try to commit fraud or a theft overseas and thinking " what are they going to do, I am 'way over here' but lets see the same mentality try to pull those same tactics when they are in New Jersey and can have the local police, the FBI or another form of Gov show up right at their front door.

Yeah no rake back? Maybe there will be "something" maybe not. I agree it will not be like it is/was now but for the people who live in the States, who still feel the "risk" of playing on any of those "U.S. allowed sites " I think they will just be happy to KNOW 100% that they will get their cash outs and not have to worry about hiding which payment processor is doing the transactions, etc etc.

I have heard great things about Intertops and their withdraw process so yes, for anyone who lives in the States, and you need to play somewhere, I would also recco that site based on what I have heard.

All of the others, can take a flying leap. (again, just my opinion on that last comment, maybe there are some other good sites to. )

Point is, if you are happy. Keep playing but I would tell Lock and their game to piss off.

I know MDoranD is happy with the cash out aspect at least and from other CR members who were happy they switched to Intertops over Lock and the others. He has a nice CR blog post up about a 'race' between his cash out with Lock ( giving them a 100 day start ) and then with Intertops.

Intertops took 6 days from the push of his withdraw button to have a Fed Ex man show up at his front door. Lock...well, he seems to be getting the run around, like he has for over 3 months.

Again, I do not play there. I do not know the game selection, etc etc.

I do think this "tier system" is a joke and yes, it will be their downfall ( kind of showing from the looks of things I have seen )

I admit, I do not read most threads on these sites because I do not have to rely on playing on them but I still like to try to keep up-to-date with poker happenings because this still affects us all here and there.

Sucks that people have to even contend with this nonsense and it sucks that there have to be threads like this on 2p2 to begin with.

Sites that cannot get you your money in a timely manner do not deserve a customers business. Hell, they do not even deserve to be in the poker community because they are just another thing that gives online poker a bad name when it comes to the industry.

Pretty sure a few of these sites in question will be going down hard and I will feel bad for the people who, in the wake of the FTP bs, find themselves once again screwed and this time I do not think the US and/or PS will come to bail them out.

Completely agreed. However, what IF it simply truely is processor problems?

I mean, in this world, things don't happen like magic. No site can decide "oh, we want to pay out in 1 day only, so poof, that's what it is and that's what it's going to be". They need to make a real effort to get that done, and in some cases, especially like when dealing with a "illegal" market (for the payment processors at least) it can be rough. That being said, 100+ days is definately a point where it's no longer excusable, and they should be called out for that.


Basically, what Kahn says in the Carbon thread (but in his mind somehow doesn't apply to Lock, but that aside)

How do you think he doesnt think think applies to Rev.?

He certainly does think this applies to them as well, but like hes stated and you have just stated, that payments at Lock are now becoming inexcuseable.

ROW waits 100+ days. US waits 4 months +. Processing money in this climate is of course tough, however there are US sites that process in days, and a few that are around 2 months. For Lock to be the only place that takes minimum DOUBLE the time of any other skin/network is absurd and obviously is caused by something more than just "difficultly processing the money."

And the argument about Lock/Revolution being a bigger room is almost not even an argument. ChicagoRy made a good post about how Lock doesnt even have the most US facing traffic of US rooms, ill see if I can find it. But the point is that argument has no bearing, and to a point isnt even correct.

I know you say that you dont "know for sure if your right or wrong" and for that I give you credit. Your right no one can say 100% for sure either way if they are broke, have players money, or dont. But if we make our best educated guess here I think you have to admit that the percent of Lock having some serious problems right now is much greater than 50%.

The problems aren't really processors the problem are margins. Even to get deposits via credit card to US poker room can get extremly costly and what lately was proved by Merge case you can't afford not having them.
Same for cashouts the cost is waaaaaay higher than most of the 2+2 members think it is.
In current climate you can't really give a lot to players and have good deposits/cashouts so thats why Lock have problems.
What screw them even more is that they are poker room where there is on average way more winners than in sportsbetting/casino.
Moreover P*/FTP were way bigger so their average cost both for deposits and cashouts were smaller than they are for Merge/Revolution/Winning Network (and we all know that one of the biggest reason of FTP collapse were uncollected deposits....) It was difficult to profit both for FTP and Pokerstars from US market and it was before Black Friday. There is a reason why despite all of the demand none of the big network is US friendly. IT isn't all that much because they are affraid of DOJ. It is mostly because they found it being unprofitable for them to be US friendly. There is very little money to be made because of what DOJ/ US government did.
The sites that are left are mostly sportsbetting sites that offer poker just a side income and because their betting fish llike to play poker for time to time so they try to give it to them.
Sure it is my opinion nothing else however I doubt there is anyone that have any clue about how US firendly poker rooms works that believe that LOCk doesn't have financial problems.
Their margins are just too small to cover all of the costs and aditionally to be able to profit from all of this.

How is it possible that a 6 12 limit game is running on juicystakes but not on lock when at the same time i can play the same tourament on both sites.