Hi, I've not been an active poster at 2+2 mainly posting at FTR and Crushonlineholdem where the main story is being hosted but think that this information is important for all iPoker players to know about.

The information came to light as I was unlikely to get much playing time over the summer and decided to try and grow a minute residual bankroll at VCpoker in the time i did have available just for fun and in a way to force some discipline into my play. Having played a fair few hands , I noticed there was a big difference between my actual bankroll , and my winnings reported by Holdem manager which were also similar for my pokertableratings graph.



The whole story is documented at http://www.crushonlineholdem.com/keith showing the evidence of what I discovered, but it boils down to the fact that if you have an account with an Ipoker room, every time that you play a table in a different currency to your account currency,every single transaction will involve currency charges with rounding taking a small slice of your bankroll each time.This is not only when buying in to a table and leaving a table which has a minor effect, the major effect occurs at the micro tables when auto top up replaces blinds and topping up small amounts. Here the effects of rounding can have a massive effect on a players bankroll and was responsible for all my missing winnings.For me , it halved my win rate, for a breakeven or losing micro player the effects will be even larger as they will be topping up more often and therefore paying these rounding charges more often. This is despite Ipoker claiming that they make no profits from currency transactions.




If you play at iPoker's $ tables , do your bankroll a favour and play at a site that offers $ accounts . Then the only currency charge you will pay is when you deposit to the site and withdraw from it.If you are at a site which has £ as its currency you can minimize the effects of this rounding by buying in for the maximum and not using the auto top up and manually reloading when you deem it will have the least effect.

Ipoker...I wait 30 min for a 10 man stt to fill, bots and all...but at least I win now and then.

tried it out and can confirm it.
wtf. I wanted to complain in support chat and they just said it shouldnt really make big of a difference! lmao

very unprofessional.

I think that this is a pretty big deal.

It's clear from the screen grabs that they are operating differently to how they claim.

ipoker must make a ****load of money with that when they earn for every time when someone rebuys at a table which is not in the base currency.

Every ipoker client offers you a choice of what currency you want to use when opening your account, if your getting f*k'd over cause you chose € when 95% of the tables are $ then your problem find a mirror and cry to that

Not true. If your moneybookers account is in Euros you can not choose your currency on every skin.
And this is a pretty big thing...

The majority of Ipoker players are recreational players, their accounts linked to their bookmaker site such as William Hill. What suckers they are for signing up from the UK and clicking £ as their currency. Clueless, the lot of them.

At 6max 100NL, there are currently 9 USD tables, 9 EUR tables and 9 GBP tables. Hardly 95% USD, is it? EVERYONE gets ****ed because sticking to one currency leaves very little possibility of table selection.

so every cent is rounded downwards? didnt know that- that must mean huge losses for microstakes players especially? Anyone else up for a boycott?

this policy isn't well thought out if it's designed to empty accounts. they should also silently charge daily non-use fees.

wow, pretty ridiculous

iPoker better shape up b4 they disappear as a viable option for players

so many negative threads lately about the network

OP lost 17$ in 22k hands with a GBP roll. I guess he played NL2.

yep, started off with 4$ so 2nl was the sensible option and most of the hands were played full ring. start of september switched to 2nl & 4nl full ring and got a massive increase in ipoints.Its why the missing profits were so obvious, all of my roll bar 4$ should have been winnings atthe tables butthe roll and winnings were completely different , and i was playing atthe stake that the rounding had the greatest effect on.

Some questions:

1. How does this affect people who play tournaments rather than cash ? Could you give an example please.

2. What methods do other sites use for currency conversion that are different to what iPoker are doing ?

3. What would be a fairer/better way iPoker could do this ?

4. Is this not what all companies do to make a little more money, ie if I were to buy a book or a song or whatever in a different currency, would I not be subject to the same system of rounding ?

5. Where do you feel this lies in terms of 'wrongness,' ie is it illegal or immoral or just a bit sneaky ?

1. probably not at all

2. no senseless rounding when converting funds

3. no senseless rounding when converting funds (it obviously works when you take and leave a seat so why shouldnt it work for auto rebuy)

4. if they say that they take a charge for every auto rebuy then it is okay. it would be incredible stupid because no one would actually pay a charge for this though.
On most or maybe all iPoker skin websites you can read that the currency conversion does cost you nothing. But if it says that because of rounding you pay up to 0.01 GBP per auto rebuy noone could feel betrayed.

5. unprofessional, probably semi-illegal, greedy, sneaky and incredible stupid

What you're saying doesn't seem to quite add up.

My account is in pounds and pence and the balance is always an exact number of pounds and pence. So, when I play in dollars, there clearly needs to be some rounding taking place. You've not really clarified what you mean by 'senseless' rounding, or how we could avoid rounding.

Are you suggesting account balances which are more precise and go into fractions of pence ?

Or is the suggestion that the rounding is 'senseless' because iPoker are always rounding 'in their favour,' when they should infact be rounding to the nearest pence every time ?

I'm not having a go at you, I'm just trying to understand what the problem is here and what you're suggesting would be a fairer way to do things. Is the claim that other sites round to the nearest number, whereas iPoker always round to the number which suits them ?


Also, if this rounding affects cash games, does it not affect me when I enter a tournament in dollars and again at the end of the tournament, if I go on to receive prize money ?

this is pretty sickening for microstakes players, the issue isn't the size of the money they are taking, just that they have found another way to rip off players.

lol ipoker once more i guess

yeah i think the point is they are rounding in their favour every time.

if they just rounded .4 of a penny down and .6 of a penny up, there would be no problem

• when they round the converted amount and always in their favour there is obviously some money going into nirvana aka iPokers pocket.
• when they round up or down whatever is mathmatically correct then there would be a bug which could be exploited.
• the only logical solution is to make the bankroll with appropriate positions after decimal point and calculate the conversion exactly. you can still round then in your favor when a cashout is requested. Noone will complain about that tiny tiny loss then.

thats why rounding is senseless imo.

Interesting, how does pokerstars system differ?

thanks for the heads up OP, i have changed auto top-up settings, that was probably costing me a waffle a day.

What have you changed? I thought that manually topping would also result in the loss?

prob done it so when they are under 85bb or something they auto reload i guess, less reloading leading to less losses

tourney players will experience this rounding but to a lesser degree.I don't play tourneys so I can't give a definitive answer but it would be interesting to know if they have a 1$ +$0.2 whether they take $1.20 convert and round that or take 1$ convert and round that and then take the $0.2$ seperately and convert and round that. Perhaps you could use the manager chat and ask for a list of your tourney buys and sells. winnings will also get rounded.
stars - you need to open a seperate account in the currency that the table is in.
full tilt - only $ tables as far as i can see
ongame - only $ tables

several ways.
1. just have $ tables and $ account - player stands exchange rate variation betweeen depositing and withdrawal.
2. convert all of your roll to $ at the start of each day at their exchange rate and then convert it back at the end of each day at the same rate. only two lots of rounding per day and fairly small cost to the player but no exchange rate cost , but $ available each day will vary according to the exchange rate.
3. not force you to convert back to your currency when leaving a table and then convert again when you get on a new table.I.e once you have $ available they stay as $ to buyin again or for use in auto top ups.
4. have the ability to have $,£, and euro accounts and move money between them in the cashier at the current exchange rate so that you have currency available to play those tables.
5. Have the account balances calculated to as many decimal places as they use for the exchange rate conversion - therefore rounding only needed when it comes to closing the account.

yep , and you would be paying a different rate as well.But you are advised what rate it is before hand.
this is a hard question for me to answer and would probably need a lawyer to give an answer. For the uk bookmakers sites they are regulated and if they are putting on their websites that currency conversion occurs at the same rate each way and no profits are made on the conversion then it is reasonable to expect that they are telling the truth. So the legality I'm not sure on, immoral and sneaky i can definately agree on as they have chosen a method which will generate the most amount of currency transactions and each one will generate them pure profits when they claim no profits will be made.

Another factor that should be considered is that you don't get any ipoints for the money you lose through rounding , so no chance of cashback on it and I have no idea whether it is included in the revenue generated when it comes to paying affiliates their cut for their reffered players.