i just want to add my 2 cents. disclaimer: this is all imo and i could be wrong but imo:
this is superb news for iPoker players. (fwiw ive been an ipoker player for 4 years now i think).
why did noiq annoy me?
1. their advertising policy
2. their race
regarding 1. ive never seen them advertise beyond internet poker forums and PMs. this is terrible for any network. they must have attracted less than 1% new players to the network and got 99% of players from other iPoker sites.
regarding 2. I wouldn't mind this at all if they were simply giving more cash back to players. But there were only giving it back to the nittiest, 15 tablers. None went back to advertising to the public aka fish. NoIQ players bust the fish, then NoIQ expect other skins to attract the fish, without NoIQ having to spend any advertising money to the public, for their nitty players to bust.
For example, two main skins i can think of are, one are official, bookmakers for Man Utd (brings in lots of fish) and another having a huge sports book from lots of ads to the public. These types of sites are healthy for an iPoker network and they are, imo, as well as other iPoker skins, what made the network great.
Obviously they are not doing this to make our games fishier directly, they know they'll dump money in the sports book, but it has a good knock-on effect for the poker side as well.
the owners of noiq im sure are nice people, and their business plan was clearly successful, i tip my hat to the profits they must have made. However, what I did not like was they were doing this at the expense of the iPoker network.
also, iPoker have finalllly learnt their lesson and aiming to stop all crap new skins setting up on the iPoker network, to prevent the situation they've had recurring.
this rant wont come as surprise to some as ive seen comments like 'parasitic site'. this is exactly what they are. they'll go to the next network, try to steal as many players as possible by encouraging really nitty play, they'll do no advertising to the public because as they have no sports book is far more profitable to only focus on advertising on poker forums. The new network will experience tougher, nittier games and those players on the existing sites, they games will have a declining fish population as rake which may have gone to sites which advertised now go to the 15 tabling nits.
anyways, as i say this is nothing personal, im sure they are nice people, i may well be completely wrong in the above. id be very interested for them to reply to my comments, that they aren't healthy for a poker network in terms of long term fishiness of the games, lack of advertising to the public.
hope everyone had a good christmas