10% for "Administrative Fees" they just happened to add in the fine print when they made the announcement to give everyone currently at a BBJ table a chunk of the jackpot when it hits. The BBJ was close to 1mil when it was hit. So they pulled out close to 100k for "Administrative Fees" which somehow increase as the jackpot increases.

Traffic for the boost games seems to be a bit low,at least at the times i log in.Any reason for this?
Maybe a special tab for these games might help, not sure.

It really only runs regularly at the lowest stakes. I'm not exactly sure why that is. I know many regs prefer regular tables. Regs also like to track their results and their hud/databases may not have had updates for the format yet. I'm sure if a bunch of recreational players started hopping in them at higher stakes the regs would join in them as well.

Bad Beat Jackpot administration fees are par for the course. Every one I've ever played in online since 2003 has had an admin fee. Whether it is "right" or not can surely be debated, however, it is completely standard at this point and they aren't doing something that other sites abstain from.

--
Kahn

This a quote from your website Professional Rakeback in the Chico Network Sites & Review section:

"Many poker sites are accused of allowing collusion, bots, and all sorts of other offenses. It is not surprising that some players feel this way given past issues with sites like Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet having insider cheating scandals. However, the Chico Network actively searches for collusion and botting networks and shuts them down."

Any comment on that?

Are most of them 10% of the jackpot and progressive as well?

Wait, are you saying that they're taking a % at the time of the drop and then again when the jackpot is awarded? If so, that does sound unique to them - but I'm not up to speed on all the sites' BBJ rules.

BBJ tables take out their rake and a portion that goes to the jackpot out of each hand. Whenever the jackpot is hit the sites take out 10% of the total jackpot for "administrative fees." The fees associated with running and maintaining the jackpot somehow increase as the jackpot increases. If it's hit at 200k the sites take 20k. If it's hit at 1mil the sites take 100k. This fee is on top of the BBJ table rake that they get. I may just be ignorant to how BBJs normally operate. I certainly won't regularly sit at a table with multiple bots that has additional fees going to a jackpot likely to be won by a bot.

As kahn said, a number of sites take a BBJ admin fee, and I thought many of them did it at the time it was dropped, so it would never show up in the jackpot in the first place. If they did it that way, it would be the same phenomenon as you're talking about - larger jackpot means larger cut for the site. Much like a larger pot is raked more than a smaller pot, even though it's no more work for the site. Of course this is on a much, much, much larger scale, and there is no cap as there is on rake.

Not trying to justify it, just saying, as kahn did, that this isn't out of the norm AFAIK.

I would take anything Kahn says with a couple sacks full of salt. He was still directing people to Full Flush Poker months after it was obvious they were going under and pretty much all regs had stopped playing there. He was buying people's balances for 30 cents on the $1, while at the same time trying to get more sign-ups via his site. Stand up guy that Kahn.

Kinda shocking he is still allowed to hang around here, but whatever.

Thanks for the warning Fossil. I have personally never had any dealings with Khan or Professional Rakeback, but I have heard that same thing about him and Full Flush from a few different people.

I have found some of the stuff on his site to be informative and the news to even be entertaining. I just question the accuracy of his information if he's telling people that Chico is actively shutting down cheating. This is the exact opposite of what Chico is doing!

What he should be doing with his platform is exposing the rampant cheating on the network and steering the uninformed away from the network until the bot and collusion issues are addressed. He is obviously well aware that these issues exist and choosing to remain silent. That hurts his credibility in my eyes.

Site crashing on anyone? Or is it just me?

The BBJ tables wouldn't be an issue if some cancer******s wouldn't open sit them all the time.
Same applies to the ****ing 5/10 50bb tables.

Just checked and everything looks good from here.

Until recently here is how the BBJ operated and is taken directly from ProfessionalRakeback.com:

35% to the player who loses with four-of-a-kind Jacks or better at showdown
17.5% to the player who wins the qualifying pot at showdown
17.5% to be split among the other players at the table
30% to reseed a new Bad Beat Jackpot

As you can see, these percentages add up to exactly 100%. The poker room doesn’t keep any of the jackpot funds for itself. They’re all returned back to the players.

I think adding a percent that goes to the players at other BBJ tables was nice. It sounds like administrative fees associated with running the BBJ on top of the rake they already take is actually normal. An extra 100k just seems excessive to me and a drastic change from the previous way it operated until recently.

Sure, I'll comment on that. They have an active security team investigating bots and trying to remove them. I have even helped them with this matter on numerous occasions. We have written about some of those instances in fact.

WRT to any existing bots on site, they actually reached out to us again in late Novemember/early December about this topic. We provided them some internal information we have been gathering insofar as tracking where botter traffic comes from. We also helped provide them with contact information to a third party which we think can help streamline their efforts in rooting out bots.

FWIW, this is something we have done for multiple sites in years past. I personally have served as an "expert witness" in helping determine collusion and botting in fixed limit holdem games.


I would take anything you say with a couple sacks of salt.

I was buying player balances because I believed in Equity Poker Network. I did not seek out players in a predatory manner to buy these balances from. Someone, on this forum no less, challenged me to put my money where my mouth was and buy his balance. He specified the rate in public debate. I accepted. Others came forward and I accepted some of them as well. I purchased their debt because I thought it was a +EV move. Ultimately, I lost money just like everyone else when EPN disappeared.

Sometimes businesses fail and people lose money. In all the years our website has been active, over 70 poker sites have gone under. How many of them did we promote and did our customers lose out on? Exactly two. Pokes Poker in 2006 and Full Flush in 2016. I personally lost money on both of those sites because we do not promote sites that we don't use ourselves. And as far as our EPN customers go, we reached out to every single customer we could and offered them a way to recoup their lost funds on other rooms - a few of those people even posted right here on 2+2 saying as much. The first site that went under in 2006, Pokes, I paid our players $37,000 in unpaid rakeback out of my own pocket. I am not the evil ******* you make me out to be.



I have been an active member of the online poker community since the early 2000's. I have consulted with and helped improve the games and situations at probably every single network you play on. I freely spend my time on a dozen public forums where I am not allowed to promote our business/gain nothing financially to keep the fish flowing into online poker and keep this game I love alive. I have correctly called out 5x as many sites for fraud as I have succumb to.

I am not perfect, no one is, but I belong here as much or more so than you do.


--
Kahn

(decided to respond to Fossilkid93's blah blah for once)

You can do it for me I'm in chico to make me an expert witness ?

I can confirm this. I've recouped about $8k so far out of the $20k I lost with Full Flush Poker(EPN) thanks to Khan. He reached out to me about getting the money back months after I thought it was gone for good and had given up.

to my mind he should pay 12k more

Well if BetOnline is serious about stopping the bots as Kahn claims they can PM me and I will help them with the PLO ones. There's something that makes it fairly obvious which ones are the bots (aside from the fact that after a few k hand sample size they all have the exact same stats and play a very distinct style that no reg emulates). But that is all irrelevant as I'm 99% sure they know exactly who all the bots are and choose to turn a blind eye.

Thank you.

They either aren't trying to remove them or they don't know what they're doing. I have sent them large lists of bots that still remain to this day.

Did they stop accepting your help or are you just unaware of how out of control the bot issue currently is on the network?

I've been providing them the account names as well as screenshots and links to where they are coming from over the last year as well. They have not taken any noticeable action against these accounts. They continue to bot on a daily basis.

Can you provide the name for that company so that I can contact them? They either chose not to use that company or the company is also incompetent in rooting out bots.

That's great, but Chico is either not taking your suggestions any more or you don't know who all of the cheaters are to provide to them. Between the people who frequent this thread I'm sure we could provide you, who could provide them, with every account name that is either botting or colluding. If you did that and still no action was taken I'd say it's time to put them on your blacklisted sites until action was taken.

"the Chico Network actively searches for collusion and botting networks and shuts them down."

While that quote from your site may have been true at one time or at random times in the past it is clear right now that it is no longer true. You are misleading people by not removing it.

Any indications that there's a reload bonus on the horizon here? I can't even remember the last time they offered one. It's getting irritating as a US player to have so few benefits and rewards offered to us compared to ROW players. Things have definitely improved on this front over the last couple of years but there's still miles to go.

I could be wrong but I think the word on the street is to never take part in reload or deposit bonuses of any kind from BOL.

that word is true... don't do it IMO

Saying Chico is active at removing botters is one of the dumbest things i've heard in a long while. Their incompetency in this area is probably only matched by that or merge.

Good to know. Thanks, guys. I have enough on there that I don't need to redeposit but I do remember their bonus's being easy to clear a few years ago which should probably be red flag #1.