These guys are far from scum bags. I speak regularly with the whole team and can honestly say they are the most straight up affiliate I've dealt with.

so basically u guys are all posting in here to show how intelligent and morally superior you are.. is that basically the gist? Like, what does stopping vpn-ing do for your lives in the slightest? You guys are usuing your efforts for this instead of doing something actually worthwhile to benefit others. I get that u get an ego-boost out of this, but i think that shows how smart you really are.

If the DOJ shuts them down, what will happen to everyones rakeback?

lol are you serious?

i'm not saying you can't make "some sort of argument against it" i'm just saying from literally skimming this thread for 3 min, and making multiple assumptions.. i think you all are a bunch of tools, who's heads will only be hardened by my attacks.. but seriously if my assumptions are correct then yes i think you all are stupid toolbags that think they are uber smart and probably don't ever openly look at the big picture

Paying on time and having unscrupulous business practices are not mutually exclusive. There will always be something shadier, but OP happens to have some facts about this.

I'm not following. Before I give a response to this...You are saying that everything he is saying is true, yet he is a toolbag?

I haven't read what he said. I just asked, is he basically hating on these sites for offering vpn services? The answer seemed to be yes, so yes I think everyone on the anti-vpn train is a huge dildo. So go put yourselves on the top shelves of your closest and stay there until next saturday night.

Maybe you should read the OP. Obv there is more to it than just that.

Got it. You know nothing about this situation, yet you manage to have nearly as many posts (and stronger opinions) in this thread as the reporter. In my opinion, you hate is due to your lack of knowledge on this subject. Even if it was his mission in life to stop VPN usage, using legal threats to intimidate him without a real reason is wrong.

enn, vee and gee ladies and gentlemen.

What is your definition of straight up?

Is illegally setting up players in America with accounts on European networks straight up?

Is providing under the table rakeback on a network where it is not allowed straight up?

Is stealing players from other affiliates straight up?

Is threatening affiliate managers straight up?

Aside from all the ridiculous things cited above, what people here also need to realise is how bad this guy's model is for the poker industry. Pokervip adds no value to the industry. He does not attract new players or fish. His entire model is based around poaching high value players from other affiliates and from skins that do not offer rakeback.

The poker ecology is dependent on new recreational players coming in. When people like him are demanding 67% of net rake from a poker site, they are forcing the operators to work off razor thin margins. Because of this their marketing budgets for attracting new players is much less.

To compound the issue, when a player on say bet365 starts getting a little better, puts in more volume, hears about rakeback, he then gets poached by a rakeback affiliate such as Pokervip. This means that affiliates who are bringing in these recreational players suddenly make nothing from them. Again, in turn this means those guys have less of a budget to market to recreational players.

So it keeps working in a vicious circle where rb affiliates steal high value players and force the people who add value to ecosystem to work off smaller margins and dried up marketing budgets.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate and started out in the rb industry.

Also FWIW, PokerAddict has always been an absolute stand up guy in 100% of my dealings with him. I would put him atop any list of people who I deemed as trustworthy in the industry.

In fairness your news site like your business model is the nut low in the industry. When your writers aren't stealing other peoples content word for word they are simply rehashing old stories posted on other sites first.

I've never seen a news story on pokerupdate that wasn't first on pokerfuse, pokernews, flushdraw, 4flush or other real news sites. Removing links to that rehashed/plagiarized junk is doing the community a service.

Being hung out to dry!

Hi Jamie and Everyone else:

I want to address one of the above paragraphs in more detail. So here goes:

My understanding is that this may have occured more than the words "on occasion" seems to indicate. But even if "on occasion" is accurate, for those of us, like myself, in the publishing business, this would still be something we take seriously.

To be specific, it's my understanding that the author of the articles in question was taking fairly large chunks from other writers' articles and just reproducing them word for word in his own articles with no acknowledgement to the original writer. And if this is the case, based on how I understand the law, it not only violates "fair use," it would be plagerism.

But there is another side to this coin. While this may have been going on, it doesn't mean that Jamie Nevin, Founder 180Vita ltd, would be aware of it. We at 2+2 also receive many articles (and books) which we publish and we take the author's word that it is his work. Of course if we were to find out that this was not the case, we would remove such material.

My understanding is that this is the case. But it's not completely clear to me as to whether the author in question may still have some of his work up on site. And if this is the case and offending articles do remain, they should be removed. On the other hand, if any non-offending articles by the author in question remain, then it's my opinion that it's okay for them to stay since non-offending articles would not be the source of the problem.

Moving on, while it's unfortunate that other issues have also come to light and are described by Jamie above, I suspect that what I have outlined above would be acceptable to both sides and then (hopefully) the other issues will go away. I think this could be handled privately without the further use of attorneys.

Best wishes,
Mason

You gotta be a ****ing moron to advocate legalizing online poker in the US and blaming people for playing on a VPN at the same time. Why is it wrong? Cause it is against the law?

Mason - Thank you for your input.

The copied articles have not been removed. I mentioned four of them but there were many more. Some involve my work. I reached out to Pokerupdate twice privately about this before publishing my article but I was ignored. Pokerfuse published a story in May about the same author copy/pasting articles and publishing them on PokerUpdate. Pokerupdate did delete the article mentioned by pokerfuse.

Note that Pokerupdate did take some action after my article. They deleted the author from their site. Now these articles are published anonymously.

In my opinion, this shows that Pokerupdate was well aware of the plagiarism before my article. They certainly have no excuse for not deleting the articles at this point.

One other issue that I want to address is that I am not on a campaign against this company like they claim. I have published 500 or so articles this year. I would estimate I mention their company in three of them. Even if it is twice that many that is still 1% of everything I have written this year.

IMO that could be said if a player is doing it on their own. I have been inspired to write an article today about why an affiliate doing this is a cause for concern.

The article in question in the C&D was not an opinion piece. I do not believe I have ever stated an opinion on the topic.

My article stated the fact that Pokervip was named (identified using their old ipokervip brand) in an email being distributed to skins that required those skins to investigate players affiliated with Pokervip. Surely it is of interest to players to know that the network asked all skins to investigate players under a certain affiliate. I had the email and used its image in the article, but yet Pokervip and their attorney made this accusation:
The email from ipoker completely contradicts this accusation.

Ive dealt with pokervip a couple years ago and I was paid on time. I don't know if they have new people but the guy I dealt with (jamie)seemed legit

I'm not a moderator, obviously, and there's zero chance I'll be one in the future. (From either the site or my perspective.)

However, if I were a mod, then this is what would be happening now:

PokerVIP has asserted that the general nature of the C&D is being misrepresented. They've gotten permission from Pokeraddict to publish the full text.

They should publish the full text and explain the assertion of misrepresentation.

Barring that, they should be banned.

I don't fully understand the negative responses in this thread. Ive read this thread, the thread on the other forum and the articles that have been mentioned. What I have gathered, simply put, is that PokerVIP is a very shrewd company. A company whose business model consists of poaching vip players away from other programs, not doing any actual work to actively recruit new players to help promote the game. A company that wants to compete with some of the better companies out there, but doesn't want to put in the money, research or effort to do so. I think some posters are confusing a companies sheer greed for money as a company looking to help out joeblowplayer #1. And you can make the argument that there are many companies that don't care in the least about the customer, just the bottom line, and sadly that may very well be the case. Under the table rakeback may be common practice in the industry, I would have no idea. I would just hope that no one thinks they are doing this out of the goodness of their heart. Clearly, if there wasn't anything in it for them, it would not be done.
If everything that is stated in this thread is the truth, why should any of it be criticized?

Pokervip actually do moreto recruit new players to the game than plenty of other affiliates. Pokertube is one of the biggest beginner orientated poker communities on the web. Their website also includes beginner sections and plenty of free video content.

To be honest, I would advise readers to be wary of some of the post in this thread, especially those from newer 2p2 accounts; other affiliates love to jump out of the shadows and do some name bashing whenever they get the chance.

Full disclosure: I know the pokervip guys personally and am also a customer. I don't think they're shady and trust them explicitly

+1

You are breaking T&C of the sites and in significant way. One of the pillars of security si that the site know where you live, what is your name, what place you are playing from etc. if you are set up to play from different country you provide false information. It's very unfair to other players because it reduces their security (you are more difficult/impossible to investigate if anything goes wrong).
Another thing is that the sites trying to play along with US government (and maybe lobbying for legislation change along the way) face negative consequences if US players are found to play there.
If you do that you are basically scamming the sites and other players.