Whut I know is that Lock has done a great job of poaching players like me from other skins in Merge and a few of my mates had the same experience when they were on Cake. Whut I don't know is if they can bring in new players. I guess I'll need to play on Carbon now because Merge will get super soft the minute Lock leaves.

Might not be that bad as long as Lock keeps their own cashier. But from what I've read Cake withdrawals are pretty fast anyway. But if it ends up sucking, just move to Carbon or RPM if you want to play on Merge.

Doubt it, players will probably still play on both sites.

Online poker network model fails once again as history repeats itself.

Lets hope the US states re-write the network model rules and the enforcement of those rules when that time comes.

not sure what this will mean, lets just wait and see

Will we have the option to make a new screen name on Lock/Cake/Revolution, or do we have to keep the original screen name we have been playing on?

I don't play on the Lock skin, and I don't remember the SN I created awhile back so I'm all for making a new account and starting fresh.

Wonder how the traffic on Carbon will be from now on?

Cutting a network in half and adding 2k cake players doesnt make 2 decent networks. It makes 2 ****ty ones. I hope lock poker crashes and burns. Bunch of greedy MFers. Just like FTP.

I try to see the silver lining in this, but I can't. Just going to dilute the player pool once again unless lock makes a push with better software, rake back and advertising to try to grow.

I play on RPM and see Lock and Carbon avatars all the time. I'll take a screen shot next time.

this is 100% bull****

If people don't set an avatar, you see the avatar of your network as their avatar. There is the option to choose your network avatar as your actual avatar, in which case people on all networks will see it.

Competition is good. The whole LockOps fiasco was embarrassing in a lot of different ways. Sick and tired of feeling like we could/would be getting better player rewards if it weren't for network restrictions. Lock apparently was fed up with it too.

End result might end up not being so hot. But I welcome the possibility that this shakes things up a little bit because the status-quo for U.S. players kind of sucks....and it feels like Merge is closeish to a complacent monopoly and don't seem to be trying terribly hard.

Having 2 networks with 5k players is nowhere near as good as 1 network with 10k players. Only thing that might come of this is Lock still doing Lockops then merge countering with another Poker Maximus. Those were really the only highlights of the merge network for me.

Any thoughts on if the sunday 150k drops back down to 100k? There barely met the 150k gtd and without the lock players i can't see them keeping it

I'm assuming that a lot of the players on Lock will open another account on a Merge site, so I don't think the hit on the player pool will be as bad as some people think.

i think this is great.. .merge is a sinking ship- they don't give a **** about their players, their tourney schedule is god awful, and cashouts take 2 months

lock breaks off with 40% of the player pool + the cake player pool, starts a brand new tourney schedule with advice from ****ing name tourney pros...

only thing that is a concern is the software. hopefully they soon upgrade the software because cake's is lol bad, even worse than merge's..

RIP merge

why all the hate for lock?
creates competition, will be a change in software (but hopefully they improve cakes), better cashouts, bonuses, better tournament structures, maybe the rebuys will work? lol, and who knows what more. lock seems to be on top of things imo and i'm excited for it

I don't know how Lock is going to beat Cake's deal. If you're true VIP, your functional rakeback on Cake is in the 70-75% range.

I'm trying to figure out how Cake makes money, especially when rakeback partner is getting another 10-15% for affiliating the account, plus bonuses.

Maybe someone with back office online poker experience can explain this to me if I'm in error.

It made me wonder enough where, coupled with Cake's not segregating player balances, and the more hoops than in a croquet game we both have to go through to get paid, I just cashed out my account.

Cake has excellent client, but the cashout and cash flow issues are troubling to me.

I don't like it because it's just gonna make the respective player pools smaller and result in less money in the tournament pools.

I don't want my money being transferred to a new site; I want it on the Merge network.

My biggest questions all revolve around what changes will be made to the Cake software and how long those changes will take to implement after launch since most players find Merge software superior.

On a positive note almost surely the top end of player rewards will be raised. Rewards top out at 45% on Merge and I'd expect that number to go as high as 55% on Revolution.

Another big plus is Cake currently has really slow cash out times and Lock taking over will fix that major issue. Lock also runs it's own cashier and cash outs will not be effected during the transition.

It's unfortunate players who deposited on Merge are having their money transferred to a new network without any choice except for withdraw, however, I would not be surprised if Revolution somehow made up for that. In the end players will make the decision of what network will be more successful and having another choice for the US market should not be a bad thing.

you made my day

I agree there is no way lock has 40%.

While some people get close to 100% back (I've even had months back in the old loyalty level $ amounts where I got 120%+) you have to remember that some people don't get rakeback, and others that do get rakeback don't even do the reload bonuses.

In other words, some of cake's players they make next to nothing off of (but still help the site out because they tend to be the players that keep the tables going) while other players they make a TON off of.

Intertops has been processing cashouts for me super fast, as long as they get to stick around and keep their cashier I think I'll be happy. I am a little concerned that the Lock player pool may be nittier than Cake's, and so the games for Cake players on the new network will be worse than before. On the other hand, maybe better software and a new network could lure over some fish.