It's hard to take a stance like this when the main purpose of the thread is to complain. In fact, if you look at all the threads, support forums, etc, the main thing is complaints. People rarely come around to say "good job, we like playing here at xyz poker site" because the players that like what sites are doing, just play. The marginalized players, are the ones that complain the loudest. Flame wars ensue when someone with your beliefs speaks up heh.

I assure you that subjects in this thread are discussed by management and marketing partners who care. The outcome of those discussions are not always what certain players want, but logical and well written responses are weighed and considered.



Merge isn't the best spot for all player types, but it's a damn good option for many of them. Part of the backlash is psychological. I liken it to pulling a bandaid off very slowly and painfully. It pisses people off the way it's been done. IMHO they should have ripped it off all at once, let the player pool adjust how it will, and started "tweaking" from there.


Different marketing plans. One example being, not catering to the 2+2 crowd with a support forum. Now you may not like that, and I may not like that, but it is one of the changes. Others would include redistributing those marketing dollars in ways that target a more casual audience of players.


You know this could be done. But the guarantees would be cut accordingly. And then the forum would blow up with things like:

"OMG why cut the late reg, I don't care if a fish rebuys with 3BBs, that's good for me, what idiot made that decision!"

"FML, GTDs down again, Merge gonna Merge."


There is no way to make everyone happen. For every action, there is a reaction. And as I explained above, the reactions in this thread, will always have a negative bias, no matter what is done.


The player pool plummeted b/c Jazette segregated completely. If they reintegrated Merge would triple in size in under a month. But that won't happen, so it's all wasted breath.


You must have better sources than I do. And since I doubt that, I'm going to have to say that you are simply incorrect. Feel free to prove me wrong and I will humbly accept defeat, but I'm certain that you can't, so please don't spread falsehoods like this.


Overwhelming majority of rec players don't care about checking out the software first. Sure, a minority percentage do, but that is not on the mind of most recs.



I agree, Black Friday was good for Merge and lead to them growing significantly. And yes, Bovada has done the best job of marketing of all the US sites and has reaped the benefits. Merge could be bigger, we all know this, we've all seen it, and it was great IMO. But again, so could Bovada. Bovada could grow massively if they wanted to slash their margins and offer rakeback/huge promos/etc. But for the same reasons Bovada won't do that, Merge wont either.



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Kahn

I don't agree at all that cutting the late reg and limiting entries would lead to smaller guarantees(in the long term). Obviously at first it would, but lots of people are turned off by 4 hour late reg w/ unlimited reentry for basically every tournament. People w/ jobs for instance who are the casual players they are supposedly catering to. Not to mention unlimited reentries takes away the integrity of a poker tournament. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the casual player not hurt by this? It's hard to compete with the players with more skill and a bigger bankroll when they can take every small edge to attempt to get a big stack. I say this as someone who has benefited from this change. I just don't think it's sustainable long term.

Personally, I'd rather have less rewards and a bigger, more diverse player pool. That goes for affiliates too. It's ridiculous they have minimally been affected and the players have been raped. Having an "elite" level VIP that is invite only is the dumbest thing ever. This magical formula w/ an invite people have no idea how to attain just makes people angry and stop playing, not play more.

If the tournament schedule and guarantees were there, people would play with less rewards and less gimmicks. Bovada has proven this true. If they would lower the cash game rake people would play if the games were good. Again, Bovada has proven this.

If they want to cater to the casual player then cut the rewards, cut the 40% affiliate payments, cut the rake, throw out some large guarantees on a variety of tournaments with NORMAL dynamics and watch everyone flock back whether they agree with the rewards or not.

what is the rake @ carbon?

Goddamnit CarbonPoker. You take our rb saying you will improve the promotions, but the promotions are worse than they were before you took the rb. FU CarbonPoker. and **** this ****ing deposit bonus takes so long to earn. FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

http://www.carbonpoker.ag/support/FAQ/rake.html


This is the rake schedule for all of Merge, regardless of skin.


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Kahn

The player pool was plummetting long before jazette segregated its players. Your numbers are way off. When the segration occured it was reported that jazette's skins only represented about a quarter of the Merge Network's players. For you to say that if they reintegrated the player pool would triple is an absurd fantasy.

Clearly I do have better sources than you. But like you I'm not about to divulge my sources. What I'm saying is based on real information though.

I never said that a majority of the rec players check out the software first. If you saw that somewhere please quote it. I simply said that that change slammed the door in the face of those who do. It's an accumulation of many decisions by the network that has had an overall affect of greatly diminishing the player pool.

I agree. WTH is this raising the rake to up to 5 bucks a pot from 3 bucks? What's this taking a .01 out of .18 instead of .20? This is bs. They raise rake, eliminate most of the rakeback, stop decent long running promotions, players leave in droves, can't get full tables started now. If you play three or four handed you get raped real real good. Nobody wins doing this. Merge or Carbon or whatever this network is these days screwed the pooch, players being the pooch. I just had to stop playing there, it's not worth the effort or time with rake being so high and promotions and rakeback being so bad. Luckily, better options exist. Everyone should pursue sites with better options.

Man, that affiliate kid really hates you. Enjoy your own character assassination because that's how he rolls.

The first large hit in player numbers came when Lock left. As bad as they were, they had a lot of players. The $215 high roller was regularly $40-$50,000 nightly with normal late reg and no reentries. Things got better as the months went on and Lock was proven to be a fraud w/ terrible software.

After things started getting better they decided to get rid of P2P in the fall of that year. That was the next big hit followed by some of the better skins getting the boot (RPM, Hero, Black Chip). They also got rid of rakeback at this time.

Again, things rebounded and the prize pools were rising once again a long with the cash traffic. Then came May of this year when PO/SB removed themselves from the cash games. Rake was also increased about this time. Numbers dropped and it was claimed that it was "normal off season #'s".

The next blow came in October when rewards were gutted, PO/SB completed their segregation, and the tournament schedule was obliterated. Oddly enough on Oct. 1st before PO/SB left the tournaments they added went very well and surpassed the guarantee in pretty much all of them. I was very happy with the schedule and excited about Merge for the first time in a LONG time. Then in the following days they ripped apart the schedule down to 10 or so worthwhile tournaments(and that's only if you play microstakes up to highstakes) and PO/SB left.

Now we have cash traffic lower than it was in June, which was supposedly "normal offseason traffic", a sh**** tournament schedule, and laughable rewards/ promotions. They tried to change stack sizes to increase their rake, only to revert back when people finally stopped playing.

Did I miss anything? Everything that is wrong with Merge right now is a direct result of the management doing things to destroy the traffic. Why should we be happy about this? We have 3 realistic options to play in the US. Bovada, WPN, and Merge. Merge being the best to play by far, but is ran by morons. There is absolutely NO REASON WPN and Bovada should have more traffic than Merge, they are terrible sites. Bovada has this anonymous BS and WPN has some of the worst software I've ever played. The difference is they have good promotions and are attempting to get better, while Merge is doing everything possible to make things worse.

Sorry for the page long rant. I'm just really pissed off my favorite site to play for the last almost 3 years has ran itself into the ground and I have to listen to people come in here saying we need to look the other way and smell the roses.

I'd love to have positive things to say about Merge, there just isn't any.

Amen to this ...

Seems accurate to me. I'm sure there are a few other dumb things they have done as well.

The unnecessary increase in NLHE cash game rake and caps to the highest in the US also caused the player pool to take a major hit.

Another mistake that they made which isn't mentioned often is the premature rollout of the 6.0 software. When Lock left the network, Merge rushed to release their new software in order to keep some of the Lock players. The software wasn't nearly ready to be released though and had the opposite effect of driving many of the Merge players to Lock.

It has also often been the ridiculously bad timing of some of the changes, the lack of notification and the outright hiding of certain changes that have alienated and caused mistrust amongst the players.

+1

My 42,000 points being worth less than half as much over night, with no warning, was awesome! Thank you Merge!

Here's another. The implementation of changes to the super-turbo SNGs was like a year-long-train-wreck series of nut-worst decisions. That, along with the other things mentioned, eventually drove a thriving player pool (for those games) straight into the ground.

Well you see, that was his point. You used to be able to grind and now it just isn't worth it. Get it?

There were plenty of us that put up with the never ending cluster **** for a long time and tried to avoid being too publicly negative. I doubt such posts on 2+2 have much impact now anyway.

Do we still have 15 percent rb or did they just take that away too? Player admin site looks different.

Still there and still only able to cash in 10K points at a time.

So much for that 25% increase in guarantees by the way. Back to the normal nightly schedule. What would be the point in leaving tournaments that are getting close to or beating their guarantee where they were anyway? Genius I tell you!

As far as I know the whole point of getting an affiliate account is for rakeback and other such bonuses. I know for a fact that there used to be Merge "Pros" for all different skins that would get 100% rakeback and 2% of any player's rake that they got to sign up under their skin and reference code. I am not sure if those deals still exist specifically but I guarantee you the affiliates are still getting something close to that.

As a network, how do you profit like that? They got too overhanded with the affiliate accounts and their profit margin suffered greatly. FTP and Stars can offer 100% rakeback to their pros and affiliates because they print money but Merge is not that big so they have to slash their output and maximize their input ie: getting rid of affiliates and attempting to bring in new players without rakeback and affiliate deals.

I stand corrected, PokerHost remains part of the Merge Network. But iplayhighlow or whatever it is making a claim of real information without any proof makes him come off like a bit of a conspiracy nut. If you want to make claims like that I would be ready to support them otherwise it's just smoke with no fire.

No offense man, but nothing you have posted has been anywhere near correct. I follow very closely what goes on with the site and everything I post about it is fact.

You however have posted no facts and don't even have the slightest idea about how the site is ran or what's going on.

Anyone who follows what's going on at Merge will agree what I post is true and unbiased about the situation.

I'm not here to bash Merge. I reallllllllllllly want them to succeed and do well. That doesn't mean I'm going to sit silent as they screw people over every which way.

+1

Grindmentality:

I wouldn't start throwing stones if I were you. Your assertion, until you were corrected, that PokerHost was no longer part of the Merge Network and that site traffic is up overall has made your 8 post history look pretty sad. Nobody has to prove anything to you.

The only piece of information I've put forth that was wrong was the detail about PokerHost. Fwiw, I've played over 5000 tourneys on the network this year so I would know a thing or two about what's going on. Again, you made a claim with no proof to back it up. To say a site is booting players because of results is a pretty wild accusation and it just comes off like you're trying to slander a network.

I refuse to turn this into a pissing contest but you clearly have a vendetta out for the network so I'll just let you be.

I think that it is time for you to just stop posting while you're behind. If you knew anything at all about players being banned from PokerHost, you would know that PokerHost has freely admitted that they have banned winning players. They sent the players emails stating exactly that and those emails have been reposted in these forums. The reason that was bandied about for them doing that is that the network implemented some kind of shark tax on the skin that PokerHost either couldn't or didn't want to pay.

Cool, but aren't you talking about Lock of several years ago when they had a skin on Merge? Maybe someone can ask that affiliate kid who posts all the time here about the real affiliate deal on Merge.

5000 tourneys this year So u average a little over 400 a month..?? How many hours do u grind a day??