yeah, just confirmed that some mtts can be registered for, wow. Shoot me, just trying to obtain milk for my cereal and merge is making it more difficult by the day

This is what you can use them for:
I'd rather hoard points then play MTTs I have no interest in.

I no longer have the VIP Points to Exchange option under my Player Admin anymore either. FML. There is really not much reason to play here anymore.

they are quite soft though, had to laugh at the **** i witnessed last night in the $60 nightly. managed to bink a g yesterday, whens the last time u did that in one day playing sngs matt??

stuntin in my rarest pair, homie i aint never scared. case u didnt hear me clear, stuntin in my rarest pair, homie i aint neva scared.

Twice last month actually, I run good

They'll probably start looking at their numbers and see less players beating the rake and more money "staying on the site" or whatever flawed arguments led them to these changes and think to themselves "WE DID IT!".

However, I hope someone with common sense looks at their bottom line and sees they actually lose money when they cap regs and players like me, who haven't been capped yet, but now put action on other sites that normally would have stayed on Merge.

Bottom line: IMO significantly less poker playing on their site cannot possibly make them more money compared to MORE poker playing on their site. Poker sites make money off the RAKE, not by who wins or loses a pot short term or long term. Trying to manipulate the winner of a game of skill is a exercise in futility.

this poker network makes its money with the sportsbook and casino......

That's fine. But they STILL make money from poker and there's no need to sabotage your poker site and profits.

they arent sabotaging it. they are just protecting the higher margin segments of their business.

No money in MTTs, SNG players too solid.

FWIW, as bad as the changes are, it's not the end of the world. I think we all saw this coming. If you make money playing poker you can still make plenty on Merge.

I don't at all agree with the way they go about things. How hard is it to send out an email? The 5 minutes it takes to put out a mass email would alleviate a lot of headaches pissed off customers cause.

What good are double points to LHE cash game players if those players don't play tournaments? I'm a cash game and sitngo player. Those points are pretty much useless to me.

yep, pretty much

in the end, points for cash removal does suck but it's only gonna cost me $850 a month because that was the cap. what rakeback % is buying into tournies with pints, 10%??

10%

the writing has been on the wall on this one for about a week, but i do feel sorry for players who had a large balance of VIP points saved.

from the website the bolded is a foolish overreaction. that's only true for break even rake-back grinders, and if people were doing that on Merge, they're doing it wrong.

the massive influx of bad players more than makes up for losing 15% rake-back. Merge is still a great option for US players.

Ya, I don't agree with this. If that's their goal, then just don't offer poker - then you rape your customers in the sportsbook and casino until the cows come home.

IF, however, you make the choice to have a poker room, run it like a poker room and focus on creating lots of quality games with a reasonable rake that players enjoy and then stop being a greedy Gus and enjoy the millions of dollars you make in RAKE.

Sometimes I wonder if poker is a loss leader for Merge, and they barely tolerate it because enough people sign up to play poker and punt off in the sportsbooks/casinos.

Kinda like how real life casinos treat poker.

Remember, casinos hate poker, they tolerate it because it brings in just enough foot traffic to be worth it, the poker boom is over, more rooms, both online and brick&mortar will close in the near future, because poker just isn't that profitable for small operations.

EDIT: Phatty, there is a chance poker is a long term losing proposition for some of these sportsbooks/casinos. You can't just look at the amount of rake they collect and just assume they are making money because of that.

I don't see the issue on a broad scale here. Almost all poker rooms in one way or another are shifting from the typical rakeback, points for cash model to one geared more towards recreational players. Bovada doesn't give rakeback or straight cash bonuses anymore, and look how successful they've become over the past three years. Games are soft, tournaments are plentiful, and they're a successful business on the poker ops side.

If you're a good cash game player, then this really shouldn't affect you. The point of playing is to win the money, right? The points should be an extra thing - not meant to be the thing, IMO.

If you're a solid tournament player, this means more players cashing in points to play in your MTT's. Again, more money to be won, overall.

So it's not like they are taking your money away from you. They are putting it to better uses for the good of the ecology. It's still in the games to be won and earned - you're just not going to earn it by simply playing volume alone. Way things are going, for better or worse, in the marketplace.

There are many poker rooms that are there just to be there and provide entertainment and not generate much revenue. They don't care how it's run because most of the people will still play and the ones that won't are the ones they don't want there anyways.

As a private business they can do as they wish and the only think the consumer can do is choose to do business with them or not. They are in business to make money not provide reasonable rake that players enjoy. LOL at that....try starting a non-profit online room and let us know how that works out.

The jury is still out on that one for me. If I had the choice between segregation and 15% VIP versus now, I'd definitely have to think about it but I think I'd be leaning towards having VIP. The games are a bit better for me at full ring, but not like amazingly better and that extra cash was automatic and significant in the face of high rake.

For this year of the money I made on Merge, 83% was at the table and 17% was bonuses. About 21% of that bonus money I can theoretically still bank in deposit promotions which accounts for 3.5% of my overall profit. However, I'm now out 79% of my bonus which accounted for 13% of my yearly nut to date. If the desegregation will cover that amount I guess remains to be seen.

The crux of the problem is twofold: rake is high. VIP program helped make it more reasonable. That's gone. #2, it's pretty bad to have something, enjoy it, and then have it taken away from you with nothing else in return unless you want to count desegregation. But, desegregation is something that IMO should have been happening all along, so, to count that as a gift is tenuous at best. And, let's not forget that many of us had 36% rakeback before the 15% VIP program was introduced.

So, yeah, it sucks pretty badly, but that's why I started playing Bovada.

You're extrapolating ideas I did not espouse. I DO recognize they are a business and it is my opinion that they are running the poker segment in such a way that will make them LESS money than if they ran it another way. Like I said, I was not capped (yet) on the number of tables I play, however, I now play less tables intentionally on Merge and more tables on Bovada. How does that help their business model for a player like me that played 6 to 8 tables and also STARTED many tables to now play less tables? I would routinely fire up my client and see 1 table of $100NL full ring going and single handedly get 3-5 tables going by playing heads-up. I'm sure there are more players like me in a similar position.

I'll learn to live with it like I do everything else, but trying to be the next Bovada is not a very lofty goal. In my opinion, they could be beating Bovada if they ran their poker room better or at least doing better than they currently are for sure.

The thing about Bovada though is that we really don't know how successful their business strategy has been in attracting US players. If Bodog were to segregate its players from Bovada, what would Bovada look like then? We know that Bodog has done a good job of marketing. But I think how successful their recreational model actually has been is really an unknown.

I mean, you don't honestly think there is some huge number of non American's there, right?

I'd assume at this point there is more international players than there used to be (as they are a pretty valid option at this point) but I really doubt American's make up less than 75% of their traffic. Who really knows though.

Edit: Referring to Bovada

It's a debatable point until the results begin to come in, but IMO it's a sign of the times. They're rebounding their MTT schedule from segregation and since they reintegrated on the whole, tournaments are generally crushing GTD's. Tournaments should be a good promotional tool to get people to the poker site. So with the older models making less and less sense as time moves on, the idea of feeding more traffic into the MTT's to use as a bigger promotional vehicle overall should improve traffic throughout.

Carbon OPS is coming this weekend. All signs point to it being the biggest series held on Merge since Poker Maximus VI in September last year. Combine the player pools ahead of this series, funneling the VIP points into these and other MTT's, and you've got much higher potential to sell more players on an expanding slate of offerings.

Not everyone is a tournament player, granted. But again, aiming towards the casual players with more visible and higher-GTD tournaments brings more of them into the fold. They win, sharks win, the poker room wins. That would be my read of this move, anyway, fwiw.

cant they just ban the sportsbook fish from poker and let the rest of us be. just jk. Sucks carbon is taking this route. don't have much to give up anymore, it is what it is I guess.

so to summarize, the most you can now get for your points is 10% in tourney tickets? that is, the max conversion for points is 10%?!?