No need to complain, you can still play all those other games Merge offers!!!! Still can't believe the nerve of some people.

Yea being completely restricted is pretty crazy, you must have been really crushing. I agree that isn't right, but I think hes the only one whos reported that so far. I'm just saying I'm totally fine with the network doing minor things to limit our winrates as long as the games continue to be as juicy, I think merge could potentially compete with bovadas traffic if things continue like this and look at bovadas VIP system (4% RB chea).

Yea your right about that..they fed that crap into the Poker Media so rival sites would follow down the wrong path and kill their business.. the real reason why Bodog is in the top ranks is because they are capitalizing on the asia gambling boom

.

LOL no. They banned poker players from pretty much every asia country except Vietnam and China and you have to be citizen there to play....
They were tired of foreginers living in Thailand, vietnam, Cambodia and making bank on soft bodog88 tables.

The reason they are so big is that the US market got abandoned by pretty much everyone and thats where they are big.
Bovada.lv and bodog.eu (Canadians only) are the reason they are big not the Asian market where they are tiny at best (they are like 3rd league bookmaker here, not really succesfull,plenty of bigger books here in Asia)

///End of offtop

The great thing about WPN is 35% RB and the debit card cash outs. Buck stops there though. Software is garbage and most games are rock gardens.

In other news, haven't played Merge in over a week and the 4 table cap was gone. Glitch obv

Bodog's footprint in Asia is much larger than simply offering poker through Bodog88. And Bodog has accepted Asian players from more countries than just Vietnam and China. Not in a million years would Calvin Ayre rely as much as you think he does on the US market.

There was a 3 week or so period after the playing pool was integrated and we still had a VIP program when the games got noticeably better - felt somewhere in the neighborhood for me of 30% more traffic and 30% softer. But, since the player caps and removal of VIP program, the games I play have regressed to probably half of that. I think part of the reason is that players like myself put action on other sites and stopped starting new tables.

If your games are noticeably better and you haven't been table capped, then that's great for you, but I think it's pretty short sighted to think to that capping tables or banning players is a good move for either the players or the business.

Would you stop saying the business please? You have absolutely zero clue what's best for the business. You are correct it sucks a ton for the players, and mostly the good players.

in 7 months of steady multi-tabling, i've accumulated about 250,000 player points, which i would assume is around 25k in rake paid to the site. (please correct me if i'm wrong.)

i began at 10NL and worked the roll up to where i now can comfortably play a combo of 10-15 $200NL and $100NL tables.

i've withdrawn $8,500 that has successfully cleared, have one pending withdrawal that was just "processed" for $2,500, and have a current BR of around $6,500.

assuming i withdraw my remaining account funds right now and hung it up on merge, that's about 18.5k in "profits" in 7 months compared to rake paid of 25k.

i'm a small winner compared to some, but pay a good amount of rake, and my tables have been limited to 4. they're making over THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS+ in rake EACH month just from me.

restricting tables for regs (or banning them altogether) kills your business. when the player pools combined about a month ago, the tables were booming. 6 max tables would be filled with 4-5 regs and 1-2 fish; 9 max tables had 6-7 regs and 2-3 fish. literally two-thirds of the players at any given time anywhere were regs. this will always be the standard. restricting regs stops more tables from starting/running. does management not realize that 10 tables of $200NL makes double the amount of money as 5 tables of it? especially when two-thirds of the players at the table are regs, who are passing money back and forth raking the **** out of each other...

clear as day - the tables began dying as soon as the powers that be started going banstick crazy in the last few weeks.

also, lol @ playing in the OPS tournies on sunday. i planned on playing every event... but obviously the table restriction got in the way. so they would have kept me on the site literally all day, raking (raping?) me on my side cash games while collecting more tourney entry fees, but instead i crapped out after 4 tournies and resorted to tv for the rest of the night. well played...

the execs / decision makers must have a hell of a time in their meetings. (i'd love to sit in on them, and listen / respond to the reasoning for their decisions.) i do understand the casino part of the business, and that they make more profits from casino players. that being said, i wouldn't ignore the poker players, because $0 per month in revenue per player is a lot less than $3,000... and that seems to be the way they're going.

Last I calculated it, max points for tickets was 1.4%.



You aren't the first person to report this natural removal/reduction of a table cap. I think that one day in the future we might all have a better understanding of "table caps" being more like the equivalent of a small engine governor.


--
Kahn

I'm sorry some of you disagree with me, but I and others think some of these changes are simply bad for everyone. As far as the business side goes, I can't speak to the best way to recruit players, handle processors, or run tournaments, but there are some other basic business principles I DO feel qualified to speak towards or at least have an opinion. Specifically, I've been playing cash games for over 6 years or more online and I think I have a pretty good grasp of some good practices.

Before Black Friday, there was a lengthy debate about 50bb default cash game tables when PokerStars introduced them. Some regs said from the get go they would be bad for players and bad for Stars. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and at least tried them before coming to the same conclusion. You can read the threads for all the back story and specific reasons why, but to make a long story short, myself and other players left to play on Full Tilt because the games became awful. The players that stayed on Stars typically had to drop stakes. I predicted Stars would lose money and IF they were a good company, switch back to 100bb default. Less than a year later, they DID change to 100bb default.

Players in that thread made the same shortsighted arguments many of you are trying to make now when they first made the change.

• "They know what's best".
• "They are business and have to do what's best for their bottom line".
• "They are trying to protect fish".
• "You only care about your bottom line".

... and on and on and on. Fast forward to TODAY and the train wreck of decisions (with the sole exception being desegregation) made by Merge:

• Selectively (predatorily) capping players at 4, 2, 1, or 0 tables is bad for BOTH the business and the player.
• Not communicating major changes and effectively STEALING points from players is bad for BOTH the business and the player.
• Not having a rep on this site like CarbonRyan is bad for BOTH the business and the player.
• Having practically NO considerations for winning players is bad for BOTH the business and the player.

I don't care if Merge has a casino and it makes more money than their poker room. IF the poker room hurts casino profits in some way, then shut down the poker room. IF you make a business decision to keep the poker room open, then you should run it in a way that maximizes profits and doing the things on that list will NOT get them there.

A successful poker room like PokerStars, who I believe makes more than Merge's poker room and casino combined:

• Reaches out to recreational players because they are ESSENTIAL to the site to make the games good
• Reaches out to winning players because they TOO are ESSENTIAL to the site to make sure enough games are regularly being played - this is why live casinos hire prop players
• Has excellent customer service. Why is there no presence on this site? I can't say for sure why, but my HUNCH is they don't care about what we want. Again, bad for business. This is business 101, too. Doesn't matter if you're running a poker room, casino, or selling pizza. If you have disdain for your customer (any segment), you are making a mistake.
• Has excellent software - as good as Carbon is, it could still be MUCH better: more card/table skins, better table tiling, less glitches, and so on.

There is a market for US poker players. It's not as big as the market for ROW, which PokerStars has a monopoly on, which they got by doing the things in my 2nd list while AVOIDING the things in the first list. There is also an opportunity to try to expand that pie. The unfortunate truth is that Merge, Bovada, Winning, and all the others are not prime time players in that business. If that's BECAUSE the pie isn't big enough or in spite of it, that's just the way it is:

Merge: banning winning players (bad)
Bovada: horrible software and anonymous tables (bad)
Winning: bad games and horrible software (bad)

I've worked in business for 20 years and I see both bad and incompetent decisions daily. Businesses under perform if not fail and go out of business every year. If you think that Merge, Bovada, and Winning are making the best business decisions because they are all run by astute, smart people, then YOU are the one that is delusional, not me. PokerStars, who is WORLD's better than Merge, Bovada, and Winning in EVERY WAY possible, made a MISTAKE when they introduced 50bb max cash games in 2010. They THOUGHT it was a good decision with all their experience and track record of making good decisions. Myself and others KNEW they were wrong and not because WE didn't like the decision, but because we knew what it was doing to the ecosystem and business. FORTUNATELY, PokerStars WAS astute enough to know they made the wrong decision and fix it. UNFORTUNATELY, I do NOT have confidence that Merge, Bovada, or Winning has that same level of business acumen. It's quite possible we will be stuck with these bad changes indefinitely. However, that does not make them good business decisions: quite the contrary. It makes them a bad business for introducing them in the first place and even worse for not fixing their mistakes.

Well said.

Whats funny to me is any player that is happy with the current state of Merge could have been playing in games like this for a long time if they had simply played on the Jazette side.

Fwiw, no one on WPN has 35% rakeback but the people who were grandfathered in from BCP when they were on Merge (happy to say me included). The standard is 27%. Not trying to be a nit, but don't want people to get the wrong idea. You cannot get 35% rakeback as a new customer.

As far as it being a glitch, I really doubt it. I too was restricted to 4, but now am back to 16. I also am down a few thousand dollars as of late. Would I be restricted still had I not went on a downswing? Who knows..... Fact of the matter is people shouldn't have to worry about getting restricted for winning money. That is RIGGING the games. Restrict everyone or restrict no one.

No you couldn't, they would ban you. I was banned from PO back in late October/early November for winning too much money playing cash on that side of Merge. Merge banning winners and restricting tables isn't new, it's been going on for a long time. Poker Host did it when they were on Merge, Players Only has done it for certain game types (as well as restricted people to 4 tables or less), and Sports Book/ Super Book also have done it/ have restricted tables for over 6 months.

When I was banned I was only up about $9,000 and I mainly played 400NL/PLO+ on that site. It's not like I won some crazy amount of money for the stakes I played.

Kahn at some point you should just keep your mouth shut. It's easy to keep sticking up for a company when you are getting 40% (right?) back on all the people you have signed up but you have taken it too far this time.

For once sit back and look at it from our perspective and not yours. If you can't do that because your head is so far up your ass just don't say anything.

You are normally tolerable in your constant "unbiased,lol" opinion and remarks but saying the sky hasn't fallen because he still can play other games in an insult to all the people in this thread. I really can't believe you said that and now believe you are probably a bit delusional. You probably do believe that it's not that bad because he can still play other games.

I have an idea....take all the money you get from affiliates every month and take away your limit games. Then take your monthly cut and give it away. Do that and then come tell us how you feel.

Until you put yourself in our shoes you really just need to stfu.


You are still trying to compare merge to stars which is impossible. Yes they both offer online poker but they compete in two different markets and have two different business strategies. Why is it so hard to see that what might be right for stars might not be right for merge?

I just looked on pokerscout and Pokerstars has 28410 cash game players online and merge has 393. Now please tell me how you can compare anything from either company? Do you not see or understand why they might operate on different business ideas?

I understand where you are coming from about the whole situation and how you think it isn't right or how it won't work but I think you are just looking at it from your perspective and how it is negatively impacting you.

To me it is very clear and easy to see why they are making these changes and I'm not sure why some of you are having a hard time seeing this.

I see why they are as well, and agree with it to an extent. My whole issue is capping and banning on a case by case basis and essentially rigging the games in favor of how Merge wants them to be.

It truly is disgusting how some people post snarky, ridiculous statements when they are making MORE money now that VIP has been cut. The 40% is after bonuses and rakeback come out which are pretty much non existent now. They are making much more per player now than they were 2 years because of the cuts by Merge. Some people want to come here and say "it's not that bad, come on guys! Give them the benefit of the doubt." yet they haven't had their pay touched 1 bit and in essence, got a raise.

Cue the shill minions coming to the rescue and the mods who want to protect this joke for some reason or another.

Don't buy into the corporate BS that they are different. The basic principles I outlined, which based on your response, I doubt you read anything except "I'm sorry some of you disagree with me" still apply. Those basic principles apply to ALL poker rooms online and live, USA or ROW. Treating your customer right applies to ALL businesses whether it's poker, food, or a car.

Yes, Stars has a TON more players and that is BECAUSE they make consistently good decisions. Merge was around before Black Friday and had the same opportunities but they then and still now DO NOT make consistently good decisions. It's as simple as that. If a company came along today with Star's level of software, customer service, dedication to bringing in both rec and regs, processing capabilities, and ability to recruit players, they'd probably get 5k to 10k of the USA and ROW market IMO. They would grab the lion's share of what's out there TODAY AND expand the pie. The reason a company doesn't get that market share now OR expand the pie is the current players (Merge,Bovada,Winning) do not excel and have a long history of not excelling at what they do. I NEVER thought about playing on any of those sites before Black Friday.

By the way, based on those PokerScout numbers, whatever traffic boost Merge enjoyed after integration looks to have evaporated when they did the player caps and VIP removal. And, if you think less players and business equals more profits for Merge, then I redirect you to my comments that you don't understand how a poker room makes money. It's NOT a player's balance, how much he or she deposits, or withdrawals: it's consistently good games going on and collecting consistent rake - not less games or less players.

The only way Stars and Merge is the same is the fact that they both offer poker. Yes, treating your customers well is the #1 way to succeed in business, but Merge cannot run their network the same way Stars runs theirs. It's like saying a HS football team should practice like an NFL team.

Stars can tolerate 24 tabling rakeback grinders because they have an enormous pool of rec players to combat them. With that said, they are still one of the hardest sites to play online poker at because of their business plan.

Merge doesn't have the benefit of endless recs like Stars does. Most sites in the world don't, which is why many of them are doing the exact same things Merge is doing in regards to catering to the recs. (Though Merge isn't doing a very good job of that either)

Stars business plan works great for them, it's pretty bad for everyone else. WPN has basically copied Stars model and caters to mass multi tabling grinders. Why isn't everyone playing there? Well, because the games are miserable. Granted they have many other issues, but the core of their problem is trying to be like Stars when they don't have the player pool they do.

As far as Poker Scout goes;

There numbers have been off for Merge multiple times over the last month. Check back tomorrow, they'll still have 500+ average cash players.

to add to the numbers i posted:

i do not (nor did ever) get any rakeback here. i also did not sign up thru any affiliate, although i did exchange a message or 2 with kahn about possible benefits. at the end of the day, i decided that other people (affiliates) shouldn't be getting tons of rewards/cash back for my time and effort, especially if they didn't really "recruit" me. no offense to any affiliates.

i've actually been blowing through my players points via tourney buyins because i'm scared that they might just disappear one day

i did see my max table limit at one point go to 2, but then it came back up to 4

back when my tables were NOT capped, i would constantly start new tables. i would start a session where there were 4 or 5 games running, and within 2 hours we'd have 14 or 15 running, with myself starting a new one each time a table filled up. it was pretty incredible how quickly they filled - it's like players were just waiting around for a game to start... when my table limit was put into place, i emailed the poker powers that be and explained how i'm a constant table starter, etc... and they blew it off. IMO that's just terrible handling of a situation.

so if they don't want me sitting at each one of the $100NL tables, (even though i got them running) there are two solutions: either limit me to X tables - or - GET MORE PLAYERS TO THE SITE. which one will generate actual revenue?

I am actually not entirely sure if Merge even knows what their business strategy is.
You should probably not sign up on the Equity Poker Network either. They even openly admit doing this whereas Merge is usually not even willing to issue statements.
They can through the loyalty program but that requires quite some grind at the tables. The flat rakeback by default for new customers is 27%. You won't find any huge rakeback % anymore on any sites that still serve customers from the US though, because it simply isn't profitable anymore with all other costs involved.

RE: Bodog/Bovada Rewards -- For clarity's sake, I calculated for cash game play. It's triple that rate, and you were correct, if one plays exclusively MTTs.


--
Kahn

WPN is not getting players not because the games are terrible, it's simply because their software SUCKS!!!!! I would insta snap cash out my roll on Merge and move over to WPN if I didn't have to worry about constant lagging/crashing issues that is reported constantly. If WPN had Merge's software and the same VIP/bonus structure that they currently offer, they would dominate.

Software is the ONLY issue I'm not playing at WPN.