Table limitations are not randomly decided. Clearly winning players are targeted. The only answer given to players is that "the decision to limit their table count was made by upper management." I don't expect that anyone outside of Merge Gaming Network will ever know what formula is used to determine table limits.


--
Kahn

but a lot of winning players are not restricted .... especially the ones that play a lot like 1troy1

That is simply not true. The UIGEA is heavily weighted in one direction because it can only enforce what goes on in US banks. Unregulated pokersites can freely do business with overseas banks.

Back when Chad Elie was doing business players were able to send deposits in such forms as certified checks from banks to sites like PokerStars which directly involved US banks and needed to be processed. Not only that but it was the huge sums of money that were being transferred that drove the costs way up and involved shady characters like Chad Elie and those he did business with. That day is long over. Today it is the players who need to jump through hoops to send money to the sites in a form that can be more easily processed.

If the processing fees for depositing were as exorbitant as I think that you are implying, the sports betting side of Jazette would have gone bust (yes wuhsahbee, I said bust) a long time ago.

For the sake of it you may want to mention as well that they pass on 50% of their processing fees for deposits and withdrawals to affiliates as well.

Which is complete BS
Exactly, someone who made $100K playing MTTs last year isn't restricted yet people who made $40K are? Not hating on Troy or anything, but he's a good example. It does seem to be heavily weighted towards cash players, but that's not the point.

Merge- Unless you want to continue alienating your entire player base go to a 4 table cash limit for EVERYONE and 16 for MTTs. FFS, how hard is it to make a uniform policy to stop the madness?

Nobody should be able to play more tables than anyone else, period. All it does is cause mass hysteria and disdain for the network.

.

OMG I FIGURED IT OUT!

Merge uses racial demographics from your registration information to decide. Merge is racist! Explains it all.

Board Chairman #1: "Ok so the next player we're assessing goes by the account name "d33seNut$. His real name is Fei Lee and he is from San Jose, California. He wins 6 big blinds per hundred hands at our $100 no limit tables."

Chairman #2: "Hahaha, another asian guy! Well you know what to do. Start him out at a 4 table cap and lets see how much more hands he plays to compensate. If he is still winning too much after a week, put him on a 1 table cap."

Obviously. If they won't give us demographics of the bans it must be because they are racist. Conspiracy unraveled.

I wonder if Mothers Day or pissing players off is to blame for all the overlay today. Really, numbers have been down the last few days......

Over under on the $250K not getting cut before next week?

OPS #37- 150K overlayed by $15,400. ITM in less than 5 hrs.

oh yeah this should be interesting to see how much they lower things now or cancel them.

yeah the overlays are somewhat surprising, and I bet they do cut the guarantees down

I would almost 'guarantee' it. As if they haven't hurt themselves enough lately...

It hasn't been just today, so it'll be interesting to see what the rest of the week holds. Hopefully people are making a point not to play with how scummy they've been lately. I know I won't be after OPS. 100% Bovada here I come.

^^ With concrete statements such as "numbers have been down the past few days", "a lot", and "not just today", who wouldn't take your word for it?

To clarify, MTT traffic on Merge in $4k GTD's or better was actually up a bit this Saturday (5/10) from last Saturday. Mon-Fri traffic in the same types of MTT's was down this past week about 1,500 players (better stated, "entries"). The Sunday majors are down today as well a fair bit from last Sunday, but so is Bovada and WPN.

Both Bovada and WPN have had increasing rate of overlays lately too. I know because I track them and can provide actual statistics on the subject. Trends for this time of year coupled with the holiday today are the top two reasons, in my decently expert opinion, as to why traffic is off. Welcome to the summer time, folks.

I don't spend my time tracking tournaments for how much the prize pools are, I play them. Since Wed of last week the numbers have been down quite a bit from the norm lately across most of the tournaments I play. Last night they spiked back to a more normal level.

Did I say it was a trend? No. Did I say it was for one reason or the other? No.

Will Merge most likely cut the $250K ME like they did the last OPS? Yes.

I don't get mad, I just roll my eyes and delete silly derails like the 11 posts I just deleted.

No other thread generates as many post reports from multiple people these days as this one does. Any chance we could all try to get along and stop the pettiness? Rhetorical question; no answers required.

This isn't directed at any one person; it's several of you, and you should know who you are.

Dang, I had just written a rather eloquent post asking for a moderator to clean up this mess.

This thread is like the 90210 of Internet Poker firmed.

Im glad you came out and stated it like this. Its frustrating for us regs who actually play on the site to come to the thread and have to sift through 50 troll posts containing nothing but pointless bickering. Kahn does a great job and it would be nice to have a thread containing useful/relative info.

sounds like were on the same bus. then again i wasnt playing here before ops.

ps. to the guy who said bovada is getting a lot of overlay. which tourneys are you talking about i almost NEVER see overlay at bovada.

There was a lot of different tournaments today that did, they usually don't.

The $162 also was only $140K or so today and usually is quite a bit more. Mothers Day definitely has an effect on traffic, but the light traffic the previous few days is what concerns me.

All of the tournament player fields with red backgrounds are MTT's that had overlays. They've been slightly increasing in occurrence over the past 5-6 weeks or so.

Merge had quite a few today in OPS events (below; data is ordered by OPS Event #, MTT, buyin/fee, # of players/entries, prize pool [before overlay], amount of overlay)



The regularly scheduled $7.5k GTD and the $5k GTD at 8pm EST also overlaid for an additional $1,755.

where are you getting these images/data?

I catalog the data myself and create the image straight from my spreadsheet. Part of what I do.

Agentcooper72 PM'ed me later with a detailed explanation of what had/was occurring @ the table on the bubble. I found the explanation credible as nothing varied from what I saw when watching. However, from the outside looking in, it conceivably could take on the appearance of asking for help (softplay) with 4 others on bubble not asking for same @ their tables. And I conceded that my impressions of what was happening were colored by being a short stack in this tourney last year with another ss asking for a BB walk, then pounding my BB from button after receiving same. I noted I did not post ITT @ that time, but, did PM the other ss about the ethical nature of their play. Agentcooper72 also noted that the post about being an affiliate was not his/hers. No hard feelings.

*clap clap