Quote:
Originally Posted by MacauBound
1) None. Correct.
2) There is no issue as far as Merge is concerned. They just made more money.
I sure hope the huge fish are invited to top tier and the games become as soft as Bovada used to be, but I just don't think fish think like that. If they really considered value and such before they deposited then they would be less likely to play bad.
Merge has made their intentions clear regarding the grinder vs. rec model and I can't say I blame them. It's good business for them but unfortunate for some of us. Hopefully, some interstate compacts will soon (1-2 years??) render these issues moot.
I've mentioned this before in other threads, but the whole idea of the Recreational Player Model being the cause of Bovada/Bodog having a lot of fish, I feel, is a scam that Bovada/Bodog has been perpetuating on both players and other sites. The real purpose of the RPM is to turn the game of poker into more of a casino game.
After Blackfriday many posters in the Carbon Support thread expressed their dismay that Carbon wasn't trying to get more ROW players on their site. After all, with more ROW players the player pool would be both larger and fishier and it would provide something for them to fall back on if the DOJ were to step in. But the player pool stubbornly remained concentrated with US players. Considering that 80% of players never cash out, I've never felt this was simply ROW players choosing sites with faster cashouts. My belief has always been that Merge has wanted players who would not only play poker but who could also be potentially enticed into the US centric sports gambling part of their business.
Bovada is very different than Carbon in the sense that Bovada is a part of Bodog which has had a large ROW presence particularly in the Asian market for both its poker and sports betting business. Bodog has recruited heavily from that market and they've been lucky enough that the Philippines has recently had a very strong economy which has helped them somewhat. Having a large and fishy player pool has attracted even more players because in the poker world success breeds success. The Bodog PR people have very heavily pushed the idea that their success has been a validation of the Recreational Player Model; but that simply isn't true. Their success has actually been the result of marketing.
Recently some other sites have grabbed onto the concept of the Recreational Player Model because those sites are run by greedy and gullible fools. A few months ago the CEO of Bodog resigned, stating that his next project is to introduce his Recreational Player Model to the potential California market; lucky us.