1. Beginning October 1, instead of using lube on you when they bend you over and f*** you in the a**, they are now using tabasco sauce.

/end of list

How do you know this? Are you just making stuff up?

From everything I have heard and read on this topic, the poker side of Bodog is dwarfed by the sports betting side. I believe they tolerate the poker side to cater to their real clients, the sports bettors. If the sports bettors want to splash around playing poker, they don't want them to get mad and go somewhere else.

You have it totally backwards IMO. Poker is growing and thriving there because the sports bettors are losing players. Enter fish. Sharks arrive.

The sportsbook business is driving the poker business. Not the other way around.

^^^ look no more than merge, sportsbook and player only segregated their pool of poker players from the carbon side of the player pool. This protects the sports players from the pool of mostly better poker players.

Though carbon players can move to that pool with a signup on sportsbook. I think the vip system is about the same now unless invited to the secret club of losing depositors.

Not sure why anyone would stay on carbon now, I will because I like the mobile app to dink around on. As far as I know poker host still has their lifetime levels that pay up to 35%, however, not sure it will last now that merge hates the regs.

Winning players on SB/PO tend to get opted out of VIP program altogether. People that continue to win too much have been known to be completely banned from cash games.

--
Kahn

carbons mtt schedule and gtd's are vastly better than the other side of merge. for alot of mtt grinders, that is all that matters.

hahaha is this real???? also there's 0% chance any change in something connected to poker would make any difference to a person who signed up to bet sports.

also can the 2 people who said they were invited to the highest VIP tier say a little about their stakes/volume of play? US or ROW?

I just love how you make black and white declarations and then accuse me of making things up. Talk about hypocracy.

Poker can certainly thrive on its own. It has gotten a lot of TV coverage over the last several years and is the game that I think most would consider most sexy. There is no question that poker brings in new players to the sportsbooks. PokerStars has no SportsBook and has always done just fine. The largest online sites have not needed a Sportsbook to thrive. Poker has a very strong following.

What I referred to in another thread as the "unholy union" between sportsbooks and poker sites, has only served to diminish poker. Poker has been the loser in that unholy union, not the sportsbooks. Poker in itself produces a positive income flow. The small amount of money that leaves the sports betting sites through the poker side of their business, I seriously doubt, represents much of a hit to their sports betting operations. I believe that the network is really only grabbing whatever money that it sees it can take rather than taking care of the overall health of its business. They possibly just picked up hundreds of thousands of dollars with yesterday's October Surprise.

Bovada/Bodog is making money on their poker side and they are making money on their sports side. And they are using the poker side to give their sports side brand recognition. They are hardly simply tolerating the poker side of their business. You write as if the Carbon Poker is an albatross hanging around Merge's neck when in fact it has been a fat goose waiting to be plucked.

The $11 1R/1A at 18:00 says 10 min levels in the subtitle but has says 5 min where you click on the structure and is running with 5 min levels. This has to be mistake. One of my favorite tournaments but without a rep here I not wasting my time trying get it fixed threw the incompetent support. Just won't play till its fixed

SantaCruz, u cant compare Pokerstars' model to these sports books. PS is an online poker company where people go to play poker.

these sports books are where people go to bet sports and they also offer poker.

I wasn't comparing PokerStars to Sportsbooks, I was making the point that poker clearly has a following of its own that sportsbooks are able to draw from.

Despite the title saying 1R it is set up for unlimited rebuys. Now I will have to deal with support to try to get a refund

Not in the US. Nope

I asked them how 2 get hte 35% and they replied :

We appreciate your interest in our VIP program. Please be aware that the Carbon Elite VIP tier is by invite only and is based on many factors. Our team ensures that all players are considered each month. If you qualify we'll let you know.

Any1 got invite? Looks 2 me like ROW players are'nt treated any better.

+1

Just for kicks I'm going to log into the $11 4K 10PM turbo at 1158EST and see what happens.

ship it

NOw it shows 15% instead of 35% .. Atleast they should have another VIP tier for 15000 points or so that offers 25% ... 15% is just so bad . Makes me go on life tilt. fml

Can someone please clarify; The Merge skin originally consisted of Sportsbook, Carbon, Players Only, Blackchip (I think) and maybe some others...about a year ago, Carbon took it's customers and split off, correct? So now Carbon is no longer on the Merge network, even though it still has the same type of gameplay, right? So are you saying that all we have to do to get on the other side of the pool is to sign up with Sportsbook, and then somehow we will be moved to an entirely different player pool consisting of worse players (obv, we can't just transfer our rolls, right? - we would have to w/draw from Carbon and then deposit back on Sportsbook, right?)

And why is this? Carbon has a sportsbetting aspect that is pretty easy to navigate, so why would Merge need to segregate their sports bettors from their poker grinders? Also, Carbon has become looser and better (they went from nearly impossible to be a winning player to just tough to be a winning player) in the last year. Does this move further increase the fish population? Would it make sense for a decent player to just stick it out on Carbon w/o much in the way of rakeback because the player pool will become worse, or is it better to just w/draw and play at sportsbook?

Also, if I was to play approximate 20K hands at Sportsbook per month at 6 max 50NL, then does anyone have a rough estimate of how many monthly VIP points I would earn? How about @ 25NL, 100NL? (1 VIP point/$.10 of rake contributed)

Rake $.01/ every $.18 in pot w/ max rake of $4.00

Also, regarding the rake contributed - does this mean my portion of the rake, or the total rake? i.e., if the pot is $18, between myself and one other player, rake would be $1. Does that mean I get 10 VIP points based on total contributed rake, or 5 VIP points based on the rake I personally contributed?

For the LHE guys wo don't want to go to ACR because of the lack of games....

Last night I decided to sit at a .25/.50 table since that is the highest stake I am willing to game start based on the roll that I have on ACR and I had a game going in 5 minutes. Granted, it never got above 3 handed (and I dropped 20 BB's ) but it just shows that if us regs go and start games the players will come.

If I continue to see some success I will be pulling my entire role from Merge instead of just half.

Just because you suck at transforming your site into a rec model site doesn't mean you aren't trying to go towards it.

Umm...Carbon is still very much on Merge. Black Chip went to the Winning Poker Network early this year. Merge is a network, not a skin...I'm not sure I follow on the rest.

Soooooooo looks like the biggest tourney on Host tonight is $109 4k, all the big stuff is off even though the nightly $11,$33, and $60 blew guarantees out of the water last night. The High Roller overlaid by a few hundred and now host freaks out again!

Sorry, it was late, and I wasn't making much sense.

Still confused though. Does Carbon share its player's pool with any other 'skin.' What network is Sportsbook on? Some OP said that Sportsbook and Players only segregated their player pools from Carbon. What does that mean?