How bad off can they be? Consider they just hosted the 25K $1 frenzy with something like 10k in overlay.

As long as they don't stop paying affiliates 40% of players gross revenues who really cares what they take from players, right?

While I understand what IHasTehNutz's is saying, I agree with you and think maybe he could have worded it a little differently.

I didn't say you have no claim to it - obviously you use the funds on the poker site. But when you deposit $50, they're crediting you $50 in poker money for $50 real money. You can't do anything with the poker money except play with it, for the most part. That $50 in real money goes to the segregated accounts to cover all player balances (supposed to anyway). The payout amount is owed to you once you make a withdrawal request, later on, though, and then it's yours when you get cash in hand. Semantics...I was just pointing out the process.

You have no earthly clue what you're talking about. If you sat down and actually had a face to face (or even a Skype chat/PM) with me outside of posting in this thread, you'd have a lot less reason to make the generalities that you tend to. Try it sometime. I'm a pretty easy guy to (actually) talk to. Even made peace with iPlay recently (he owes me a drink now...lol).

In the end, perhaps. I tired to illustrate the literal deposit process and maybe didn't get it out right. As I said, it's semantics anyhow. Apologies if it came out as snide or improper.

No worries, your point is still valid. Even if the money is technically ours, it's still not in our pocket and we may have to jump through hoops to get it back.

Ok smartass, if it isn't the 40% of gross they state in their affiliate agreement then what is it? Shouldn't take more than a sentence here to set me straight. Do it. Wasn't it last month you swore to me you had no connections to affiliates? What's your story anyways? Now you are the expert on how much they get paid?

Posting one interpretation as correct isn't an accurate way to portray things. You posted what amounts to the sites interpretation. The IRS interpretation is very different from that. The player interpretation is also very different from that.

IRS wise, our poker account is a foreign bank account which holds our money. It's not some Chuck E Cheese, where you exchange cash for tokens. Players tend to consider it as their money, held for them by the poker site. Each interpretation is biased to the interpreter, but none of them are right or wrong, they're just different spins on the same story.

^^ Now we're really getting into semantics...lol. Forget I even brought it up. Whatever anyone's interpretation is of how it works, what it is...up to them, no problem.

Just noticed Merge nixed my reload bonus from a month ago for seemingly no reason.

Edit: from what I could tell in the lobby there was no expiration date.

I have to say that you are pretty much going to deserve whatever iPlayPLOhigh throws at you for making that post. Of course the money is still ours. If we go to a casino and put our money in their safe that money is still ours. Whether it is chips or money makes no difference. If we put chips in the safe, the casino hasn't any right to change the value of the chips while it is in their keeping because those chips are as good as cash.

That 3% is a lot considering it comes on the heels of other drastic increases whose cumulative nature hurts most players' bottom line. In poker, the real enemy is the rake. At Merge these changes all add up to a rake that is becoming harder and harder to beat.

And characterizing a 3% fee as being "pennies" is way off the mark.

I can't stress enough how important it is to click on the "Comments and Improvements" section in the bottom left of the poker lobby. Send them a note describing how the new Hand History is terrible and often does not work. I did 1 day after it came out. If you can't do this simple little step then your only spinning your wheels by coming here and crying about it. It's rare that we can actually attempt to get a change instituted by Carbon. So even if it's a long shot let's at least try. Then we can bitch about it all we want ITT.

Heading it off at the pass (like that's going to work)...

The casino comparison is not totally accurate, though. If I put down $100 at a cage at Bally's, I'm getting $100 in chips that I can use to play poker, run through the casino table games, and even use to eat and tip. The money I gave to the teller is gone to me, replaced by the chips. They have some actual value in the real world.

In online poker, you get a balance you can use to play poker, and in the case at Merge, use in the online casino. The real $100 I deposit onto Carbon is put into a segregated account that covers my $100 skin money balance - but the real money is not technically mine anymore. I've got to either cashout my balance, or play to increase my balance to get any of it back. That $100 in my balance has no real world value, since I can't use it to do anything but play online poker or in the online casino at Merge.

At any rate...as I've said, it's semantics and I was only trying to illustrate the process of the money leaving your possession.

Far as the fee goes - 3% of a max ROW withdrawal is a chunk of change, I do realize that. But without going into a tirade on Merge, the players, et al (there's one coming, and soon), this shouldn't be surprising and if it were me being affected by this, I should have more than seen it coming.

You were responding to "but they want to charge us 3% for them to send us our money?" by stating it is NOT our money. Semantics or not, your rebuttal was flawed.

Then you (once again) try to flip it back to the player, implying he's ****ty and whining over something trivial, with the statement "I don't know...maybe win more?". Logic and reason seem to bounce off you so... I don't know...maybe EAD?

That you think that transferring money into chips means that the money is gone shows that you really don't understand modern economics. Money these days are transformed into all kinds of things, yet the owner is still the owner. When I put money in the bank, the bank doesn't keep that money. The money is transformed into a series of ones and zeros on their computer. How the money is stored has no bearing on who owns the money.

Whose money it is isn't just semantics, it's an extremely important point. I think that there is no question at all that money that we deposit is ours until the rake releases a portion of it to them.

In trying to apologize for Merge's policies you've taken things too far. If we accept that we are giving a site our money until they give it back to us, we are accepting the paradigm that Lock, FullTilt, and UltimateBet utilized in stealing players' money. If we are actually giving a site our money then we are essentially investing in the site and can't complain if they are unable pay us back. Responsible sites segregate funds for a reason, to create a boundary between our money and theirs.

^^ You had a point, perhaps, and yet again, if I mis-worded the point I was trying to make (long ago now), that's what I referred to as semantics. Not whose money is whose. The words being used to describe the words we were using.

Then you said "In trying to apologize for Merge's policies". No, I think them adding fees without even so much as informing anyone it was coming was obviously a bad idea. It's created another firestorm among people in this thread, and probably elsewhere too, that could have yet again been avoided with any semblance of PR. Merge has done some pretty ridiculous things over the past number of months. You can't really deny that - nor have I. I don't work for them.

And it's funny to me how doing some work outside this forum automatically renders my opinions and statements bought and paid for among the fringe element here. When all I did was the Lock report, people actually seemed to respect what I had to say. Most still do...but I start doing some indy contract work on a website and now my words here aren't mine anymore.

No point in continuing this. Believe what you want.

It's been more than a few days.

You want it to have been long ago, but it was just a few hours ago.

The only one commenting on your website work hosted by an affiliate is SE, so you don't need to act put upon by the entire forum. It seems like most posters are arguing the ideas and not that you might have some bias.

Perhaps...I've also been up since this time yesterday. I'll admit to not being at my best this afternoon. Seems like a few moons ago...I shouldn't have opened the thread earlier.

Big +1 to SantaCruz for putting it better than I could've in regards to the check fees and other negative changes.

<3 Max Cut (gettin aggr0 today)

And at least you can admit when you're wrong IHasTehNutz

Carry on fellas

I thought that Max Cut's posts were right on point.

Yeah the hand history is extremely buggy. I get tons of lag and have been experiencing crashes. Things like this strengthen my theory that all the recent changes to Carbon aren't a result of greed but rather utter incompetence.

Soo.. anyone else have PT4's Mac HUD stop working after today's Carbon update?

Works for cash games, not MTTs.

PT4 for windows not working either

for MTT's