that highroller sometimes doesnt even get 100 total entrants and thats counting re-entries. I final tabled it 3 times in a row after not playing it in months. Sick brag i guess.

still no update on the missing player on the sng LB's??? looks like it could be permanent...nor have i saw either player logged on since their removals

Is anyone else getting really tired of this new schedule on Carbon?

I have been what some would consider a reg for sometime now, mostly buy-ins $11 and below and was excited for a new schedule at the beginning of the month. Almost a month has gone by and I have given the new schedule a shot but have to say that it sucks pretty bad. I used to play 5-6 days a week on Carbon and this last week I played 2 sessions both of which I ended early because I had no desire for this boring schedule. I used to love the deepstacks with 20 minute levels, the 3r, 4r, and 5r, also the 3k starting stack 15 min level tourneys. No more of those except 5r which has a $250 GTD LOL and never fires. Ever since every freezeout became re-entry I have kinda been hating this schedule. Not to mention the long let reg times. Yes long late reg and re-entries can build a prize pool but I don't think it is necessary if the tournament is good enough. They used to have great tourneys with no re-entry and only 1 hour late reg. Now late reg goes till the bubble WTF. Every tournament doesn't have to be a re-entry, tournaments used to be about being able to put people in tough spots for their tournament life, but now it's just like whatever I can re-enter for 4 hours lets flip coins for no reason!

Carbon is steering away every type of player, reg and recreational right now. Do they realize that most recreational players have a regular job and play poker for fun? No recreational player wants to come home from a long day of work and play tournaments that go for 9 hours. The nightly tournaments do not excite me at all because I do have a normal job, but what else is there to play? The schedule looks pretty full but it's not, a lot of the tournaments don't even run. So basically you get to play the nightly's and some $50 and $100 GTD's $1 rebuys. And the smaller freezeouts with 2 hours 10 minute late reg LOL joke. I finished up my morning session Sunday and was thinking to myself why I am still playing this schedule when there isn't a single tournament that I look forward to playing? I used to look forward to the 3r,5r,11 6 max deep turbo with 10K starting stack, 1r Dollar Dazzler, but now I can't think of a daily tournament that I look forward to playing. After this thought I then snap withdrew my whole bankroll from Carbon!!

Someone PM when the schedule gets better, until then I will be splashing around in the Bovada cash games!

+1.... Just seems that they do not care one bit. And it does not appear that they will be doing anything to change this either..... Really sad.

Yes, it pretty much blows for all the reasons that you stated and everyone else has been going on about. I quite miss the 3r, 4r, 5r and 11r which never had overlay and were well structured but I guess didn't generate enough rake for the powers that be.

I can understand that said powers are doing what they can to try and re-imagine their site so it can end up being a sustainable business. Before it was easily the best place for US players, but that's not a sustainable player base for them because the business will close either upon DOJ action (unlikely but always a threat) or the re-emergence of legal online poker in the US (virtually inevitable, even if it takes a few years). It seems obvious they are moving in the Bovada/Bodog direction catering to recs and if they can re-orient their player base away from the US and pic up recs who are too intimidated by the big players in the field (Stars et al) then they have a chance at staying in the poker business & growing their sportsbook once the US market closes to them.

But just because I understand it doesn't mean I like it. I hate it and am also looking at the other options available to try and find the one that is the least crappy.

Yes, new schedule is awful imo. I played 4 mtts there yesterday and maybe 6 during the week days. The nightly tourneys run way too late for east coaster and almost every time I look at a lobby and it says 4 hours left of late reg (considering everything is reentry) I just grrr and end up skipping. My main problem is the recreational players barely have a shot which is totally against the spirit of tourney poker. So basically when you get deep it's almost all regs, this is only going to get worse if they don't change things very soon. Laughable that ppl say that some of recent merge changes are to favor the recreational players when the tourney changes will basically have more effect then any of those changes combined.

It's pretty sad considering merge has the best software available to USA players. If merge would follow a normal tourney poker model that was somewhat eco system friendly and didn't look to make short term profits from rake, they would easily be the biggest/best USA site to play on in time. This would increase the networks margins on the sports betting side and poker side over time.

Also a joke that the network is offering a tourney series on certain skins and not the others, the whole nature of a skin based network should be to work together and compromise on things which it seems almost never happens on merge. It's basically poaching players by the network/favorable skins imo which is a slap in the face to your supposedly business partners.

The SNG LB is accurate, read into that what you will.



These aren't published nor do I suspect they ever will be. Grinder's wouldn't want on this tier anyway as the maximum value of points traded in per month is $250 as opposed to carbon plus which is $750/month.


--
Kahn

I agree the situation right now isn't great on Merge. October seems to be one step forward, and two(or more) steps backwards. At least the structures are much better right? I think sometimes people forget that the segregation that happened out of the blue(Sportsbook/PlayersOnly) this month was like a gut punch for Merge when they were trying to release this new schedule this month. From what I heard, it was a big enough percent of the player pool that it hurts not having them. The tournament series doesn't make sense to me either like you said, but hopefully that will bring more of the players that were on SB/PO to those skins into our player pool which will allow the schedule to grow in the future.

Hopefully some more of the old tournaments can be added to the later end of the night schedule in the next week or so making a longer nightly schedule playable. Right now it's pretty much just Re-entry spam Nightly Deeps which isn't ideal for anyone in the long run.

I'm trying to keep my hopes up for the future and not get too caught up in all the negative, but it's becoming harder every week for sure. I hate only playing 25% of my MTT schedule on Merge. I really want to be able to play more solid tournaments on Merge and will continue to be patient and attempt to be understanding.

They need to get rid of this long ass late reg times, especially on the weekdays. Theres no point of playing any decent tournament when you have work to go to the next morning. Ive registered in some tournaments and realize that theres no way Im even going to play the whole thing as it would take another 3 or 4 hours.

Structure is good but the way the new blinds are, it just adds to how long the tournaments get. Like whats the point of having 2250/4500 between 2k/4k and 2.5k/5k? I just think its unnecessary especially on an every day basis.

Only the big tournaments on Sunday should have a 3+ hour reg period. Everything else needs to go down to 1hr and I wouldn't mind a lot smaller gtd's. At least it'll be playable.

Yeah this

Also someone mentioned that the schedule is being looked at and there may be some changes soon

Definitely should be a fun series and interesting to see what kind of numbers it generates

Late reg doesn't really have a big impact, no. But re-entry does and re-entry happens all the way through the late reg period.

Why don't you guys just register late? If it bugs so much.

re entries is just dead money for you to take... whole bunch of people shoving wide with 10bbs.

?

I have only 15 tables ( playing+registering) , but it says I have crossed 18 tables .. some 1 help !!

now I have only 14 and it says 18

could try rsing client on break

late reg/re entries is far from as simple as people punting 10bb stacks over and over, avg stack at that point is rarely over 30bbs

When Sportsbook/PlayersOnly first segregated its cash and sitngo players a few months ago, I think that we were all mystified as to how Merge would allow that to happen. If there is one thing that stands out to me in this thread that clarifies things, it's the revelation that Jazette is now essentially running Merge. In other words, it is Sportsbook that is running the show not Merge or Carbon.

What Jazette has been doing has more the feel of trying to shake poker players loose from the site rather than them changing over to a rec player model. It's entirely possible that Jazette bought into the network solely for access to the software and really doesn't want to have anything to do with poker beyond their own crippled (in regards to poker) skins.

What is particularly troubling is that Jazette has a long reputation of stealing from its players. Since they have been a part of the network over the past year, I've certainly had the feeling that they have been trying to steal everything from the players that isn't nailed down.

merge gonna merge

really scared what they're gonna change on 1st ..

This happens all the time for me. I'll get to ~12 and then I can't reg for anymore. Only fix is to restart the client.

SNG traffic is slowly dying so I doubt this will be a problem too much longer though.

why would they buy into the network for the poker software if they dont want anything to do with poker....?

The software itself has huge potential value and demand right now on its own with legal poker sites starting to go online. And it is very professional looking software for their sportsbooks compared to much of the other software out there, which is something that draws customers.

Regarding the VIP redemption changes:

This is really awful, and it is outright stealing.

Seriously, this is what I'd expect out of Lock Poker.

If someone told me this story and asked me to guess which US-facing poker site did it, I would snap-guess Lock. Sounds just like them. Yet it's Merge.

These are not simply promotional points.

Rakeback is a substantial reason that most active grinders play there. Without rakeback, many of the active customers there would not have been playing at all.

It is heavily used in Merge's marketing.

They have a right to change the program at any time, but they also have to retroactively make good on the previous rate on any previous points earned, even if the customer hasn't reached the "level" yet to redeem them.

Let me give you an example to show how dishonest/shady this is:

Say I decide to open up a neighborhood bar.

However, I notice that the more established bar down the street has all of the area's business, and my bar is a ghost town.

Desperate, I come out with a staggeringly good promotion. The promotion states that, after 200 drinks purchased, I will refund 90% of the money the customer spent back to him. This gets tracked electronically on a card for each person.

Now, let's say you LOVE this promotion, and abandon that other bar and start drinking at mine. You come to my bar regularly for months, and quickly rack up drinks, knowing you will get 90% of your money back very soon. After 3 months, you've ordered 195 drinks. Then you come one final day, expecting to drink 5 times and get your 90% cash back, and find out some bad news.

I've changed the promotion. Now you only get 10% cash back. So once you get 5 more drinks, I will only be giving you 10% back on your 200 drinks purchased, instead of the 90% originally promised.

When you complain, I tell you that this was just a "promotion" and that you have no right to anything.

Could I get away with this?

No.

I would be legally responsible to give you at least 90% back on those 195 drinks -- the number you had ordered prior to my ending of the promotion. I cannot simply say that I can change it all retroactively, simply because you haven't met the 200 redemption milestone.

Why?

Because the promotion substantially changed the value of what you were purchasing, and clearly affected your decision to purchase the items. Thus, it's a bait-and-switch, and is illegal.

You cannot make false promises for a discount based upon certain actions/purchases, and then change the terms retroactively when a customer attempts to redeem it.

That is illegal in all 50 states.

Now, Merge is not a US company, so legally you can't do much to them.

However, these actions would be ILLEGAL in the United States, and are highly unethical. Simply put, they are stealing.

F them.

Everyone is acting like Merge is the only one to do things like this. Have you guys not been following Bwin.Party? They have just as many bad things, and to a much larger player base. It doesn't absolve Merge, but in reality, it's kind of SOP for poker sites these days.

Most of us in this thread are US players who can't play on Party so we aren't going to be talking much about Party. Party started segregating players before Lock did. The way they went about it was even worse than Lock because they kept it a complete secret from the players until the players figured it out for themselves. Lock at least told players that they were going to start segregating. I don't think that you should be so ready to accept that as standard procedure.

I think that our next surprise is that they are going to start throwing players off the site for simply winning and not redepositing which is what has started on PokerHost. Merge won't be the first site that has ever done that either, but that still doesn't make it right.