Should we be making more of this?

zz - the whole point of money being held by a third party as poker stars do is that you are not dependant on the site making money or staying liquid to get paid. If there was a rush of players withdrawing their $$ from a site you would have no long periods whilst you waited to get paid (if indeed you could be paid). This does not neccisarily mean that if you are promised a bonus you will get it but if you dont you will find out sooner and you know that $$ in your account is as safe as the bank that acts as intermediary.

In terms of deals that forums (or other affiliates make) and dont end in you getting paid they normally form into four headings

a) rogue affiliates - often having no intension of paying. Sometimes there is an intension but no comittment. In this case it would be worth reporting the affiliate either to the poker site OR to one of the regulatory organisations that exist for online gaming. As in off-line transactions if something looks too good to be true be very careful before getting involved.

b) times where they were let down by the poker site or made big miscalculations in what profit/loss was likely to be and as a result they do not pay BUT this is within their terms and conditions. When it is within their terms and conditions either specifically stated or elsewhere on the site they will often be entirely in their rights not to pay and you should not really hold it against them if they dont. If a site makes what seems like a geniune offer to players and an affilaite advertises this, the site doesnt pay - should the affiliate always be accountable for this?, particularly when they make it clear that such deals are subject to them getting the money from the site etc etc.

c) cock ups. Sometimes poker sites do not make the payments as they should or data is entered wrong by the affiliate and a player suffers. etc. Often if you ask nicely this sort of thing can get sorted but not everyone is good at admitting they are wrong and sometimes geniune complaints can be mistaken for rouge claims (there are loads of these unfortunately) or folks can respond to critisism by banning those concerned rather than by listening fairly to the complaint.

d) player error - often the contract terms are complicated and players have not fulfilled them (ie not played the raked hands etc required. Also remember that you will often only be entitled to bonuses if you registered through that particular site AND are recorded as doing so. Given that much of this is based on cookies (which some people can have disabled and could have competing info stored as cookies), sometimes there are errors / inaccuracies is the recording of new members by the poker sites tracking software amd om these cases you will not generally be entitled to the bonus that you seek. Sometimes the player error is much more simple though. Generally the 50$ free offers have strings of conditions that are hard to read and rarely as good as they sound once you see the details.

The fact that an offer originating from an affiliate is not honoured doesnt neccisarily mean there there is any reason why you shouldnt trust that poker site.

It is true that there are risks involved in dealing with poker sites but players can make active choices that will greatly reduce the risks that they are exposed to if they choose carefully which sites they play on and go for sites that apply good practice such as having 3rd party banking etc. Many of the player complaints I read about sites are often tied into sites that have been blacklisted on forums and that have acted in every aspect of their dealings in ways that should give players plenty of warnings as to their charactor.

Very interesting post Ben. I'm no economist either but i consider myself a rather savy business person. Everything stems from the all mighty-dollar (or Euro, Yen, etc...). Poker sites are business' pure and simple. They operate like any other business on the simple basis of "supply and demand". The strong will survive.... and the weak will disappear into the night, along with your money.

I love to give examples so heres one..........

Lets say you live in a town of 1,000 people. You get the idea one day to sell "pumpkin pies" from your house. Everyone in town loves Pumpkin Pies and they start buying them from you. Your making money left and right. Your neighbor see's this and decides to start selling pumpkin pies too. Now your business will decrease because some of your customers don't like standing in the long line in front of your house so they go next door to buy their pie instead. It's OK though becuase your still making money........

Then, 3 more people decide to make pumpkin pies too, all in different parts of the town which makes it more convenient for some of your customers to get their pies from a closer location. All of a sudden your original customer base of 1,000 customers has just been given the opportunity to buy their pies at any of the 5 locations leaving with you w/ 1/5 of your original base which equals to just 200 customers.

Then one day half the people of the town decide they still like pumpkin pie but they are getting tired of it from eating so much of it and decide not to buy anymore for a while. Now your base has dropped to 1/5 of 500 which equals only 100 people you are selling pies too. You do some math and decide you need to sell 150 pies in order to make a profit. A 100 just wont cut it.

All 5 cant survive on only selling 100 pies each. This where the "Strong will survive" saying comes in to play. Being a savy business man you decide to buy-out 2 of your competitors. You offer them a fair price and they know they probably won't survive much longer anyway. This leaves you with 3 of the 5 locations in town. Through an effective advertising campaign and a short period of lowering the price of your pies to cost, your 2 remaining competitors decide to call it quits and close down their pie shops.

Now you have all 500 customers again all to yourself and you decide you will close 1 of the locations down leaving you with 2 locations, one in the North end of town and 1 in the South end.


This is what happens every second of every minute of every day in every country in the world. Its business. This is what is happening in the on-line poker industry as we speak. Its just like selling pies. People are getting sick of the pies and eating less of it leaving too many suppliers not making a profit. In the beginning, everyone wanted pie and their wasn't an oversaturation of suppliers which made it profitable to sell pies. Now with less demand and too much supply its time to clean house.

I forgot to mention those 2 pie dealers who decided to close shop becuase you put the pressure on them walked away with all the money their customers had put down to secure their next pie order.

The 2 sites you mentioned that closed shop and walked away are miniscule compared to what will happen in the future if some sort of governing body doesnt step in and regulate the holdings to protect the consumer. It should be "mandatory" for these companies to insure the holdings of their consumers, not an "option" as it is now to most of them.

The strong will survive. Sites such as Pokerstars and Full Tilt are the only 2 I would bank on right now. All the rest are vulnerable no matter how big the "Network" they belong too. Play it safe and keep your funds on any site to the minimum.

i think doyles room will also survive prima will cut down to 1 or 2 sites as for the rest i would not risk putting 1c on any off them

I can only surmise from you reply post Ben, that you agree with me. You are preaching to the choir. Poker sites that are well funded will do fine. Those that are on a shoestring will usually screw things up and cause ill will for all concerned, Dutch Boyd, ring a bell. I could open a poker site tomorrow for $100 but I have more sense than those who have done it already. All, really that I am saying is that other than customer pressure we, as the players have absolutely no control. In addition we are all in it for the money. How many people do you think that I think give a rats rooti tooti about what happens to my money. People in something for the money care only about their money and not other peoples money.

ZZ, I think you may be being too cynical. If people were only in it for the money, then apart from the totally cretinous, most would give up as soon as they realised they were not making any money, because, let's face it, most players are losers, some quite big time, even at lower stake levels. So I think it fair to presume that there is a large body of players who just love playing.

I'm not a loser, I make a small but steady profit at my own level, but that amount of money will pay no serious bill. So to say winning players are only in it for the money is also not necessarily true.

As one wiser head than ours once said (and I really bloody wish I could remember who!), the money is just a way of keeping score. If it isn't, then either you are one of that small handful who make a living at the game, or you are playing beyond your means, which you shouldn't be doing.

So I suspect that if poker players in general were pushed hard enough, then yes a caucus of activists would emerge who would band together to fight the good fight. I'm not convinced they have been pushed hard enough yet. When US players are facing a total ban from all sites, and all sites are therefore in danger of closure, now then people will get their arses into gear.

we are not in 100% agreement zz - sites like mansion are pretty well funded and even without much poker action are pretty safe. Size is not everything but the business principles under which they operate are significant.

Also I think it is likely that many sites will survive leaving the US - there are plenty of non-us poker players out there.