Poker News

Loyalty programs have been one of the core components of the online poker experience for ages (does the history of online poker even have ages?). Sure, players want to play in quality poker games on a software client that runs smoothly, but part of the fun, part of the impetus to sit down and play has always been those rewards waiting for us down the road. Rewards earned just for playing. Be they cash rewards, tournament tickets, store swag, added benefits, or even useless virtual prestige items, people want to feel like they are always playing for something, even if they aren’t winning.

Carbon Poker’s thoughts? “Loyalty programs…pfft.”

The lead dog on the Merge Gaming Network has announced that as of July 15th, it is changing its loyalty program, effectively stripping all sense of “loyalty” from it. As things are currently constructed, players at Carbon Poker can earn VIP Points by playing in any real money games: cash games, Sit and Go’s, and multi-table tournaments. One VIP Point is earned for every 10 cents a players contributes to the rake in a raked pot (if the hand never reaches a flop, the rake is put back in the pot) or for every 10 cents paid in tournament and Sit and Go entry fees. Fractional points are awarded, so if a player contributes 55 cents to the rake in a hand, he will receive 5.5 VIP Points. These points can be used to purchase seats in Carbon Poker’s Early Bird, Nightly, Night Owl, Sunday Big tournaments, as well as various tournament series with buy-ins of $11 or higher.

So, while Carbon Poker’s loyalty program is rather meager, it is at least something. It used to be better, but on May 1st, Carbon removed the option to redeem VIP Points for cash.

But starting July 15th, the loyalty landscape turns from bleak to totally barren. On that date, VIP Points will be renamed Player Points (all VIP Points balances will be wiped out) and will no longer count for anything. The only thing Player Points will be used for is to keep track of bonuses or other promotions. They will just be a vehicle for counting. They won’t even be able to be redeemed for tournament entries. Player Points will be zeroed out at the end of every month.

For people who don’t think that’s so bad and that hey, Player Points will still be used for promotions, consider that every other poker room has promotions that use points as a score-keeping method, but the points still have value in some other way apart from the promotion. On Carbon Poker, Player Points will purely be used for counting. That’s it. It’s pretty awful.

The Merge Gaming Network, Carbon Poker’s home, is one of the few offshore networks that still accepts U.S. players. With a seven-day average of 450 cash game players, it is light years behind Bodog, the top U.S.-facing site, which has an average of 1,350 cash game players.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *