Affiliates around the world woke up to find that Carbon Poker is ending the successful 35% flat rakeback program. Players who were receiving rakeback will be moved to the VIP program which offers various levels of rakeback based on the poker points you generate. The last day for players to earn flat 35% rakeback is January 31st as after that date all players will be automatically moved to the VIP program.
Several players after hearing the news went on to twoplustwo to vent and a representative from Carbon Poker had the following to say to players:
After being able to digest this for a while, we believe that moving away from rakeback, to an improved VIP program, is the best way to build and improve the overall poker ecology of our network.
It is still not known as of this article if this is a network wide policy or if it just effects Carbon Poker. Merge has been know to change it stance on rakeback on more than one occasion in the past. Rakeback on the Merge Network has been through a lot as it was initially allowed without a cap which brought on rakeback wars among the white label site operators.
As the rakeback wars heated up, Merge then instituted a rakeback cap which helped level the playing field among the skins. Then out of no where they announced all rakeback was banned but existing players with rakeback were grandfathered in. Then Lock Poker bought the Cake Poker Network and we saw Merge bring back rakeback but at a capped 35% flat rake.
Now we see another change with rakeback being completely eliminated on Carbon Poker & we assume Merge Network as well. The only difference this time is the fact that players are not grandfathered in.
Merge has seen a lot of change of the last several months. The network has seen some sites close and or merge with competitors. They have also seen several skins open up there own cashier system instead of using the Merge network wide cashier. They also recently banned all player to player transfers which was the life blood of some players as they were not able to deposit.
Here is a snippet of the email sent to affiliates of Carbon Poker:
We decided to remove rakeback entirely as of January 31st, 11:59 PM EST. All players will be transferred from the rakeback program to the VIP program. Removal of rakeback applies to all existing and new players.
This change enables us to offer larger and more beneficial bonuses and ultimately allows for an improved distribution of bonuses to our players.
