BluffRoom & FeltStars Shut Down Their Merge Poker Sites
Bluffroom - Feltstars Close Merge Poker Operations
Professional Rakeback has some more Internet poker news for you, hot off the presses. In what is quickly becomming a reoccuring trend, Merge poker sites are being closed, bought out, or selling their business back to Merge Gaming Network. We at PROFRB believe that this is due to an epidemic of contract violations perpetrated by man Merge Gaming operators. What kind of contract violations you ask? Well, the offering of under the table rakeback for one, which strictly forbidden. The improper useage of tournament tickets and network cross cage funding? Yup, we are pointing our fingers at you FeltStars. All of the shenanigans going on between third party, white lable skins was leading to a tremendous amount of infighting and player poaching, which ultimately wasted thousands of manhours just to police each year. Poker networks do not want internal competition, they want external competition... to take market share from competing networks and to bring in new recreational players from all over the world to feed the poker ecology. These operators were not doing that, they were acting in their own self interests and using their "marketing budgets" not to attract new players, but to take existing players from the "brand name operators" of the network, online poker sites like Carbon Poker, Sportsbook, Youwin and PlayersOnly.
Bluffroom Closes
BluffRoom.com shut down its website within the last twenty four hours. We at Professional Rakeback can not say that we are surprised to see this happen either. As we sort of expected BluffRoom to close its Merge Gaming skin, as only a couple of months ago, Bluffroom operation on another competing poker network shut it's doors. This is typically a big warning sign of trouble ahead, and in this case it proved to be true. The rumor is that Bluffroom became insolvent through a series of bad business decisions, not the least of which was the under the table rakeback deals that we spoke of earlier. You see, not only does such a practice weaken the financials of the company who offers it, think low margins, this is business 101 stuff here, but there were other financial landmines that might blow up for partaking in this practice. You see, Merge instituted a new policy some five or six months ago - a new fine for operators. This fine was to be handed out to any operator caught participating in internal poaching of customers from other poker operators by virtue of using under the table rakeback deals. The fine was a staggering twenty thousand United States Dollars, $20,000.00 USD! Obviously the Merge Network was not playing around and was serious about stopping this type of internal strife. This fine was per instance by the way, each and every time one was caught would result in a huge financial blow. As such, the rumor is that BluffRoom got caught, and this exacerbated their already tenuous situation with thier other skin closing on the competing poker network. Just like that, BluffRoom was insolvent and sold its business to the network, end of story.
Professional Rakeback wants the players to know that they should not fear this situation however. BluffRoom did not use its own cashier, Bluffroom was on the Merge Cashier. Why does that mean you are safe as a BluffRoom refugee? Well it is simple. The Merge Cashier is owned and operated by Merge Gaming Network, and as such, the guarantee all the funds held within. Your BluffRoom funds will not vanish like they did post Black Friday at Absolute Poker or Ulitimate Bet!
Feltstars Closes
FeltStars, was one of the Merge Gaming skins marketing itself heavily in the Southern United States of America, quickly becoming a medium sized US online poker site. Feltstars was home to a great many online MTT pros, and it too also shut down its poker operations this morning! FeltStars, originally associated with the dreaded scammers Futurebet [Avoid at all costs, they stole MILLIONS of dollars from players MULTIPLE TIMES], broke away from Futurebet completely ~2 years ago and became a premier home to tournament players on the Merge Gaming Network. Feltstars then decided to use the Merge Cashier and ended up holding a nice cadre of players. Then they decided that they wanted to do their own player processing... somewhere along the line these discussions broke down and FeltStars decided rather abruptly to close its doors. Now, all you will see is this when you log into FeltStars poker client.
FeltStars was also implicated in a great many wrongdoings however. Not as prominently known for under the table rakeback as other skins like Bluffroom and Overbet, they were however giving out deals. The biggest violation however was that Feltstars was staking multi-table tournament players using the ineternal tournament ticket issuance plugin. What this means is that instead of having money on hand to pay for these tournaments, they simply gave them out to players, if the players failed to cash, it was a debt, if the players cashed, they used those winnings to pay off the other tournament tickets that they had issued. This effectively put a not too insignificant amount of risk on the Merge Cashier to handle the load, should the mass of Feltstars players getting free tournament entries ever "ran bad." Merge eventually found out what was going on and this seriously soured the business relationship between the two companies.
SO WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Both BluffRoom and FeltStars were on the Merge Cashier. The player funds were held in segregated accounts and are available for transfer to another poker operator on the Merge Gaming Network. ProfessionalRakeback would be delighted to help expedite this process for you. We can often get accounts moved and set up on Carbon Poker, PDC Poker and Aced in under 24 hours. Unfortunately, the skins are liable for unclaimed VIP points and tournament tickets, and these are not transferrable/recoverable.
One can check their cashier balance at BluffRoom by clicking here (defunct link), or at FeltStars by clicking here (defunct link). This entire balance can be transferred very quickly and easily by ProfRB's crack staff :)
Now more than ever it's best to stick with a big provider on the Merge Gaming Network. All of our partners are owned and operated by the same group, who happens to have the majority of Merge's traffic, and thus, are the safest bet in town. They also have the biggest promo budget and best VIP rewards program... what are you waiting for, Sign up now with one of our premier Merge poker partners, Carbon Poker, Aced Poker, or PDC Poker!