Carbon Poker Slowdown Concerns Players
Merge Network has had a rough couple of weeks that has some players concerned about the safety of their money and others upset about the lower initial bonus offer. Hope is not lost though for players, things are just different.
Carbon Poker Slowdown Concerns Some
When Black Friday struck the US in 2011 players were left without a home to play poker by and large. Carbon Poker, and Merge Network to a larger degree, became a new home for them rising to become the largest US-friendly poker network. Since that time a lot of change has happened such as the shedding of most of the network's skins, the removal of flat rakeback and player benefits and a general switch to a more Bovada-esque recreational poker model. Merge Network is currently the 2nd largest poker network in the US market and the largest poker network still openly advertising and offering online poker to Americans. While the rakeback and VIP program were scrapped, the network became a softer and more recreational friendly place to play.
Merge Network Checks Slowed
UPDATE March 31, 2015: Shortly after publishing this article players a number of players on 2+2 forums began posting about check payouts coming in. Current times are in the 6-8 week range for 2.5k checks.
Over the past 2 months players have seen their cash outs via check slowed from around a 3 week average to a 6 to 8 week average. This has caused some players to become worried as many have been bitten by shady or untrustworthy sites in the past and are scared that could be happening again. For those players, there is a fairly bright silver lining to this situation though that hasn’t been present with other sites such as Lock Poker. Rest of world cash outs are still are still taking a short amount of time. When Lock Poker stopped playing players getting a cash out via even Skrill would take over a month, but that has yet to be the case with Carbon Poker.
While it might be inconvenient for players to have to wait 6-8 weeks, or longer for their checks, it’s important to remember that Carbon Poker warns players of this possibility by saying that 6-8 weeks is the expected time frame for checks to arrive. Also, it has taken up to 12 weeks in the past for Carbon Poker checks to arrive. None of this makes the wait any easier, obviously, but it’s important to keep facts in mind before jumping to hasty conclusions. Getting checks to US-based players is not easy and while some sites do have good systems in place to expedite the process, not having these systems in place is not a sign of insolvency. Carbon poker has been in business for over 10 years and has never failed to pay out a player - Professional Rakeback believes Carbon Poker and Merge Gaming Network to be profitable businesses and NOT a risk to players funds or bankrolls. We expect cashout times to improve, as they do every year (this is a repeating pattern at the beginning of each calendar year). While other sites do have quicker times on average, such as Bovada and Winning Poker Network, they to have also suffered slowdowns from time to time, and that is likely what this sutation is as well.
Big Initial Deposit Changes
Carbon Poker once had one of the best first deposit bonuses available to any players at 200% up to $5,000. Not only was it tied for the largest percent for American players, but it also was for the greatest amount of money if players could clear it. Slowly, changes have been happening to make this offer a bit less appealing. These changes came to a head recently when the old deposit bonus was completely done away with and now Carbon Poker is offering a 100% up to $1,000 bonus, putting it in line with the industry standard for US-facing sites in terms of bonus size, but the slowest bonus to clear of all US-friendly sites.
This change is sadly not the only change that players are going to have to endure. The bonus will now clear at a slower rate (5%) and will now release in $20 increments instead of the previous $10 increments. The time players will have to clear the bonus is being shortened from 90 days down to 60 days from the time of deposit.
Summary
While a lot of the news out of Carbon Poker might seem ominous, it’s important to remember that not a lot of these situations are completely different than what has been seen in the past, even if they are not what players might want. If you would like to see the payout report for Carbon Poker, and different sites that we track, you can do so here. If you're looking for an additional poker site to play on so that you can have steady payouts from more than one source, please check out our US Poker and Gaming Guide.