For heads up sng players I would guess Merge is 3rd best. It's slim pickings, Cake has died off a lot recently, Bodog too and UB has some concerns at all times.Party still rakes too high for low stakes euro players to find a good home there I believe. I'm not sure the best rooms of the rest for euro players, iPoker might be good, but I can't play on any of those rooms so I don't have any experience.I would say Merge though, games are soft, somewhat populated up to the $115 level so that there's minimal wait times and the rakeback is great (we offer 35% which is their max they allow on the Carbon skin there).
Ipoker is dying out for husng..best choice is imo Ongame, but it requires that you put in a lot of play, if you are able to do that you can secure deals of 60-70% RB which negates the high rake + Ongame has plenty of traffic
my experience with merge is somewhat not so cool, I dont beleive there is ALOT of traffic. but I think there is somewhat sufficient, I mean its standard to wait 5min or so at the 30-50$ level, I like the rakeback deal, but I dont like their cashout policy and all, I decided to stay on stars simply because games insta fills
Unfortunately with higher rakeback deals like this, there's usually a catch.Some things I hear about euro room deals from time to time:- Under the table deals (usually somebody PMing you on a poker forum, who doesn't have an actual website, or somebody that offers you something that is not listed on their website) can often go wrong, you can stop getting paid, get owed a lot of money or even get your account shut down and money taken back.- Players that win too much on some of the large euro networks get booted by the network or affiliate (search around on 2p2 for something like win vs loss ratio for affiliates... probably in the "internet poker" forum over there). Their "logic" here is that they want to balance the games and the ratio of affiliates who refer players to them (IE not referring too many winners compared to losers).- Sometimes you're required to play a ton or clear a bonus to get to the high rakeback percentages.Some not so good stuff that happened recently with betfair, a publicly traded company that I believe is on the Ongame network.http://www.casinomeister.com/rogue/betfair.phphttp://www.casinomeister.com/forums/...us-fiasco.htmlhttp://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...eister-934242/So yes, their double rake can be negated by 60-70% rakeback offers. These offers are essentially giving you similar rakeback as you would get on Full Tilt or Carbon (the former has more traffic, the latter has just as soft of games), so don't be too excited about the prospect of 70% rakeback (given there's 10% rake to begin with).So in the end, it might be fine to play on a network like this, but it doesn't really appear to give players any better of a deal when considering the 2x rake, possibly exclusion for big winners from long term rakeback security, possible exclusion of low volume players to the best deals and weaker customer support/decisions.
Ryan: What do u mean by "booted"? Didnt really understand what u meant there.Yeah u can get up to about 70 % rakeback at ongame, but u have to rake for at least 4000 dollars per month i think, the more u play = more rakeback (not under the table). Dont know for sure but i guess theres still some 8x bonuses u can get under the table, get that offered sometimes but not interested in deals like that myself.
By booted I mean that I've read (and it's been a highly talked about practice) that some Euro rooms are requiring affiliates to maintain a certain percentage of losing vs winning players on their network, in order to keep the games softer and room healthier I believe.It may be more of an Ipoker thing, but I believe this has been going on at all the major Euro networks (I haven't heard this from Party however), where affiliates are forced to let go of some players (or networks shut their accounts down) in order to maintain that percentage.I only bring it up because of the requirements for high effective rakeback players. As you mention, if you're required to rake 4k a month to get 70% rakeback, you are probably more likely to be a target for removal if the poker network you play on uses this practice.I'm not up to date on all of this however, but I've read a few big threads in 2010 that detailed this practice and the positives and negatives of it.
Stars has a tougher population overall, but under the $50 buyin level it shouldn't amount to much of a difference (especially considering action is very plentiful).I've noticed a site like Carbon (Merge) is very soft at the $50 level, a lot softer than FTP or Stars.Entraction I haven't tried. The overall network has about half the population of Merge (which has slightly more than Cake or Bodog). I'm not sure how that translates into heads up sngs. I may signup with one of our offers and try it out soon though.
http://www.pokerscout.com/ have all the information you need !! i believe rakeback , is cool ...
For heads up sng players I would guess Merge is 3rd best. It's slim pickings, Cake has died off a lot recently, Bodog too and UB has some concerns at all times.Party still rakes too high for low stakes euro players to find a good home there I believe. I'm not sure the best rooms of the rest for euro players, iPoker might be good, but I can't play on any of those rooms so I don't have any experience.I would say Merge though, games are soft, somewhat populated up to the $115 level so that there's minimal wait times and the rakeback is great (we offer 35% which is their max they allow on the Carbon skin there).
Ipoker is dying out for husng..best choice is imo Ongame, but it requires that you put in a lot of play, if you are able to do that you can secure deals of 60-70% RB which negates the high rake + Ongame has plenty of traffic
I'd be interested to know how you get rakeback that high as well.
How many games one can average per hour on Merge? On ipoker its roughly 5.5 (10.7 min per match according to my HEM)
how do you obtain the 70% rakeback deals?
my experience with merge is somewhat not so cool, I dont beleive there is ALOT of traffic. but I think there is somewhat sufficient, I mean its standard to wait 5min or so at the 30-50$ level, I like the rakeback deal, but I dont like their cashout policy and all, I decided to stay on stars simply because games insta fills
Unfortunately with higher rakeback deals like this, there's usually a catch.Some things I hear about euro room deals from time to time:- Under the table deals (usually somebody PMing you on a poker forum, who doesn't have an actual website, or somebody that offers you something that is not listed on their website) can often go wrong, you can stop getting paid, get owed a lot of money or even get your account shut down and money taken back.- Players that win too much on some of the large euro networks get booted by the network or affiliate (search around on 2p2 for something like win vs loss ratio for affiliates... probably in the "internet poker" forum over there). Their "logic" here is that they want to balance the games and the ratio of affiliates who refer players to them (IE not referring too many winners compared to losers).- Sometimes you're required to play a ton or clear a bonus to get to the high rakeback percentages.Some not so good stuff that happened recently with betfair, a publicly traded company that I believe is on the Ongame network.http://www.casinomeister.com/rogue/betfair.php http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/...us-fiasco.html http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...eister-934242/So yes, their double rake can be negated by 60-70% rakeback offers. These offers are essentially giving you similar rakeback as you would get on Full Tilt or Carbon (the former has more traffic, the latter has just as soft of games), so don't be too excited about the prospect of 70% rakeback (given there's 10% rake to begin with).So in the end, it might be fine to play on a network like this, but it doesn't really appear to give players any better of a deal when considering the 2x rake, possibly exclusion for big winners from long term rakeback security, possible exclusion of low volume players to the best deals and weaker customer support/decisions.
Ryan: What do u mean by "booted"? Didnt really understand what u meant there.Yeah u can get up to about 70 % rakeback at ongame, but u have to rake for at least 4000 dollars per month i think, the more u play = more rakeback (not under the table). Dont know for sure but i guess theres still some 8x bonuses u can get under the table, get that offered sometimes but not interested in deals like that myself.
By booted I mean that I've read (and it's been a highly talked about practice) that some Euro rooms are requiring affiliates to maintain a certain percentage of losing vs winning players on their network, in order to keep the games softer and room healthier I believe.It may be more of an Ipoker thing, but I believe this has been going on at all the major Euro networks (I haven't heard this from Party however), where affiliates are forced to let go of some players (or networks shut their accounts down) in order to maintain that percentage.I only bring it up because of the requirements for high effective rakeback players. As you mention, if you're required to rake 4k a month to get 70% rakeback, you are probably more likely to be a target for removal if the poker network you play on uses this practice.I'm not up to date on all of this however, but I've read a few big threads in 2010 that detailed this practice and the positives and negatives of it.
Anyone tried entraction?
Stars has one of the tougher populations? Number of regs etc?
Stars has a tougher population overall, but under the $50 buyin level it shouldn't amount to much of a difference (especially considering action is very plentiful).I've noticed a site like Carbon (Merge) is very soft at the $50 level, a lot softer than FTP or Stars.Entraction I haven't tried. The overall network has about half the population of Merge (which has slightly more than Cake or Bodog). I'm not sure how that translates into heads up sngs. I may signup with one of our offers and try it out soon though.
Best sites always depends on the player's own definition regarding that matter. Mine is Carbon, Red Star and Titan.
Start your day with a