Online poker is a tough business in which to get started, especially if your goal is to offer rake-free gaming. LiveAce, an innovative poker room that debuted in mid-August, has announced that it is already shutting its doors.
On its homepage, LiveAce posted its obituary, writing, “We have worked tirelessly over the past two years to bring competitive, legal, rake-free online poker to the US. Unfortunately, despite support from our passionate user base, we haven’t been able to generate revenue sufficient to cover our operating costs.”
The message goes on to say that players will have until March 1, 2014 to cash out. Anything that was paid for and unused, such as Club Live memberships or chip packages, will be reimbursed. Those Club Live reimbursements will most often be refunded back to the credit card used to make the purchase. Other cash redemptions will be made via paper check or Dwolla payment. Customers must request refunds via physical mail; instructions are posted on LiveAce.com.
LiveAce launched as a sort of hybrid play money/subscription poker room. Customers could play completely for free or pay $19.99 per month for a Club Live membership to earn extra benefits. Everyone received 1,600 chips to start and Club Live members could top-up to 400 chips per day, while regular members could top-up to 200. Club Live members also received an additional 1,600 chips per month, compared to 200 for non-paying players.
LiveAce only offered ring games, reasoning, “We believe that poker players prefer the autonomy and flexibility of ring games. Tournaments are extremely time consuming and often require players to arrive at a set time and play for many hours in a row. Tournaments also have very few winners. In addition, tournament strategy is completely different than ring game strategy, so you don’t get any practice benefits for the types of games which you typically play in casinos, card rooms and home games.”
Though there were no real money chips on the site and no tournaments, players could still win cash in quite the interesting way. Each day, LiveAce held auctions in which players could use their earned chips (free chips like the monthly bonuses could not be used) to bid on cash prizes. Those who had the highest bid rates (chips per dollar) won the amount for which they bid, up to the maximum for the auction.
In what was likely a sign of trouble, some of LiveAce’s policies became less customer-friendly in recent weeks. Earlier this month, non-paying members were only eligible to top-up their chips weekly rather than daily. Last week, lower limits were placed on how much money players could win via auction.
