It seems as though the Merge Gaming Network and its member online poker rooms are constantly fiddling with their policies to try to save a penny, squeeze another penny out of their players, or just keep up with the Joneses. We wouldn’t have a complete week of news without something from Merge, so fortunately, here we go. As reported by professionalrakeback.com, it appears that the Merge Gaming Network has instituted a new player account rule.
The rule is simple: players are only allowed to have one account on the network. That means that anyone with separate accounts at say, Carbon Poker, GR88.com, BetUSA, and Sportsbook.ag will soon (as early as today, possibly) have them consolidated into just one. ProfRB.com has said it does not know if players will get to choose the room which will be the lone account or if the Merge Gaming Network will just do things automatically, but it is working on finding that out.
Most players should not have too much of a problem with this, as the Merge Gaming Network is dominated by Carbon Poker. None of the other sites on the network move the needle at all.
The purpose behind the business decision is not known, but one goal is likely to stop “bonus hopping.” Bonus hopping is a practice that has gone on for as long as online poker has been in existence, and this writer certainly took great advantage of it during the “golden age” of online poker in the middle of last decade. Bonus hoppers do just what it sounds like they do: they jump from poker room to poker room to earn deposit bonuses. For example, one might start by making a deposit at Poker Room A to receive a bonus, then play the required amount to unlock it. That player would then cash out and deposit at Poker Room B to do the same thing. Rinse, repeat. This tends to be especially easy to do at poker rooms on the same network, as the player is already familiar with the bonus structure, deposit methods, and software, so there is no learning curve. Plus, the traffic and player base is the same as they are used to.
Bonus hopping isn’t as easy to do today as it used to be, as poker rooms have made playthrough requirements stricter (and for Americans playing on offshore rooms, deposits and withdrawals are not as fast as they once were when we could quickly use Neteller), but it is still a common practice.
The problem bonus hopping poses for a poker network such as Merge is that it allows member rooms to poach players from each other by something as easy as offering a better bonus. They essentially end up undercutting each other on price, making everyone less profitable. Attracting players with bonuses also does nothing to inspire player loyalty.
ProfRB.com also posits that the Merge decision may help keep costs down by reducing withdrawals across the network.
The Merge Gaming Network is one of the few offshore networks that still accepts U.S. customers and ranks 17th in cash game traffic, according to PokerScout.com.
