Official Message from Empire Poker

[surfdoc]

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Empire Poker will take all necessary steps to prevent players from playing only for bonuses on its tables, while keeping its active players satisfied and rewarded for their play through the VIP program, Royal Flush Club, reload bonuses, Tournament Masters program and more.


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You can not list reload bonuses here if you consider it fraud also.

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Yes you can. Reloads are designed to benefit their active players who play their all the time, not those who only come over for the bonuses.

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Then they have been spamming people with an invitation to get their accounts banned. There is nothing in the T&C stating that you "cannot take advantage of the offers that we send you via email", rofl. Calling this fraud is just plain stupid. You don't invite someone over to dinner and then bitch at them for eating too much.

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This analogy is absolutely perfect. NH.

[eastbay]

Empire,

Offering a deal with hidden conditions is dishonest. The bonuses clearly state that the condition for getting the bonus is playing N raked hands, etc. It does not require "active players" which is of course a very arbitrary designation for you to invent at your whim.

If there are additional conditions on the bonus deals, you must state them as conditions for obtaining the bonus, whether it be playing X other hands a month, or frequency of played hands, or whatever way you want to define "active players."

But 1) inventing new conditions post-facto and 2) refusing to divulge exactly what they are, is a dishonest and irreputable business practice. In this age of the internet where reputations travel to millions at the click of a button, you would be well advised to reconsider this policy.

It is not dishonest to accept incentive offers given by businesses. If the business cannot accept the terms of the offer as stated, they should not make the offer in the first place.

eastbay

PS I don't play for bonuses and never have.

[dutchgrl]

all I know is that I am with a big affiliate with over 600 players, and none of these players has had any problems with their accounts. This should confirm this statement.

[dogmeat]

I refuse to believe this is from Empire. Prove me wrong.

Dogmeat [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

[Wabby]

Look at it this way.

The future may have 50$ bonuses with 15x raked hands given to everyone, and you can whore it at all available sites on the internet.

Or they close some accounts that they predict are the worst "users/abusers".

In the future that may let them have a monthly 200$ bonus with 7x raked hands for all "active users" and beginners.

I know what I prefer.

[uw_madtown]

Empire Poker,

Please read StellarWind and eastbay's posts. Both of them make valid points that many agree with -- further, their responses are not from bonus whores banned from your site, but rather come from the "active users" you are trying to protect by instituting this policy.

-- Your customer support was horrid on this issue. There is no reason a straight answer could not have been given sooner. This hurts both the customer and your business; as you can see, many are reconsidering playing on your skin and the Party network in general because of such vague and shadowy responses from customer support.

-- While your T&C basically state "we can do whatever we want with your account at any time for any reason" and there is no recourse for those whose accounts have been closed, it is bad business to close accounts irrevocably without notice, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEIR ACTIONS WERE NOT EXPLICITLY AGAINST YOUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS. Your "active" players are now concerned -- what if you decide that regular 4-tablers are hurting your bottom line? Or those regularly sitting with fishy players? We have no reason to expect Empire will even notify us of policy changes before freezing accounts, and that's a scary thing indeed. The best way to handle this would clearly be to either stop offering the reloads to non-active bonus whores, or to notify your player base that such activity will not be tolerated in the future. Quietly closing accounts and refusing to tell players why is ridiculous. I expect you will lose some business as bad word of mouth spreads -- unlike Party going after rakeback, this is something that ALL players will be concerned about.

- uw_madtown, VIP player buckymadtown on Empire

[CORed]

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How do I know what is considered to be fraud?
Any account that shows almost zero activity between bonuses, and claims our reload bonuses continuously is subject to investigation.

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The use of the term "fraud" here is inappropriate and possibly libelous. While I understand that people who play only enough to clear bonuses are costing Empire money, and I can't argue that they have the right to tell those people that they no longer want their business "fraud" implies that they have done something dishonest and illegal, and with the possible exception of people who have created gnome accounts, these folks haven't done anything that could remotely be considered fraudulent. I can only assume that "PR" stands for "pathologically rude", or "pathetically ridiculous" rather than "public relations". I would say that this post is more evidence that Empire is run by chimpanzees, but chimpanzees are smarter than that.

[mb2696]

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I refuse to believe this is from Empire. Prove me wrong.

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I don't remember the specifics of account creation here, so this is just a thought. When you signup, do you have to verify your email address before you can post? If so, this person's profile lists the email as vip@empirepoker.com, which would make it real. If not, that doesn't matter I guess.

[NoChance]

I sent support an email telling them that for the first 18 months of playing online poker I considered them my home except when I was off chasing bonuses. The past 3 months my home has been Eurobet because of an affiliate deal. I prefer to play at Empire but when I first started playing I knew nothing about affiliates and started playing without one. I asked if somehow I could play under the same affiliate but do it at Empire OR create a new account with Empire under him. I also asked about whether my account was in good standing because I have been playing at Eurobet.

The response I received from support was instructions for the 3-step process on how to change my password [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img].

[droolie]

EmpirePR,

I would suggest you restructure your bonus system to benefit your loyal costumers and new sign-ups. Make more account specific reloads with smaller playthrough requirements and general reloads with high enough playthrough requirements that you will not lose money to bonus chasers. Offering bonuses that cause this conflict is bad business and should be discontinued.


I play a limited amount of poker and sometimes attractive bonuses are what get my attention from one site over the next. Many sites actively encourage this type of pattern. Until the actions of Empire poker administration this weekend I was under the impression that Empire welcomed all players, even players who choose to only play during bonus periods.

What exactly constitutes an "active player"? These things need to be made clear to everybody. In the future I don't want to run afoul of your site's un-written policy by unwittingly abusing something that seems to be freely offered when I am not able to play much when bonuses aren't being offered. Until I can be sure my business is truly wanted I believe I will be avoiding Empire poker (and it's reload bonuses) in the future.

- Sincerely,
a concerned "active" empire player since 8-04