Online poker network – Everleaf Gaming – has started restricting successful players on its network by limiting their access to certain tables.
Why? Well, in a report by PokerFuse.com, the network has done so to ensure what it calls “a healthy player and financial balance within the card room”. Players with weekly winnings in excess of €750 have found they are limited to playing certain tables via a rather frustrating pop-up message that reads “your playing rating is too high”. Hmm, a nuisance or a compliment?
However, those whose ratings are on the opposite end of the poker-player spectrum have also been faced with similar messages – with attempts to sit on certain tables with more successful players being interrupted by cautions discouraging them from playing. These types of warning messages read: “the rating of the table is higher than yours, do you really want to play on this table?”
This system, used to control players, is said to be based on the amount a player has won per week. The total weekly winnings accumulated by a player is then reset at midnight every Sunday making all the tables available again. In the report on Pokerfuse, a representative of one of the primary brands on the network, Minted Poker, responded to criticism on the change – saying that the impact is “less than 0.004% of the entire player pool”.
The representative added: “It is this 0.004% of the player pool that accounts for over 50% of the net win on the entire network.” Even so, the representative also stated that all who “fall into the remaining 99.996% of the player pool…will have easier games.”
What are your thoughts on Everleaf‘s restrictive move? It may give beginners more of chance at winning and restrict more advanced players from thrashing newbies and taking all their dosh – but is it more fair?
