As everyone here knows, I've been an ardent supporter of Bet21 since their launch. In fact, you might say my support goes further back than that, since I was invited to participate in the beta testing prior to their launch date. I think the format and the software are the best the tournament world has ever seen. But, enough is enough. The problems and unanswered issues from Bet21 have finally ballooned to the point where I can no longer endorse the site in good conscience. I sincerely hope that these issues are a mere bump in the road on the way to Bet21's success, but I honestly fear that passage of the UIGEA may have dealt the concept a death blow. I have postponed writing this post, perhaps longer than I should have. Frankly, if the problems experienced at Bet21 had occurred at any other online casino, I would have blasted them time and time again for their practices. With Bet21, I was more sympathetic because I understood the impact that the legal situation posed, and I had such high hopes for eventual success. Nonetheless, this post is overdue. As I said, enough is enough. The unresolved issues, as I see them: Communication: This is really the root of the whole problem. The other three tournament blackjack sites online all have representatives visiting this board who respond to questions and concerns. Global Player, Get21, and Blackjack21 each have occasionally posted information here in an official capacity. Bet21 has instead chosen to remain silent while requests for information go unanswered. JoeP and Hollywood Dave both chose to pass along information they were provided about the bonus issue, but they were apparently misled. I suspect both regret having posted what they believed at the time to be true. Customer Support: Time and time again, we have seen inept responses from customer support. Yes, we all understand that Bet21 support is actually Ultimate Bet, and that explains a lot of why the responses aren't often relevant for blackjack play. Poker is, and will apparently always be, the vast majority of play at UB. Nonetheless, there is no excuse for the poor handling of matter after matter by the Bet21 CS staff. When it takes a player a dozen emails to get tournament dollars credited to his account, there is plainly a problem that needs addressing. The dreaded bonus money: When Bet21 officially launched, I deposited the max $650 to gain the maximum bonus. I knew that no matter how slowly they decided to convert over bonus money through real play, I would eventually get the entire $650 benefit. Their site clearly designated blackjack tournament play as eligible for converting bonus dollars and it still does in the cashier. We all understand that the profitability of Bet21 in the post-UIGEA era is decidely different. That doesn't change the fact that many players deposited to get this promised benefit. I think a reasonable compromise would be to make the bonus conversion rate very, very low. Perhaps convert 1 bonus dollar for every $10,000 in tournament entry fees paid. However, make it retroactive to day one. I think that would silence the critics, allowing the promise to be kept with minimal financial cost to Bet21. $1 per $10K of entry fees is essentially a rebate of just 1% of your tournament rake. If the software can't handle it, have someone manually run the reports and credit the accounts once per month. [ Note: Payments are no longer an issue. See the next message in this thread for details ] Speed of payments: Recent reports of slow pay on big withdrawals are quite disturbing. Whether related or not, the recent merger of UB and Absolute Poker coincides with a change in the cashier facility in Bet21, and the removal of Courier service for check delivery. Gambling online already requires a huge leap of faith, and any slowness in payouts can rapidly dissolve a site's good reputation. Adding payment uncertainty to the ever-present fear of non-random games is a recipe for disaster. [ Seating may not be an issue any longer either. ] The seating issue: The recent software change that impacts seating assignments in Sit and Gos is a show-stopping problem in my opinion. It is clear that the software is not assigning the seats in a random fashion, and that gives some players a big edge while others are playing at a huge disadvantage. Now we don't know whether the effect is accidental or intentional, but we do know it is completely unacceptable. This is a problem big enough in my opinion to warrant a non-stop effort on the part of the software developers until it is resolved. Because of the major importance that position plays in this game, this problem creates a completely unfair game at the moment. This should be priority one until it is resolved. Summary: Any of these issues taken alone is relatively minor, but taken together they give the impression that Bet21 is either willfully or through incompetence unable to service their customer base in an acceptable fashion. Perhaps the management has decided that it is unwilling to devote more time and money to a project that apparently is not going to be the wild success that it was initially projected to be. Perhaps they've already "left the building", and Bet21 will wither on the vine. Regardless, I can no longer be silent about the seriousness of the issues. Personally, I have been quite successful at the site, and I've made several substantial withdrawals. Still, with the non-random seating situation and the other issues, I have made the decision to stop playing at the site, effective immediately. I withdrew my remaining balance this morning. I hope to be able to deposit again in the future, when these issues have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
The above is an exact copy of the upcoming post I provided to Bet21 customer support a week ago. I wanted to post it "as-is" to record the conversation in its entirety. Since then, a couple of developments should be mentioned. First and most importantly: To my knowledge, there are no outstanding payment issues with any players. Toonces has posted here that he received payment in full. There was another player having problems, but when I followed up he felt like the original check had probably arrived and been misplaced by someone after it was received. He is now awaiting a replacement check. That's all great news. Second: Some players here have reported that the seating issue in Sit and Go events may have been resolved. I can't verify that claim, as I have not played in the last week. More data from regular players here will be appreciated. --------------------- Here is the response I received from Bet21 customer support: I have not heard back from them since that email.
In addition, there are two other issues that I did not raise in my message. 1) I believe there are still players who have not received Einiger's Play to Win book which was promised to depositors. 2) Recent posts here at BJT have implied that there are non-random problems with the cards being dealt. I don't think any of the posts made to date have nearly enough data to be statistically significant, but it is a problem that deserves exploration. I would also be interested in seeing the same kind of data collected for PlayUBT, as I have had numerous players complain to me privately that they have seen unusual statistical anomalies. I want to be very clear here though. I did not mention any non-random behavior other than the seating issue in my previous post because I am not aware of any trustworthy and sufficient data to back up any other claims. This message is primarily to aggregate all known issues in one thread, for reference. I wish that someone at Bet21 would choose to respond directly here at BJT.
Anybody out there? That sums it up nicely, Kenneth. It's pretty unbelievable that UB/Bet21 have reached the stage of completely ignoring the most important facets of their BJT online business and their albeit small customer base. Given the context of UIGEA and the aggressive stance of the DOJ, one can understand to a certain degree why UB/Bet21 is fast becoming an orphan. Hopefully, somehow with your prodding, the situation changes in the area of communication and CS.
10% of 1000 rake... is $10 not $1. If I convert this to my six months of intense play on Bet 21 (my records show that they raked more than $2500 on my play only) it would translate to either $2.50 Bonus dollars (your count) or $25 (my count). Both ways, it's laughable:joker: Such an offer being offered, I would say keep it, jerks! Instead fix your software, communicate properly and I'll be happy. The 968 Bonus Dollars pending in my account from three separate deposits I made last October translate, under the Terms and Conditions agreed at the time, to approximately 450 to 500 credited Bonus Dollars to my account. I got zilch. At the rate suggested I'll be 500 years old before collecting. Actually I don't really care. I really enjoyed my time there. After I emptied 90% of my account three weeks ago, my perception now is that they made pretty sure to empty the rest themselves by not giving me any cards. No book, no bonus dollars, no regrets. I'm outta there for now and I'll be back when they fix things...the most important one being respect for their loyal pool of regular players:flame: Thank you Ken for clearing up things once and for all. Keep up the good work and hope to see you at a table one day. :sad: :sad: :sad:
My two penneth Thank you Ken for your input on these issues. I feel that I should also withdraw my money from Bet21 until things have been resolved. I too want Bet21 to be a success and I really enjoy the games but they have let players down with empty promises, poor communication, and what I would call a lack of respect. Cheers Reachy
playUBT.com, too I can verify that every problem outlined by Ken in his excellent message, with the natural exception of anything related to player's cash, is also happening in the freeroll games. The seating assignments problem was there, has improved, but is still obviously non-random. Frequency of occurence for certain hands has degenerated significantly (I had 19 straight non-winning hands, won 2, then a dozen more non-winners across a number of qualifier tournaments). And I'm convinced that bet21 and playUBT.com are using the same software for operation of the games themselves, so those of you playing for $$$ on bet21 must be engaged in some serious teeth-gnashing frustrations. The whole thing pi$$es me right off, and I can't imagine ponying up cash to play in semi-rigged games. It's too bad, there's certainly a big market for online BJT cash play.
Hummm, Well the ball is definitly in their court. The free site and UB/Bet21 all use the exact same software. I think they roll out updates first on UBT site ...at least that what I noticed.... Seating.... I probably complained first and loudest about this issue certainly because I was finding myself constantly in the "BAD" seats...And after several hundred games (this included the free rolls also) and after many hummmm's I finally decided to stop being lazy (Im really lazy btw) and track my results...I also estimated that this seating issue was new and I could approxamate when things changed. The seating issue seemed to be related to a upgrade to the game that seated MTT players at their next table as soon as their first round ended. Thru the forum here I also heard some honest players admitting to always getting the "GOOD" seats...hummmmm again... After recording a few hundred seating assignments and getting a 99% consistant range I decided to try some basic changes based only on what I knew.... I started noting players names in seats 5,6,and 7 (seats I was never getting). I added accounts and changed my user name to closely refelect some constant 6th seater getters....(hows that for bastardizing the english language Colin , Andy and Reachy...hehe...sorry) Anyway....Viola!!!! After a few trials I found a name or two that put me in seat 6 95% and seats 5 or 7 four more percent....with an occasional seat 1 assignment!!! That lead me to a more positive conclusion and that the programing was somehow seating alphabetically ??? or maybe even account number wise but certainly not randomly... I reported my tests and results to CS... I can understand no reply in this matter...especially to a big mouth like me...but Im glad to report that in my experience....this seating glitch has been fixed! I am getting random seats now...all accounts and user names are no longer nesting in the same good or bad areas but seems spread around the table. SO I feel that they fixed something...I havent noticed an update but I am not "programmy" so maybe this change didnt require a noticable update on my computer.. In all this time I NEVER thought they were singling me out to give the bad seats to....rather it was a bug that got written into the game during the seating update ...I just happened to have the "bad" criteria.that gave me the lousey seats. That issue seems fixed but I keep one eye on it for now. I DO NOT think this software is designed to award or cheat any particular player! That fact that it could be is not debateable...certainly it could..and that alone requires an independant test of software to prove a complete randomness...or at randomness that falls into known norms...Im not a mathamatician or a spellamatician... please forgive my ignorance. Im as mad as anyone about the deposit bonus...but Im willing to play mine in a bonus dollar per entry raffel where I perhaps have 250 bouns dollars so I can enter a "bonus dollar" game that has a 250 BD fee and guarentee some payout...heck lets say 250 dollars...that reduces the debt on BD to 1/7 for them and the matter is settled. I suppose it is hard for them to do this because then they must admit there is a problem and that is risky ...Im sure they want to be preceived as successful and solvent ...in fact it imperative that they appear so ...WE have seen "ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE" right? I suggest we all give them a little more time to work up a solution and give a reply before we make a "run on the bank"... certainly we can put them out of business just like we could close the local savings and loan by withdrawing all our funds....this would be throwing the baby out with the bath water and I would advise against that. I think they will get the message now. I dont think it serves us to put them out of business... The poker game is strong yet and thats not going away anytime soon... This BJ game is an add on to the poker site....Its also realtivly new software and must undergo years of debugging and ungrading to refine everything... The game is a perfect fit for these poker sites and I wish this game would appear on every remaining poker site! This would result in more exposure and the compitition would help the game as someone would run it in the best possible fashon and that site would then benefit by attracting the flock to the best game. UB/Bet21 are the only game in town and they have been treating us like that in some respects....its time they revamp that attitude and talk about want the players need to be happy. TALK is the key word here. Hopefully they are paying attention....poker is going to stay and there is no reason this game cant be playing right over in the next room... playing and collecting revenue just like poker.
I hope the seating issue is indeed fixed. If that is the case, I think that it is imperative that Bet21 make an official statement addressing this issue, explaining what happened, and that the problem is now fixed. Just watching the seat assignments and hoping that we can figure out whether it is corrected is NOT an acceptable resolution to this problem.
Ken, a very good post as usual, you show that your reputation for thoughtfulness and integrity is well deserved. It looks like UB/Bet21 has resolved the seating assignment issue, based on what I have seen recently; and I think you are right in noting that while people may feel that cards being dealt are unfair in some way, there is no evidence that this is the case. I have tracked a pretty considerable number of tables/hands at times, and while I have seen some very odd results, when tracking is continued over a longer period of time, the probabilities eventually work out to a reasonable expectation. At the present time, I see no reason to question if the cards are fair, we are just seeing the type of 'streaks' that can be expected over a very long sequence of tables/hands, as far as I can see. I think what we are seeing at Ultimate Bet is that they just don't care that much about their ebj players; we do not provide a big enough portion of their profit to make it worth their while to pay attention to us, so they don't - that combined with a too casual attitude to keeping their promises. As a skin of UB, Bet21 suffers the same issues.
