Joined: Apr '11
Location: Romania
Age: 35 (M)
Posts: 6669
"In the latest weekly online poker traffic update we can see that the Cereus network (Absolute Poker and UB), has lost a dramatic 83% of its traffic since Black Friday.
Cereus network is now in the 28th place on worldwide rankings.
When looking Year over Year data, the numbers for big poker networks looks like this:
Pokerstars -28% Full Tilt Poker -24% Cereus -82% Merge Gaming Network +155%
Players are still waiting to get their money out from Ultimatebet, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker after the Black Friday, while PokerStars has returned already over $100M to U.S players after Black Friday."
Now i think these datas are a lot more realistic than the one presented before, as you see full tilt poker lost the less traffic, think clear after the number of players that are online on their site. As you see the biggest winner is the merge network, now it's clear why they won't offer rakeback anymore after 1st of june. I'm sorry about those that have an account on cereus but i really think they'll go to bankruptcy.
Joined: May '08
Location: Germany
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 6786
Merge is not that big. So that increase is not to impressive. But it looks like AP/UB were focused on the US market a lot more than Stars and Full Tilt.
Joined: May '10
Location: Serbia
Age: 45 (M)
Posts: 128
Yes, I play on absolute and there is almost no traffic on micro stakes, let alone higher. One or two tables per limit is all you get. A bit better shorthanded. However, I noticed another thing. On 10-2o cent table, a guy came and kept going all in with any two cards, and immediately after he had lost, reloading. He virtually donated us some 30 bucks, and said "I've got another 10 000, go on, take it" I don't know if this is some PR trick or something, but I found this guy on shark scope and he really had 10K. This kept going on for some 20 minutes and he said that he was bored and left. He might be drunk or high, or just tillting really bad.
Joined: Apr '09
Location: Australia
Age: 40 (M)
Posts: 6483
^^ Higher stakes players are well known for tilting off buyins on the micros. Whats $30 to somebody with a $10K roll. Just a way to let off some steam probably.
Joined: May '09
Location: India
Age: 37 (M)
Posts: 4873
cereus have taken a big hit and the way they are acting ( removing moneybookers/ delayed cashouts) they gonna lose non - US players too. merge seem to be getting lots of us players but can they keep this rate of growth?
Joined: Feb '11
Location: Canada
Age: 39 (M)
Posts: 1660
It'll definitely be interesting to see what becomes of these statistics. Good job Merge . . . Wow, crazy increase. I wonder what happened with the ipoker network.
Lol B1gfoot, at this point I wouldn't even be surprised.
I coould see it making sense to let other sites get big and make another example of them. Could Merge be the next Martyr?
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 3361
Yeah, just whined about not being able to get my BR from FT. At the very least I would like to be able to get what little money I have from FT. I keep reading updates that FT is supposed to be releasing funds to U.S. citizens, but I've seen no action. I hear PS has done this and wonder if FT is even going to address issues with the U.S. gov. and hopefully we can just start playing again. Really miss the SnG's, BRM freerolls and playing in the Mania with the Mobsters. Enough whining! Good LUck to All!
Joined: May '10
Location: Serbia
Age: 45 (M)
Posts: 128
Yeah, it is official. Cereus is dead. Almost no players, and I can't withdraw my money because the only option is check, and it will take days and they will deduct half my stack for fee. Stupid FBI. Bet they transferred their money to merge.
i'd really like to see how much money that the USA has lost since black friday sure theere was quite a few bad US players that were free money but there was alot of really good players that made a decent amount of money and any amount of money that was coming in, In such a bad ecnonomy would be good wonder if the FBI ever took that into consideration bet the lead on that case was just a really bad poker player that lost to much money.
Joined: May '09
Location: India
Age: 37 (M)
Posts: 4873
this is so disappointing, i just logged into absolute after about 2 weeks to play an sng but traffic is so low. only around 5600 players online, many of which might just be logged in like me. but they have ukash withdrawal option now as mudadzija said - min 50$, no processing fee
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
The poker landscape is definitely changing, especially for those sites which catered to the US market. Honestly I would be reluctant to have any money on a site which allows US players as they might be the next ones. The sites I play at that did not accept US players seem to be business as usual.
Joined: May '10
Location: Serbia
Age: 45 (M)
Posts: 128
10 days since requested payout, no cigar. BTW this place is like ghoul island now. I have some 20 bucks that couldn't be processed (limit is 250 per week) so I decided to play a bit more there. First thing, you can't find a game. Secondly, if you find a game people there play like mad and chat in a language I haven't seen or heard before (and I thought I've seen it all). And they play like they joined a game on Titanic, splashing chips around and going allin with sh.. I mean rags. As if there's no tomorrow. One could almost smell pot and vodka from the monitor. Man, this place is scary now.
