C'mon now BD, don't you know that gifts are only gifts when bobbo does them? When someone else does it, they're evening up, giving loans, or whatever other classification suits the point he's futilely trying to make (it's hard to keep track at this point when he's contradicted himself so many times). It's the same way that he views his exploiting technicalities as a savvy move, while someone exploiting his technicalities is scamming him. You made a good point of course, but your logic never stood a chance against a guy who is unfamiliar with the concept
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On the issue of flipping, for those who aren't seeing the bigger picture hinted at by several above: if SBR had sustainable rollover requirements designed to capture the rollover through rake before paying out (like profitable poker sites do), this would be a non issue, as flippers would lose the vast majority of their rollover through rake. SBR generously doesn't require the 20x rollover they'd have to if they wanted to be sustainable, running much lower requirements in the hopes of stimulating cash games by giving away tons of points. Unfortunately, this generosity seems to not only have not worked well (it seems most points are rolled over and yanked from tables soon after), but leaves them open to abuse by people who are unable or (more often) unwilling to play cash games as intended and flip instead. SBR, left in a difficult position of not having a great way to police this but wanting to encourage the rest of the community, ends up wasting a bunch of points on people who are not interested in participating in the poker community except for the free handouts.
I have some sympathy for people who prefer flipping because they're not on often enough to find games to rollover in...but if these people are unable to stimulate cash games as intended with the poker points, I'm not too torn up about them being able to get points from tourneys. Not to say all flippers are doing so with bad intent; some (perhaps most) flippers are just reacting to the current environment...there are only a few despicable ones who are just looking to scam SBR for any free handouts they can get.
The only effective solution I see is threefold:
1) raise poker point rollovers to the sustainable 20x. This would make it very clear that the purpose of the the huge poker tournament overlays is to stimulate the poker community, it would disincentivize people exploiting SBR's generosity, and the increased rake take would allow SBR to provide more promotions more narrowly targeted at the people who will grow the community. I can understand the desire to not want to scare away new players, but if they're not willing to play that much poker, they're not the people you want to attract anyways. Players with less time to rollover can still participate as outlined below.
(Note: rake caps might have to be removed to ensure 20x rollover @ 5% rake= 100% rake captured...otherwise it leaves a loophole to be exploited)
2) Change rollover evaluation. Combine all rollover-requiring poker points into one large pool, and release them in increments of 20 points or similar. This removes the need to find an appropriate blind level for rollovers, makes small tourney cashes less worthless, and allows more casual players to still receive some benefit even if they can't play often enough to roll over everything. With the sustainable rollover requirement, SBR doesn't even need to worry about expiring the rollovers (normally it's a bad idea for businesses to not place time limits on the potential liabilities), because they're revenue neutral (for the most part anyways; flippers could technically get ~5% of face value, but I think it's safe to say the handful of people who'd be willing to waste the time doing it aren't a huge concern).
3) Beef up the offerings. With daily tournament prizes revenue neutral, SBR and sponsor $$ could be focused on bigger and better contest prizes. SBR gives away a very conservative 30,000+ points a week in tourneys (after rake from rollover, non-used rollovers etc). For a 3 month contest where dailies are revenue neutral instead, that's 360,000 extra points that could be added to the final tournament/winning team prizes/etc. For comparison purposes, that means a promo like the current World cup could almost triple the prizes for teams (if 2nd-4th are turned into betpoints; if they weren't, the top team prize would quadruple), and might convince more players to participate if the top team is pulling down over $1k in gift cards each. WSOP seats would be feasible; SBR could afford to send multiple players to some of the $1k buyin events (team SBR!), or one player to Vegas for a week for multiple events including travel....high-profile prizes like this seem like they're more advantageous to the SBR brand anyways! SBR could offer a rakeback program for play using betpoints (which would be a net revenue gain) and bonuses (revenue-neutral, clearing as an equivalent amount of rake is collected).
Doing the above would go a long way to resolving the stagnation at the poker tables, the issue of people exploiting SBR for freebies, and would even bring the poker program more in line with other SBR offerings (as has been rightly pointed out before, SBR currently throws more points at the poker program than almost anything else, for arguably little return). You might have some casual players deciding it's no longer worth their time, but I'd be surprised if it was much of a net loss: very few people are playing SBR poker because they can't earn more per hour elsewhere, and players would still want a shot at qualifying for contest-end events where they'd have a shot at betpoints or other non-rollover prizes.
Important to note that even taking the above steps would still leave SBR exposed to potential abuse...people could dump rollovers to others and settle up afterwards, which would probably require some extra policing to detect. I don't think it would be too difficult to implement some quick checks to keep the abuse to an acceptable minimum though; a simple report run on points transfers between players, with an eye on repeated transactions or over certain amounts coupled with poker playing, would probably do the trick. The alternative (treating poker points as real $ rooms treat bonuses, playing for real points and releasing in increments to betpoint balance) would stop that practice, but would likely not have as wide of an appeal for casual players or those who don't maintain a betpoint bankroll.
SBR: the core of these changes seem like they're within the capabilities of the software. It would certainly shake things up, and the effects on participation are hard to accurately predict...but it seems like it would be worth a shot. Maybe try it out for a contest and see how it plays out; if it doesn't work out, you can always go back to the current way of doing things! If assistance is desired or required for any of this, there are at least half a dozen of us who are capable and willing to help make things better
tl;dr version: make rollovers revenue-neutral, simplify rollover balances and funnel savings to better prizes. Limits exploitation, targets desired players with greater accuracy, more specifically encourages poker room growth.